The Religious Nature of Education

Education by its very nature is religious. Education is the means by which people/society pass on what they believe is of highest value in order to perpetuate a viable society. What is taught is what is believed to be important (their chief values of life). What is not taught is, by virtue of silence, of lesser, little or of no value.

Education is also the means by which we express our ultimate. As Christians we believe that God has created all things. All things in creation, by virtue of their creation, are accountable and subject to God their Creator. This is the underlying presupposition of the Christians world/live view. For the Christian all of life is perceived on the basis of that premise. Thus all we learn in life, regardless of the subject, has its ultimate in God. Secularism is understood as simply another way to express atheism. The secular mind does not recognize God as the ultimate in all things, but denies God as the ultimate by its indifference and its very silence. Thus by denying Him the recognition he deserves, God is reduced to nothing more than the aftermath of a faint hope. For example, as believers we understand the subject of history to be the study of the providential outworking of God’s ultimate plan. God’s plan is the underlying premise of all of history. Whereas, the secular mind perceives history as being the pure efforts of self-determinate man, denying that God (if He is acknowledged at all) has any power to intervene in the course of history. Though the secular historian may recognize the influence of religious thought, this is far different than recognizing the influence of God Himself. The secular historian, as well as all those who adopt a secular view of life, see man as autonomous and self-determinative.

Education then is either theistic, in that God is recognized as the ultimate in all things (as all things have their origin in Him), or, it is atheistic in that God is denied by silence. Underlying either view is faith and belief. Further, values themselves are religious. The question of good and evil cannot be discussed apart from religious grounds. The curriculum of any course of education is based on what is valued most by those who establish it. That which is taught is thought to be good for the betterment of the community. Thus, in the course of study and discipline, judgments respecting good and evil are made. The question remains, what is the basis upon which those determinations are made? Is man ultimately autonomous, able to make his own rules as he pleases? Or, has God given us direction with respect to good and evil? The values taught based upon what is believed to be important or unimportant then become ethical issues. Ethics and morals are certainly religious, as they demand an ultimate. Anyway you look at it, Education, at its very root, is religious and thus a function of parental as opposed to government oversight.

In the early years of our nation the church was the seat of education. This was established in this manner for good reason. The early colonists did not want their children to be ignorant of God’s Word nor ignorant of God’s world. Their desire was to establish a moral and upright society and culture that conformed to the way of life taught in the Holy Scripture. It was the church that had oversight of the schools. In fact public education of children was originally established in the church and was supported by the tax dollars of the community. It was only as a result of a secular movement in the mid 1800’s that wrested the public school from the church and made it an entity of the state alone. Even the educators of those days were upset and fearful of the edresult of the “secularization” of education in their day. Much more could be said of other influences in American education, however, for our purposes at this time the above speaks to the current debacle of public “secularized” education and the need to return to both a parochial and a parentally guided education for our children.

Let us observe that in Deuteronomy 6 it is required by God for parents to teach their children both the Scriptures and the way of life expressed therein. Not to do so is to firstly, disobey God’s command, and secondly, to withhold from them the way of life which leads to salvation, and God’s blessing. Their failure thus condemns the future generations to the darkness of an unbridled pragmatic and pagan society which can justify any evil provided it serves the greater good of those who define the greater good. The elimination of any higher standard but one defined by the morally deficient leadership of the masses opens a Pandora’s box that knows no limits. In the words of Nietzsche,” where God does not exist, anything is permissible.” This is a frightening picture indeed. However, we can see from history that it is not far fetched. One need only to reflect on the atrocities of the former Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Idi Amin’s Uganda, Sadam’s Iraq, and currently Darfur just to name a few. One may also add to the list recent activities that have occurred in our own country like the result of Roe Vs Wade, and the questionable issues of the former Clinton presidency as well as the moral scandals of our current political arena. Those leaders educated in a secular (atheistic) context are prone to a more pragmatic way of thinking akin to what is termed “situation ethics.” The concept of being accountable to a Holy God is absent along with a absolute law (the Ten Commandments).

The above concerns are very real. Through the years secular humanistic reasoning has overtaken our educational institutions. Numerous evil consequences have been the result of expunging God from our public institutions, especially from our schools has had. We are all too familiar with the recent shootings and violence in our public schools. Some years ago (1925). these same concerns were addressed by Dr. J. Gresham Machen. Machen was a former Professor of Princeton Seminary, and founder of Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia, PA. In the quotation which follows, he addresses the bankruptcy of the anti-intellectualism of his day.

“This anti-intellectual tendency in the modern world is no trifling thing: it has its roots deep in the entire philosophical development of modern times. Modern philosophy since the days of Kant, with the theology that has been influenced by it, has as its dominant note, certainly as its present-day result, a deprecation of the reason and a skeptical answer to the Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” This attack upon the intellect has been conducted by men of marked intellectual power; but an attack upon the intellect it has been all the same. And at last the logical results of it, even in the sphere of practice, are beginning to appear. A marked characteristic of the present day is a lamentable intellectual decline, which has appeared in fields of human endeavor except those that deal with purely material things. The intellect has been browbeaten so long in theory that one can not be surprised if it is now ceasing to function in practice.

Scheiermacher and Ritschl, despite their own intellectual gifts, have, it may fairly be maintained, contributed largely to produce that indolent impressionism, which, for example in the field of New Testament studies, has largely taken the place of the patient researches of a generation or so ago.

The intellectual decadence of the day is not limited to the Church, or to the subject of religion, but appears in secular education as well. Sometimes it is assisted by absurd pedagogic theories, which, whatever their variety in detail, are alike in their deprecation of the labor of learning facts. Facts, in the sphere of education, are having a hard time. The old-fashioned notion of reading a book or hearing a lecture and simply storing up in the mind what the book or the lecture contains- this is regarded as entirely out of date. A year ago I heard a noted educator give some advice to a company of college professors- advice, which was typical of the present tendency in education. It is a great mistake, he said in effect, to suppose that a college professor ought to teach.; on the contrary he ought to simply give the students an opportunity to learn.

This pedagogic theory of following the line of least resistance in education and avoiding all drudgery and all hard work has been having its natural result; it has joined forces with the natural indolence of youth to produce in present-day education a very lamentable decline.

The decline has not, indeed, been universal; in the sphere of the physical sciences, for example, the acquisition of facts in not regarded as altogether out of date. Indeed, the anti-intellectual tendency in religion and in those subjects the deal specifically with the things of the spirit has been due, partially at least, to a monopolistic possession of the intellect on the part of physical sciences and of their utilitarian applications. But in the long run it is to be questioned whether even those branches of endeavor will profit by being excluded from the higher interests of the human spirit, and its decadence may then appear even in the material sphere.

But however that may be, whether or not intellectual decadence has already extended or will soon extend to the physical sciences, its prevalence in other spheres in literature and history, for example, for example , and still more clearly in the study of language-is perfectly plain. An outstanding feature of contemporary education in these spheres is the growth if ignorance; pedagogic theory and the growth of ignorance have gone hand in hand.

The undergraduate student of the present day is being told that he need not take notes on what he hears in class, that the exercise on the memory is a rather childish and mechanical thing, and that what he is really in college to do is to think for himself and to unify his world. He usually makes a poor business of unifying his world. And the reason is clear. He does not succeed in unifying his world for the simple reason that he has no world to unify. He has not acquired a knowledge of a sufficient number of facts in order even to learn the method of putting facts together. He is being told to practice the business of mental digestion; but the trouble is that he has no food to digest. The modern student, contrary to what is often said is really being starved for the want of facts.

It is a great mistake, then, to suppose that we who are called “Conservatives” hold desperately to certain beliefs merely because they are old and are opposed to the discovery of new facts. On the contrary we welcome new discoveries with all our hearts, and we believe that our cause will come to its rights again only when youth throws off its present intellectual lethargy, refuses to go thoughtlessly with the anti-intellectual current of the age, and recovers some genuine independence of the mind.

In one sense, indeed, we are traditionalists; we do maintain that any institution that is really great has its roots in the past; we do not therefore desire to substitute modern sects for the historic Christian Church. But on the whole, in view of the conditions that now exist it would be more correct to call us “radicals” than to call us conservatives. We look not for a mere continuation of spiritual conditions that now exits, but for an outburst of new power we are seeking in particular to arouse youth from its present uncritical repetition of current phrases into some genuine examination of the basis of life; and we believe that Christianity flourishes not in the darkness, but in the light. A revival of the Christian religion, we believe, will deliver mankind from its present bondage, and like the great revival of the sixteenth century will bring liberty to mankind. Such a revival will not be the work of man, but the work of the Spirit of God. But one of the means which the Spirit will use, we believe, is an awakening if the intellect. The retrograde anti-intellectual movement called Modernism, a movement which really degrades the intellect by excluding from it from the sphere of religion, will be overcome, and thinking will again come to its rights. The new reformation, in other words, will be accompanied by a new Renaissance; and the last thing in the world that we desire to do is to discourage originality or independence of mind.

But what we do insist upon is that the right to originality has to be earned, and it can not be earned by ignorance or indolence. A man can not be original in his treatment of a subject unless he knows what the subject is; true originality is preceded by patient attention to facts, which, in application of modern pedagogic theory, is being neglected by the youth of the present day.

In our insistence upon mastery of facts in education, we are sometimes charged with the desire of forcing our opinions ready-made upon our students. We professors get up behind our professorial desks, it is said, and proceed to lecture. The helpless students are expected not only to listen but to take notes; then they are expected to memorize what we have said, with all our firstly’s and secondly’s and thirdly’s; and finally they are expected to give it all back to using the examination. Such a system-so the charge runs-stifles all originality and all life. Instead the modern pedagogical expert comes with a message of home; instead of memorizing facts, he says, true education consists in learning to think; drudgery is a thing of the past, and self-expression is to take its place.

In such a charge, there may be an element of truth; possibly there was a time in education when memory was over-estimated and thinking was deprived of its rights. But if the education of the past was one-sided in its emphasis upon acquaintance with facts, surely the pendulum has now swung to an opposite extreme which is more dangerous still. It is a travesty upon our pedagogic method when we are represented as regarding a mere storing up of lectures in the mind of the student as an end in itself. In point of fact, we regard it as a means to an end, but a very necessary means; we regard it not as a substitute for independent thinking, but as a necessary prerequisite for it. The student who accepts what we say without criticism and without thinking on his own is no doubt very unsatisfactory; but equally unsatisfactory is the student who undertakes to criticize that about which he knows nothing whatever. Thinking can not be carried on without the materials of thought; and the materials of thought are facts, or else assertions that are presented as facts. A mass of details stored up in the mind does not in itself make a thinker; but on the other hand thinking is absolutely impossible without that mass of details. It is just this latter impossible operation of thinking without the materials of thought, which is being advocated by modern pedagogy and is being put into practice only too well by modern students. In the presence of this tendency, we believe that the facts and hard work ought again to be allowed to come to their rights: it is impossible to think with an empty mind.”

Given the present state of affairs, believers must respond to our cultural degeneration with a greater vigor. Though there may be some earnest Christian teachers struggling in the public system, Christian education is a great way to begin turning the current secular (atheistic) tide. Christian Schools and Home Schooling provide a Godly alternative to the tax supported amoral and godless social engineering fostered within much of our public education.

The Very Rev. James W. Reber D.D.
Vicar, St Francis Anglican Church
Kissimmee, Fl