Christian Education in the twentieth century may very well be facing its darkest hour. Not only does there appear to be a growing lack of interest in Christian instruction -as well as a frightening loss of understanding of what it is all about -hut also, more ominously, the spirit of secularism has infiltrated our own ranks so successfully that by and large we have become incapable of distinguishing friend from foe. What passes for sound Christian education is more often than not a thoroughly secularistic affair. Constituencies are content with Bible courses and prayer sessions. Meanwhile, an annual array of Christian school graduates goes out into the world alarmingly unaware of the impending danger, confident that the American tradition of “religious freedom” will continue for ever. At the same time, the steadily growing power of an increasingly intolerant secularism continues to tighten its vise-like grip on an unsuspecting Christian remnant. America, home of the free and the brave, bulwark of secularistic humanism, what place is there in your future for Christian education?
As was pointed out in last month’s article, the present crisis confronting the Christian community cannot be understood apart from the historical context. A long process of secularization, rooted in a faulty Thomistic philosophy, has successfully squeezed Christianity into the mold of a personal, private religion. Medieval scholasticism, as we saw, set the stage for our present troubles. The devout theologians of the Middle Ages had divided life into two realms: a sphere of the Church, “religion,” “spiritual” activities, and special grace, and a sphere of common natural reason independent of faith and the Word of God. The results were indeed disastrous. Secularism and humanism quickly occupied the “realm of reason” and proceeded to develop into the leading, directing force in western civilization. The Christian religion was effectively confined to the instituted church, missions, and morality. As a result, to be a Christian in today’s society means little more than to attend church and to refrain from dishonest practices.
But Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, is not to be relegated to a kingdom of morality and virtue. Nor will it do to appeal to “common grace” as an excuse to let the powers of unbelief continue on their rampage. Christ is King, and he alone! That means that wherever man sits on the throne, as he does in the world of science and technology, education, politics, labor, and the news media, there the claims of the King of kings are trampled upon, no matter how high the standard of morality! Not first of all dishonesty and bad ethics, but that the glory of Jesus Christ, the Lord of lords, is politely crated and shipped to a musty corner of the cellar ought to arouse the Christian community into united action!
The spirit of secularism has scored an impressive triumph in the educational arena. Not that there was any real contest! As soon as humanism had gained solid control of western culture, educational processes, too, fell victim to the forces of unbelief. Education, at first secular, became secularistic, that is, first “free from Church control,” then “free from the Word of God.” And what is secular education today but the pinnacle of apostasy? There is not an inch of room for God and his Word in our public schools and universities. In fact, whatever place there was for the Bible has been outlawed by legislative decree. Official state sanction and tax support is given only to humanistic, God-less education in the public school. To top it off. Christians are forced to contribute to such supposedly “neutral” education! Indeed, secularism has scored a complete victory!
Subtly and insidiously, the enemy creates havoc within our own Christian institutions of learning. If only the foe would fight fairly! If only the spirit of secularism would meet us face to face! Instead, the enemy within slays his thousands by keeping the Christian eye distracted from the real issues. After all, do we not have prosperous systems of Christian education? Do we not build beautiful facilities? Do we not have many dedicated Christian teachers, willing to sacri6ce themselves for the cause? Yes, indeed we do. Meanwhile, inside those beautiful buildings dedicated Christian teachers often unwittingly promote the cause of secularism. They do so because they have not been taught to bow before the radical, all-encompassing claims of Jesus Christ. Instead, still caught up in the scholastic nature and grace philosophy, they switch back and forth between Bible texts and “secular subjects.” At a loss about what it means to teach certain subjects in a Christian way, they quickly succumb to the routine of textbooks and quizzes, hoping to instill “Christian character” into their pupils by exemplary behavior. Meanwhile, student upon student graduates with nothing more than a secularistic framework of mind tinged with lofty or not so lofty—ideals of Christian morality.
The blame for this unhappy situation must not be laid upon the tired shoulders of our overworked teachers. The entire Christian community is at fault, because it permitted the power of a scholastic tradition to abort the sporadic attempts to come to grips with the crippling effects of secularism. But there is no time for reproach. The hour is late, and apostate powers are on the march. Dark stormclouds are ominously gathering and threaten to unleash destruction upon the Christian church in the western world. Already a modern, irrelevant Christianity is in the process of capitulating to the secularistic forces. It seems only a matter of time before the Christian church, indistinguishable from its environment, does nothing more than ease the conscience of a God-forsaking society. It seems only a matter of time before Christianity is as powerful and effective force in the world today as a bowling league or a bridge club.
This critical hour demands communal reflection. There is an urgent need for togetherness in the biblical sense of the word. Let the body of Christ, unitedly, rise to the challenge. or it will perish on the North American continent.
Communal reflection: that means a deliberate rejection of the paralyzing effects of individualism. Christianity is not a collection of individually saved souls, but the new human race in Jesus Christ, sprouting forth like branches from one vine. Not just so many church members leading blameless lives, but men and women united in the Spirit of the Lord, dedicating their entire existence to their King, with one mouth and with one heart confessing to be a community of saints, joyfully serving and struggling to render the entire cosmos a worthy sacrifice to the Creator.
Communal reflection: that means to arrive at a Christian understanding of our cultural heritage. It means the recognition of Scholasticism as a pernicious, pagan distortion of the power of God’s Word. The nature and grace philosophy must be fully unmasked, its character and effects thoroughly clarified. for the enemy within—secularism—cannot be adequately evaluated and eradicated unless we have a firm hold of its historical roots.
Communal reflection: that means, most importantly, to rediscover the Word of God as a directing power in the life of the Christian church. It seems certain that once the true nature of Scholasticism is exposed, a host of obstacles will be in principle removed, so that there will be room for biblical, instead of biblicilistic, thought and action.
It is imperative that such communal reflection come about at once on both a small and a large scale. True, we have our teachers’ institutes, P.T.A. and faculty meetings. The problem, however, is not a shortage of meetings, but a preoccupation with technical and often irrelevant detail. It is tragic indeed that the superabundance of meetings has stifled enthusiasm for communal Christian reflection. Meanwhile, the power of secularism continues to grow unabatedly. For the sake of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, we must meet to talk about what we are doing. We must meet as elementary, junior high, and high school faculties and constituencies, for once not to discuss grades and bookorders and student behavior, but to unitedly face the demon of secularism. We must meet as college and seminary faculties—or faculty committees—to study and prayerfully reflect upon the present status of the Christian academic enterprise. We must meet as representatives of various Christian institutions in order to determine the strength of the enemy within, and to prepare a program of study and action. To do so is not merely a question to be considered at our leisure and convenience, but a matter of life or death!
Or are we content with the status quo? Does it not bother us that it is so excruciatingly difficult to teach in a consistently Christian manner? Are we satisfied to mumble something about the glory of God to our pupils before we delve into our “secular” textbooks? Or do we simply shrug on the problem since no one can concretely demonstrate how to teach, e.g., mathematics and French christianly?
It must become very clear to us that Christian education is not a matter of getting a Christian teacher and covenant children together in a classroom. This is a delusion perpetrated by an age-old tradition. The real character of Christian education is not determined by the physical environment. It is relatively easy, for example, to provide clean classrooms, a chapel, illustrations depicting biblical events put up on walls and in hallways, a Bible and hymnal in every desk, “Jesus loves us” signs in strategic locations, and fine, upright, dedicated Christian teachers. If all these items combined would automatically produce Christian education in the true sense of the word, we would have no problem at all. Then it would be just a matter of putting the right item in the right place. All of this misses the mark by a wide margin, however. For the education that goes on in such a fine environment often remains secular, in spite of the Christian trappings. Not the physical environment, but the content determines the nature of education. Put it this way: is the structure and the context of the course essentially the same as the one that is taught in the secular schools? Does the Christian teacher follow studiously a non-Christian textbook, here and there adding some “religious” notes? Is the “Christian aspect” of the course limited to a 20-minute introduction at the beginning of the semester? Is the subject matter evaluated merely in terms of a Bible text here and there? These and similar questions urgently demand the attention of the entire Christian community. There are other matters as well: what about the structure of the curriculum? What effort is made to articulate a Christian philosophical context for the entire academic enterprise as well as for individual courses? What demand is placed upon the teacher and how much opportunity and encouragement is given him to come to grips christianly with the problems in his field? Again, the need of the hour is Christian communal reflection From all of this it must not be concluded that environment is irrelevant or unimportant. Of course not. The danger is, however, that excessive concentration on physical environment will divert us from facing the real issues of Christian education. We are so easily satisfied with mere periphery and superficiality. We are so quickly complacent.
A similar threat lies in our preoccupation with chapel exercises and Bible courses. Although undoubtedly these play a role, they nevertheless tend to obscure the issue. For example, not long ago, after a discussion about the possibility to decrease the number of chapel sessions, one staunch supporter of Christian education was heard to say: “Now they want to reduce chapel exercises, pretty soon they’ll cut out Bible courses. Then we might as well send our children to the public school!” The tenacious notion that Bible courses, opening and closing prayer, and chapel exercises automatically guarantee true Christian education is all too prevalent within the Christian community. It is one of the diversive tactics used by the spirit of secularism. As long as we continue to entertain this idea, secularism can continue to usurp a bigger and bigger place in our Christian schools.
The truth is that as long as we remain deluded into thinking that Christian education is merely a matter of creating a “religious” environment, the Thomistic-scholastic philosophy—a pagan distortion!—will continue to cripple our efforts to render full-orbed service to Jesus Christ our King. We will continue to think and operate in terms of a two-level life: a level of academic subjects common to Christian and non-Christian alike, where so-called “facts” are “facts” and where the Christian commitment plays only a marginal—if any—role, and a level of “spiritual activity”: prayer, Bible stories. Bible courses, and meditations in chapel. As long as we permit this situation to exist, we allow the humanistic spirit of secularism to occupy and determine all the so-called “factual” and “semi-factual” subjects. More often than not, precisely these courses are the ones that prepare the student for his profession or vocation. As a result, we continue to graduate split-personalities: honest and virtuous, church-going young men and women who see no other connection between their Christian religion and their daily work than to maintain a high standard of morality. With every such graduate Christianity deteriorates just a little more into moralism, while secularism grows just a bit stronger.
In view of this situation, we do well to reevaluate the role of Christian education. Perhaps we ought stop talking about our Christian schools in terms of “nurturing covenant youth.” Not that there is something basically wrong with such terminology. Continued exclusive emphasis, however, on “training our children in the way they should walk” tends in the long run to be misleading. It fosters the idea that Christianity is basically a set of doctrines to be preached in church, and to be taught in Christian schools. It limits the Christian witness to an area of morality and theology. Perhaps we ought to begin to stress another side of the coin: Christian education, as an expression of the Christian community, is a way in which one area of human existence is brought under the Kingdom rule of Jesus Christ. It represents an attempt to be antithetically busy, that is, to offset in a very limited fashion some of the tremendous gains secularism has made in the world of education. As we have pointed out, practically all of education today is under the control of humanistic secularism. Christian education should be regarded as designed to check this apostate monopoly. To put it differently: Jesus Christ has been dethroned in the educational realm. Christian education aims to put him back on the throne.
If this is so, then Christian education cannot be regarded as an isolated attempt, but as one aspect of the total, united, communal Christian effort. Christian education is just one way in which the body of Christ expresses in practical terms what it confesses, namely, that Jesus Christ is King indeed. But in order to do justice to this confession, the vision must be regained that all of life is to be reclaimed for the Master. That means that the Christian community cannot and may not be content with merely three areas of communal endeavor: the instituted church, work of mercy, and education. Christianity is more than the instituted church engaged in works of mercy and education. The Christian commitment demands nothing less than the reformation of all of life. It will not do to merely tone up the moral conduct of labor leaders and politicians; instead, we must strive for the reformation of labor and politics. Labor and politics must acquire a new, Christian direction. If we have somewhat understood the awesome power of secularism, then we begin to realize that such a renewed direction can most effectively come about by means of a Christian labor union and a Christian political party. Similarly with respect to the mammoth of humanistic science and technology; it will not do to merely sign a petition to keep the astronauts from using profanity on the moon. Our Christian calling demands nothing less than the reformation of the scientific enterprise itself. This may seem an impossible task, and yet it must be attempted. Again, the news media of today are solidly controlled by secularism. Day after day our nation—and Christians within it—is fed a steady diet of humanistic doctrines. To offset this brainwashing a Christian daily newspaper is most urgently needed.
We do well to realize that all these areas of Christian action are expressions of the body of Christ, not of the instituted church. The objection, for example. that separation of church and state prohibits a Christian political party assumes that Christianity and the instituted church are one and the same thing. That is the old scholastic notion popping up again: church and “religion” and Christianity belong to the realm of grace, politics to the realm of “nature.” Let us eradicate this pernicious tradition, and act on the principle that Jesus Christ is King of the entire cosmos, and that we are to serve and obey him in the fullness of life. As his body we are called to restore his Kingdom rule in an apostate, fallen world. As his body we express our unity in our public worship services. As his body we express our unity in the work of missions, mercy, and education. As his body we must express our unity in all other areas of human concern as well. Wherever humanism is in charge, there we boldly attack, unitedly, communally.
Within this context we begin to understand the tremendously important role of Christian education. For in our academic institutions we are called to train young men and women for the battle against the forces of unbelief. That involves much more than merely training our youth to behave properly. At the same time, as long as we fail to come to grips with the enemy within, with the secularism within our own schools, we defeat our own purpose. Then we shall not be able to stand up in the day when the secular world decides to squeeze us out of existence.
Christian education in the twentieth century may well be facing its darkest hour. A militant secularism is on the move. Christian schools in many areas are beginning to feel the pressure: sky-rocketing costs of education, lack of understanding on the part of the state and government, and unreasonable minimum standards laws. Within the Christian community itself there is a decline of interest in Christian education. Secularism has a powerful hold on much in our own Christian schools.
Our urgent task is to carry on the Reformation, especially in Christian education. This is not a task for one or two individuals or for one or two schools. It involves the entire Christian community. It involves communal, Christian reflection. The task becomes all the more urgent when we observe the apparent breakdown of society around us. Western civilization has reached a critical point in its history. More than ever there is opportunity for a united Christian witness in labor, politics, business and industry, and in all the other areas of public concern. More than ever our nation needs a Christian answer. The time to act is now. If we don’t, perhaps God will not allow us another opportunity. To carry on the Reformation, let that be our challenge. A seemingly impossible task awaits the Christian community. In reality, however, not so impossible, for we are in the service of the King of kings. And do we not whole-heartedly confess,
Christ shall have dominion over land and sea,
Earth’s remotest regions shall His empire be?
Let’s get on with the job.
John Van Dyk is instructor – department of philosophy, Dordt College, Sioux Center.
As was pointed out in last month’s article, the present crisis confronting the Christian community cannot be understood apart from the historical context. A long process of secularization, rooted in a faulty Thomistic philosophy, has successfully squeezed Christianity into the mold of a personal, private religion. Medieval scholasticism, as we saw, set the stage for our present troubles. The devout theologians of the Middle Ages had divided life into two realms: a sphere of the Church, “religion,” “spiritual” activities, and special grace, and a sphere of common natural reason independent of faith and the Word of God. The results were indeed disastrous. Secularism and humanism quickly occupied the “realm of reason” and proceeded to develop into the leading, directing force in western civilization. The Christian religion was effectively confined to the instituted church, missions, and morality. As a result, to be a Christian in today’s society means little more than to attend church and to refrain from dishonest practices.
But Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, is not to be relegated to a kingdom of morality and virtue. Nor will it do to appeal to “common grace” as an excuse to let the powers of unbelief continue on their rampage. Christ is King, and he alone! That means that wherever man sits on the throne, as he does in the world of science and technology, education, politics, labor, and the news media, there the claims of the King of kings are trampled upon, no matter how high the standard of morality! Not first of all dishonesty and bad ethics, but that the glory of Jesus Christ, the Lord of lords, is politely crated and shipped to a musty corner of the cellar ought to arouse the Christian community into united action!
The spirit of secularism has scored an impressive triumph in the educational arena. Not that there was any real contest! As soon as humanism had gained solid control of western culture, educational processes, too, fell victim to the forces of unbelief. Education, at first secular, became secularistic, that is, first “free from Church control,” then “free from the Word of God.” And what is secular education today but the pinnacle of apostasy? There is not an inch of room for God and his Word in our public schools and universities. In fact, whatever place there was for the Bible has been outlawed by legislative decree. Official state sanction and tax support is given only to humanistic, God-less education in the public school. To top it off. Christians are forced to contribute to such supposedly “neutral” education! Indeed, secularism has scored a complete victory!
Subtly and insidiously, the enemy creates havoc within our own Christian institutions of learning. If only the foe would fight fairly! If only the spirit of secularism would meet us face to face! Instead, the enemy within slays his thousands by keeping the Christian eye distracted from the real issues. After all, do we not have prosperous systems of Christian education? Do we not build beautiful facilities? Do we not have many dedicated Christian teachers, willing to sacri6ce themselves for the cause? Yes, indeed we do. Meanwhile, inside those beautiful buildings dedicated Christian teachers often unwittingly promote the cause of secularism. They do so because they have not been taught to bow before the radical, all-encompassing claims of Jesus Christ. Instead, still caught up in the scholastic nature and grace philosophy, they switch back and forth between Bible texts and “secular subjects.” At a loss about what it means to teach certain subjects in a Christian way, they quickly succumb to the routine of textbooks and quizzes, hoping to instill “Christian character” into their pupils by exemplary behavior. Meanwhile, student upon student graduates with nothing more than a secularistic framework of mind tinged with lofty or not so lofty—ideals of Christian morality.
The blame for this unhappy situation must not be laid upon the tired shoulders of our overworked teachers. The entire Christian community is at fault, because it permitted the power of a scholastic tradition to abort the sporadic attempts to come to grips with the crippling effects of secularism. But there is no time for reproach. The hour is late, and apostate powers are on the march. Dark stormclouds are ominously gathering and threaten to unleash destruction upon the Christian church in the western world. Already a modern, irrelevant Christianity is in the process of capitulating to the secularistic forces. It seems only a matter of time before the Christian church, indistinguishable from its environment, does nothing more than ease the conscience of a God-forsaking society. It seems only a matter of time before Christianity is as powerful and effective force in the world today as a bowling league or a bridge club.
This critical hour demands communal reflection. There is an urgent need for togetherness in the biblical sense of the word. Let the body of Christ, unitedly, rise to the challenge. or it will perish on the North American continent.
Communal reflection: that means a deliberate rejection of the paralyzing effects of individualism. Christianity is not a collection of individually saved souls, but the new human race in Jesus Christ, sprouting forth like branches from one vine. Not just so many church members leading blameless lives, but men and women united in the Spirit of the Lord, dedicating their entire existence to their King, with one mouth and with one heart confessing to be a community of saints, joyfully serving and struggling to render the entire cosmos a worthy sacrifice to the Creator.
Communal reflection: that means to arrive at a Christian understanding of our cultural heritage. It means the recognition of Scholasticism as a pernicious, pagan distortion of the power of God’s Word. The nature and grace philosophy must be fully unmasked, its character and effects thoroughly clarified. for the enemy within—secularism—cannot be adequately evaluated and eradicated unless we have a firm hold of its historical roots.
Communal reflection: that means, most importantly, to rediscover the Word of God as a directing power in the life of the Christian church. It seems certain that once the true nature of Scholasticism is exposed, a host of obstacles will be in principle removed, so that there will be room for biblical, instead of biblicilistic, thought and action.
It is imperative that such communal reflection come about at once on both a small and a large scale. True, we have our teachers’ institutes, P.T.A. and faculty meetings. The problem, however, is not a shortage of meetings, but a preoccupation with technical and often irrelevant detail. It is tragic indeed that the superabundance of meetings has stifled enthusiasm for communal Christian reflection. Meanwhile, the power of secularism continues to grow unabatedly. For the sake of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, we must meet to talk about what we are doing. We must meet as elementary, junior high, and high school faculties and constituencies, for once not to discuss grades and bookorders and student behavior, but to unitedly face the demon of secularism. We must meet as college and seminary faculties—or faculty committees—to study and prayerfully reflect upon the present status of the Christian academic enterprise. We must meet as representatives of various Christian institutions in order to determine the strength of the enemy within, and to prepare a program of study and action. To do so is not merely a question to be considered at our leisure and convenience, but a matter of life or death!
Or are we content with the status quo? Does it not bother us that it is so excruciatingly difficult to teach in a consistently Christian manner? Are we satisfied to mumble something about the glory of God to our pupils before we delve into our “secular” textbooks? Or do we simply shrug on the problem since no one can concretely demonstrate how to teach, e.g., mathematics and French christianly?
It must become very clear to us that Christian education is not a matter of getting a Christian teacher and covenant children together in a classroom. This is a delusion perpetrated by an age-old tradition. The real character of Christian education is not determined by the physical environment. It is relatively easy, for example, to provide clean classrooms, a chapel, illustrations depicting biblical events put up on walls and in hallways, a Bible and hymnal in every desk, “Jesus loves us” signs in strategic locations, and fine, upright, dedicated Christian teachers. If all these items combined would automatically produce Christian education in the true sense of the word, we would have no problem at all. Then it would be just a matter of putting the right item in the right place. All of this misses the mark by a wide margin, however. For the education that goes on in such a fine environment often remains secular, in spite of the Christian trappings. Not the physical environment, but the content determines the nature of education. Put it this way: is the structure and the context of the course essentially the same as the one that is taught in the secular schools? Does the Christian teacher follow studiously a non-Christian textbook, here and there adding some “religious” notes? Is the “Christian aspect” of the course limited to a 20-minute introduction at the beginning of the semester? Is the subject matter evaluated merely in terms of a Bible text here and there? These and similar questions urgently demand the attention of the entire Christian community. There are other matters as well: what about the structure of the curriculum? What effort is made to articulate a Christian philosophical context for the entire academic enterprise as well as for individual courses? What demand is placed upon the teacher and how much opportunity and encouragement is given him to come to grips christianly with the problems in his field? Again, the need of the hour is Christian communal reflection From all of this it must not be concluded that environment is irrelevant or unimportant. Of course not. The danger is, however, that excessive concentration on physical environment will divert us from facing the real issues of Christian education. We are so easily satisfied with mere periphery and superficiality. We are so quickly complacent.
A similar threat lies in our preoccupation with chapel exercises and Bible courses. Although undoubtedly these play a role, they nevertheless tend to obscure the issue. For example, not long ago, after a discussion about the possibility to decrease the number of chapel sessions, one staunch supporter of Christian education was heard to say: “Now they want to reduce chapel exercises, pretty soon they’ll cut out Bible courses. Then we might as well send our children to the public school!” The tenacious notion that Bible courses, opening and closing prayer, and chapel exercises automatically guarantee true Christian education is all too prevalent within the Christian community. It is one of the diversive tactics used by the spirit of secularism. As long as we continue to entertain this idea, secularism can continue to usurp a bigger and bigger place in our Christian schools.
The truth is that as long as we remain deluded into thinking that Christian education is merely a matter of creating a “religious” environment, the Thomistic-scholastic philosophy—a pagan distortion!—will continue to cripple our efforts to render full-orbed service to Jesus Christ our King. We will continue to think and operate in terms of a two-level life: a level of academic subjects common to Christian and non-Christian alike, where so-called “facts” are “facts” and where the Christian commitment plays only a marginal—if any—role, and a level of “spiritual activity”: prayer, Bible stories. Bible courses, and meditations in chapel. As long as we permit this situation to exist, we allow the humanistic spirit of secularism to occupy and determine all the so-called “factual” and “semi-factual” subjects. More often than not, precisely these courses are the ones that prepare the student for his profession or vocation. As a result, we continue to graduate split-personalities: honest and virtuous, church-going young men and women who see no other connection between their Christian religion and their daily work than to maintain a high standard of morality. With every such graduate Christianity deteriorates just a little more into moralism, while secularism grows just a bit stronger.
In view of this situation, we do well to reevaluate the role of Christian education. Perhaps we ought stop talking about our Christian schools in terms of “nurturing covenant youth.” Not that there is something basically wrong with such terminology. Continued exclusive emphasis, however, on “training our children in the way they should walk” tends in the long run to be misleading. It fosters the idea that Christianity is basically a set of doctrines to be preached in church, and to be taught in Christian schools. It limits the Christian witness to an area of morality and theology. Perhaps we ought to begin to stress another side of the coin: Christian education, as an expression of the Christian community, is a way in which one area of human existence is brought under the Kingdom rule of Jesus Christ. It represents an attempt to be antithetically busy, that is, to offset in a very limited fashion some of the tremendous gains secularism has made in the world of education. As we have pointed out, practically all of education today is under the control of humanistic secularism. Christian education should be regarded as designed to check this apostate monopoly. To put it differently: Jesus Christ has been dethroned in the educational realm. Christian education aims to put him back on the throne.
If this is so, then Christian education cannot be regarded as an isolated attempt, but as one aspect of the total, united, communal Christian effort. Christian education is just one way in which the body of Christ expresses in practical terms what it confesses, namely, that Jesus Christ is King indeed. But in order to do justice to this confession, the vision must be regained that all of life is to be reclaimed for the Master. That means that the Christian community cannot and may not be content with merely three areas of communal endeavor: the instituted church, work of mercy, and education. Christianity is more than the instituted church engaged in works of mercy and education. The Christian commitment demands nothing less than the reformation of all of life. It will not do to merely tone up the moral conduct of labor leaders and politicians; instead, we must strive for the reformation of labor and politics. Labor and politics must acquire a new, Christian direction. If we have somewhat understood the awesome power of secularism, then we begin to realize that such a renewed direction can most effectively come about by means of a Christian labor union and a Christian political party. Similarly with respect to the mammoth of humanistic science and technology; it will not do to merely sign a petition to keep the astronauts from using profanity on the moon. Our Christian calling demands nothing less than the reformation of the scientific enterprise itself. This may seem an impossible task, and yet it must be attempted. Again, the news media of today are solidly controlled by secularism. Day after day our nation—and Christians within it—is fed a steady diet of humanistic doctrines. To offset this brainwashing a Christian daily newspaper is most urgently needed.
We do well to realize that all these areas of Christian action are expressions of the body of Christ, not of the instituted church. The objection, for example. that separation of church and state prohibits a Christian political party assumes that Christianity and the instituted church are one and the same thing. That is the old scholastic notion popping up again: church and “religion” and Christianity belong to the realm of grace, politics to the realm of “nature.” Let us eradicate this pernicious tradition, and act on the principle that Jesus Christ is King of the entire cosmos, and that we are to serve and obey him in the fullness of life. As his body we are called to restore his Kingdom rule in an apostate, fallen world. As his body we express our unity in our public worship services. As his body we express our unity in the work of missions, mercy, and education. As his body we must express our unity in all other areas of human concern as well. Wherever humanism is in charge, there we boldly attack, unitedly, communally.
Within this context we begin to understand the tremendously important role of Christian education. For in our academic institutions we are called to train young men and women for the battle against the forces of unbelief. That involves much more than merely training our youth to behave properly. At the same time, as long as we fail to come to grips with the enemy within, with the secularism within our own schools, we defeat our own purpose. Then we shall not be able to stand up in the day when the secular world decides to squeeze us out of existence.
Christian education in the twentieth century may well be facing its darkest hour. A militant secularism is on the move. Christian schools in many areas are beginning to feel the pressure: sky-rocketing costs of education, lack of understanding on the part of the state and government, and unreasonable minimum standards laws. Within the Christian community itself there is a decline of interest in Christian education. Secularism has a powerful hold on much in our own Christian schools.
Our urgent task is to carry on the Reformation, especially in Christian education. This is not a task for one or two individuals or for one or two schools. It involves the entire Christian community. It involves communal, Christian reflection. The task becomes all the more urgent when we observe the apparent breakdown of society around us. Western civilization has reached a critical point in its history. More than ever there is opportunity for a united Christian witness in labor, politics, business and industry, and in all the other areas of public concern. More than ever our nation needs a Christian answer. The time to act is now. If we don’t, perhaps God will not allow us another opportunity. To carry on the Reformation, let that be our challenge. A seemingly impossible task awaits the Christian community. In reality, however, not so impossible, for we are in the service of the King of kings. And do we not whole-heartedly confess,
Christ shall have dominion over land and sea,
Earth’s remotest regions shall His empire be?
Let’s get on with the job.
John Van Dyk is instructor – department of philosophy, Dordt College, Sioux Center.