Reformation

Every movement acknowledges that there are people not yet in the movement who ought to be.

But it must also acknowledge there are people within the movement that ought not to be.

If classical Christian education is a movement, we must confess that too much time has been spent on the former and too little time spent on the latter, and the need for the latter grows exponentially every year.

Unless we are nominalists, we must admit that not every school which claims to be classical is actually classical. Claiming to be classical does not make one classical.

This is a troublesome thing to say, for it means making painful divisions, tough calls, borrowing from the Against The So-and-So’s spirit of late antique Christianity. It means contracting, not expanding.

The temptation is to believe: “There are people inside who don’t belong, but we will bring them to the point they do. And we will fiscally benefit from those who don’t belong in the meantime.”

But this makes the movement unattractive to the people who do belong. Bad money drives out good money.

In my mind, the race is on to be the first school that claims openly, unapologetically, in no uncertain terms: “So far as classical Christian schools go, being Republican does not make you missionally aligned.”

As the number of applications to classical Christian schools rise on account of this Fox News documentary, this will become a harder and harder message to present.