To Spread His Glory

Four Theses on Christian Education
by Donald T. Williams

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 Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College and the author of Deeper Magic: The Theology Behind the Writings of C. S. Lewis (Square Halo Books, 2016) and Ninety-Five Theses for a New Reformation: A Road Map for Post-Evangelical Christianity (Semper Reformanda Publications, 2021).

more on Education from the online archives

32.4—July/August 2019

To Spread His Glory

Four Theses on Christian Education by Donald T. Williams

24.5—Sept/Oct 2011

Pupils Delighted

on Wondering or Wandering Through College Education by Anthony Esolen

27.2—March/April 2014

Poetry Above Compulsion

Higher Education Should Advance the Glorious Liberty of the Sons of God by Anthony Esolen

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