 God 's Choice : The Total World of a Fundamentalist Christian School is a 1986 book written by Alan Peshkin and published by the University of Chicago Press . It is the product of his late 1970s 18 @-@ month ethnographic study of a 350 @-@ person Christian fundamentalist Baptist school in Illinois . He describes the K – 12 day school 's function as a total institution that <unk> about a singular truth ( God 's will ) and subordination before God . The final chapter is a comparative analysis of the school and other schools , institutions , and social movements , wherein Peshkin concludes that the school is divisive in American society for promoting intolerance towards religious plurality , the very condition that permits the school 's existence . 
