Educating Our Children: a Religious Endeavor

It is the second week of August, and classes have officially begun at Grace Classical Christian Academy in Granbury, Texas. For many across the country and perhaps across the state, this decision to hold in-person classes raises several questions. Is it safe to begin class in person while this dangerous virus persists? How does this decision coexist alongside the government mandates concerning social distancing and education during this pandemic? Three weeks ago, the Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, shed some important light upon this difficult subject. Addressing religious private schools in Texas, Paxton argued that religious schools are within their rights to continue in-person education in the fall.[i] I want to bring out three significant points made by Ken Paxton in his article.

First, the religious education of students has been foundational to many streams of thought in the history of the Christian church. Grace Classical Christian Academy, being a Protestant school, surely supports his thesis that Protestant churches have historically “viewed education as a religious obligation.” Indeed, Martin Luther, the great Protestant reformer, in his address to the Christian Nobility, advised parents not to “place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which men are not increasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt...I am much afraid that schools will prove to be the great gates of hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youth.”[ii] Education is first and foremost, a religious endeavor, according to many in the Christian tradition. While it is not limited to training in Bible and theology, it certainly must include that.

Second, because Christians of old have viewed education as a religious endeavor, it is to be understood that the Christian school is not under the jurisdiction of the state, as it pertains to the content, manner, and method of education. Referencing the Texas Supreme Court, Paxton noted that “the government cannot set standards for religious education or training.” To suggest that the government can determine under what circumstances the Christian school is allowed to carry out her vocation indicates a confusion of the three estates of family, church, and state. The Scriptures describe three estates or hierarchies instituted by God: the state, the church, and the family. The state is given responsibility for protecting its citizens and punishing evil-doers (Rom. 13:1-7); the church is given authority to preach Law and Gospel (Matt. 28:19-20), administer the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and administer church discipline by opening the gates of heaven to believers through the preaching of the gospel, and keeping unbelievers out of it through excommunication;[iii] and the family is given the responsibility of bringing up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). Because the responsibility of educating children belongs under the estate of the family, it is evident that the Christian school falls under the jurisdiction not of the church or state, but of the family. This is not to suggest that our children are not under the authority of the church or the state in any sense. The state has authority over us and our children as it pertains to our civil responsibilities and our pastors have a genuine level of authority over the children of believers because of his divinely ordained authority to bind or loose sins (Matt. 16:19). It is only to assert that the education of our children is not delegated by God to the government; rather, it is given to the parents, or to be specific, to the father of the family. If at any point in time, the state or the church prohibits the Christian school from meeting for any reason at all, it is necessarily a usurpation of the authority of the family. Christian schools like Grace Classical Christian Academy continue to meet, because the authority of the father in the family must be honored. 

Lastly, it needs to be mentioned that because education is a religious endeavor and because the civil government cannot usurp the government of the family by imposing restrictions upon Christian schools, it also follows that the right for Christian schools to assemble for the purpose of education is protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. This amendment protects the right to the free exercise of religion. No political body can prohibit a person from exercising his or her religion without imposition from the state. Because education is fundamentally a matter of bringing up children in the knowledge of God and devoting them unreservedly to Christ as King, it is fundamentally a matter of religious exercise. To prohibit Christian schools from assembling in person is to deny Christian parents the right to raise their children in the way God sees fit. God has determined that the father, not the state, is to determine how his children are to be educated, and the state should not infringe upon this divine order.

In conclusion, Grace Classical Christian Academy with several other classical Christian schools across the country continue to meet, not because of a feeling of superiority over the state, but because of a conviction that to honor the authority of the family is submission to God. It is refreshing to read a government official, affirming the rights and importance of families to educate their children according to their own convictions, apart from infringement from the state. This is a right approach to the relationship between the church/family and the state. As citizens of two kingdoms, the kingdom of Christ in heaven and God’s temporal kingdom on earth, we must be just as bold and unapologetic as Paxton was, recognizing the authority of the family in the education of our children. In so doing, we demonstrate love not only to the fathers of children, but also to our leaders in the state. Because these fathers are our neighbors, we continue to love and serve them by honoring their authority in the home. If there is to be true reform in our nation, it must as J. Gresham Machen recognized, begin with the education of our children, and this begins not in the state or the church, but in the family.[iv]

[i] Ken Paxton, Texas Attorney General, July 17, 2020, https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/images/admin/2020/Press/2020.07.17%20Letter%20to%20Religious%20Schools%20re%20COVID%2019%20Orders%20-%20Final.pdf.

[ii] Martin Luther, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate, in Luther’s Works (St. Louis: Augsburg Press) 44:115-217.

[iii] Zacharias Ursinus, Heidelberg Catechism, 85, in The Three Forms of Unity (The Synod of the Reformed Church in the United States, 2011) 38. Ursinus asks, “How is the kingdom of heaven shut and opened by Christian discipline?” The following answer is given: “In this way: that, according to the command of Christ, if any under the Christian name show themselves unsound either in doctrine or in life, and after several brotherly admonitions do not turn from their errors or evil ways, they are complained of to the Church or to its proper officers; and, if they neglect to hear them also, are by them denied the holy sacraments and thereby excluded from the Christian communion, and by God Himself from the kingdom of Christ; and if they promise and show real amendment, they are again received as members of Christ and His Church.”

[iv] J. Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009) 148-149.