Today our public schools are a culture that is
foreign to a biblical worldview making it like
many other mission fields. In that context,
Christian educators called to serve there must
function as missionaries in a foreign culture.
IT
WAS NOT ALWAYS SO. Our forefathers birthed a
nation based on biblical principles and did the same
when they formed public education. In 1789, the first Federal
Education Law post-Constitution was passed. Our forefa-
thers made it clear that public education in this new nation
must be made up of three components: Religion, Morality,
and Knowledge. They believed that religion was the basis for
morality, and if religion were removed, morality would soon
collapse. They clarified that knowledge was important, but
without religion and morality it could be dangerous.
These opinions were not just held by a few but were gener-
ally accepted. Noah Webster known as the ‘Schoolmaster
to America’ said, “Any system of education …which limits
instruction to the arts and sciences and rejects the aids
of religion in forming the characters of citizens, is essen-
tially defective.” Our first president George Washington
said, “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that
our national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious
principle.”
They saw public education as a three-legged stool balanced
on Religion, Morality, and Knowledge and as long as all 3 legs
remained strong so would public education in America.
High expectations were held for all students, and achieve-
ment soared. It was not unusual for students to move on to
Ivy League colleges in their early teens and even graduate
from there still in their teens ready to enter the workplace
or even to political office. Under this format our education
system became the envy of the world as we were first in
Math, Science, and Literacy globally.
Then something happened in the early 60’s. The US
Supreme Court ruled that public schools were to be secular.
They knocked one leg off the stool of public education leav-
ing it balancing on two legs: Morality and Knowledge. Over
the next five decades, our forefathers’ prediction seemed
to be prophetic. They had claimed that morality was built
on the foundation of religion, and if religion were to be
removed, morality would crumble—and crumble it did. The
next generation of citizens held to no absolute truths and
morality as we had known it was gone. Now the stool had
only the leg of Knowledge left, and the balance was missing.
The US dropped from first in Math, Science, and
Literacy and plummeted downward as did the expectation
of students. ACT and SAT scores had to be re-normed twice
as scores continued to plummet.
With religion and morality seeming to be void from
our public schools; the school is a mission field ripe
for harvest, and the role of the Christian public
school teacher is clearly that of a missionary.
Based on the concept of the 4-14 Window, the majority of
those coming to faith do so at the ages of 5 to 13. Even though
the Holy Spirit is not bound by statistics, it is interesting
that most do come into a relationship with God in that age
span—an age span when most children are attending public
schools. The majority of those attending public schools do
not consider themselves Christians, so the “fishing pond” is
well stocked for those open to sharing the faith.
Each person’s worldview is a set of individual truth claims
that have been embraced so deeply that one believes they
reflect what is real and therefore they drive how one thinks,
acts, and feels. Right now in our culture there is a battle
between what the Lord says to be the truth and what other
beliefs and philosophies espouse. Sharing one’s faith can
often be done simply by living the biblical worldview that is
in clear contrast to the secular worldview.
The result of following other truths can be found
described in 2 Timothy 3:1-4, “But mark this: There will be
terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of them-
selves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient
to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving,
slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good,
treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than
lovers of God.”
With the First Amendment of the Constitution still
in place, educators clearly do have some religious
freedoms in place.
The concept of denying the Christian roots of this nation is
a new phenomenon, one I believe that has led many to deny
their own faith and buy the lie that our public schools must
be “God-free zones.”
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