Reclaiming the Christian Intellectual Tradition

A Student's Guide

Ted Newell, David S. Dockery

• Publisher: Crossway
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781433554964
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Education

Education has the power to shape culture through the passing on of traditions, narratives, and values across generations.

Profiling five distinct paradigms of education through different eras in history, this book casts a vision for a renewal of Christian education—essential for bringing hope to our postmodern world. Understanding the role of education in the reformation of societies will enable churches, families, and schools to reclaim their task for the spread of the gospel in our world today.

1

The Potential of Christian Education

When disciplined learning tells the Christian story in a fresh way, history has shown that vibrant expressions of faith result:

In the 800s, organized learning in a Europe united under Charlemagne brought a time of confidence when Christian culture flowered.

The 1100s renewal of learning seen in figures like Anselm and Bernard of Clairvaux led to the first universities.

The 1400s revival of humanistic learning in northern Europe and diffusion of books from the movable-type printing press raised interest in what Scripture really taught. The next generation saw a widespread renewal of faith in Christ.

John Wesley, the mid-eighteenth-century evangelist to Britain and America, maintained the gains of the Great Awakening for at least another century through Bible learning carried out in small groups called “classes.”

Denominations formed universities in the 1800s to train leaders for churches and society. University-based revivals brought urgency to the worldwide Christian movement.

Education can foster a wide renewal of the Christian story in our time and place. Initiatives in education can be a sign of Christian renewal, and feed it. Getting the story right changes people. Imaginations are fired. Believers reclaim a vision for evangelism, missions, church life, education, and family life.

This guide aims to introduce the academic field of education in a Christian perspective. It takes Christian education in the widest perspective possible. It discusses all types of disciplined learning—schools, universities, seminaries, local churches, parachurch organizations, youth ministries, and families.

Education has a strong claim as the very first Christian intellectual tradition. The apostles Paul, John, Peter, and others wrote documents for local churches in Corinth or Rome and elsewhere where individuals engaged in a battle of knowledge. The New Testament effort might be summed up in 2 Corinthians 10:5: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (NIV).

These chapters show how Christians accept a too-narrow understanding of education’s work. The modern world dramatically narrows the range in which historic Christian beliefs are public knowledge. This guide shows how to reclaim a Christian intellectual tradition in education.

Signs of Life, Portents of the Future

But first, a question: Does the Christian intellectual tradition of education really need to be reclaimed?

On the surface, Christian thinking about education is much in evidence. If academic writing about education indicates a Christian intellectual tradition, then publishers issue hundreds of new books, journal articles, and curricula every month. It would be impossible to attend all Christian academic, professional, or family conferences about education that are convened all over the world every week of the year, to say nothing about the dozens of education courses in seminaries and Christian universities and innumerable websites and podcasts. Christian education displays vibrant vital signs.

Imagine an alien investigator. Even if it limited its investigation of education to conservative Protestant or evangelical families, churches, youth ministries, parachurch organizations, schools, universities, and seminaries in the early 2000s, it would find a day-school movement of tens of thousands of schools on all continents, largely expanded since the 1960s, with dozens of curriculum publishers and two major associations.

It would find a homeschooling movement embracing nearly two million children in 2012 in the US (the largest homeschooling country) directed by books, curricula, and conferences.1

It would find a classical education movement for day schools and homeschools, with more curricula, blogs, and conferences.

It would find conservative Protestant or evangelical universities with published rationales for existence, along with professional journals and conferences, in addition to similar intellectual activity for Catholic universities and other faith groups. The process of confirming employment at an evangelical university often elicits a specific statement of Christian beliefs from the professor. Administrators scrutinize thousands of their statements about Christianity and education. Hundreds more professors teach church education to seminary or undergraduate students.

On secular university campuses, our alien would find student groups such as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Cru, and smaller groups—all teaching Christian beliefs to future leaders.

Neither would the alien find educational thinking absent in conservative churches. Sunday school materials plus mid-week and summer programming from Christian publishers would find a place in its survey. Parents would be seen absorbing programs from sources such as Focus on the Family and similar parachurch agencies. Church leaders would be noted as having the choice of offsite learning for leadership development conferences via worldwide satellite link.

Our alien might conclude that a Christian tradition of education is alive in thought and practice.

And yet . . .

Sociological surveys since the late 1990s reveal that as few as 40 percent of American young adults who grew up in evangelical churches still attend services regularly. The phenomenon of low adult adherence is apparent in Canada, Australia, and Europe—across Western societies.

Moreover, the faith that young adults confess is different than that of their parents and of the historic declarations of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Newsletter Signup
• Endorsements
• Other Crossway Books
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Preface
• 1 The Potential of Christian Education
• 2 Jesus’s Education
• 3 Christian Education in Hellenistic City-S tates
• 4 Cloistered Education
• 5 Empirical Education
• 6 Progressive Education
• 7 The Next Christian Education
• Questions for Reflection
• Timeline
• Glossary
• Resources for Further Study
• General index
• Scripture index