Feature
To Spread His Glory
Four Theses on Christian Education
Christian education should be more than just avoiding the evil influence of the secular academy. It not only has a critical role to play alongside the Church and the home in transmitting the biblical worldview to the next generation; it also, in its higher levels, has a role to play in showing the relevance of the Christian worldview by applying it to all of life. It is not a luxury; it is a necessity if the Church is going to fulfill its mission.
Yet the Christian school movement—whether on the primary, secondary, or collegiate level—is the stepchild of the Church. We give lip service to its importance, but we will not support it on a level at which it can function well. It struggles to pay its faculty a living wage and still remain affordable enough to be a viable option for parents in the real world, for these are incompatible goals. They simply cannot both be met without a constant infusion of cash from outside the tuition structure—whether from endowments or from unrestricted giving. Most Christian schools do not have the endowments and aren’t going to get what they need in gifts. Qualified faculty members are hard to retain, and when they are retained, they are usually overworked in ways that make it difficult for them to advance in their fields.
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Donald T. Williams is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College. He stays permanently camped out on the borders between serious scholarship and pastoral ministry, between theology and literature, and between Narnia and Middle-Earth. He is the author of fourteen books, including Answers from Aslan: The Enduring Apologetics of C. S. Lewis (DeWard, 2023). He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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more on Education from the online archives
24.5—Sept/Oct 2011
on Wondering or Wandering Through College Education by Anthony Esolen
26.5—Sept/Oct 2013
The Perils of Pragmatism in Christian Attitudes Toward the Liberal Arts by Robin Phillips
more from the online archives
17.6—July/August 2004
Old Science Confronts a Formidable Challenge in the Scientific ID Movement by Jay W. Richards
29.1—Jan/Feb 2016
Secular Credibility Is a Devilish Temptation by James Hitchcock
34.1—January/February 2021
What the World Needs Now It Hardly Knows by Anthony Esolen
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