By Julie Ooms

Image: Seth Hahne

My church’s pastor preached a sermon a few months ago that took a bit of a different tack on Christ’s words to “let the little children come to me” than I’d been used to hearing. Instead of interpreting them to mean that Christians should try to cultivate a more childlike faith, he began with a historical note. Children in the first century were considered last and lowliest, he said; by inviting children into his presence, and by commanding the disciples not to hinder them, Christ put children—the lowliest—first. The kingdom of God belongs to such as them, he said. They’re a part of the Church. And all of the Church’s members—not just their parents, not just their relatives, but all of the Church’s members—bear some responsibility for the care of its children. That extends, in my view, to their education.

So, not just as an educator at a Christian university, but even more so as a member of the Church, I share some of the responsibility for its children. I’m reminded of that every time there’s a(n infant) baptism at my church. The pastor asks questions of the parents, and they make more specialized, parental promises to love their child and raise her or him in the fear, love, and knowledge of the Lord. Then, he asks the members of the congregation to promise to help the parents, and to affirm that promise by standing.

I’m a part of a church that affirms covenantal theology; one of the implications of that affirmation is infant baptism, in which every new covenant child is baptized into the body of believers to which his or her parents belong. Now, I recognize that not every church, and not every Christian, shares these beliefs (and I’m really not gearing up for a baptism debate here).  However, I do think that the promise I make when I stand up at a baptism is one all Christians make to the children in their congregations and in the Church more broadly speaking, regardless of how exactly it’s enacted or defended theologically. We affirm, like Christ, that children are a part of the Church, and that all of us share responsibility for their flourishing.

That’s the main reason why I think Christian education is so incredibly significant: it’s one way in which the members of the Church fulfill their promise to its children. At its best, Christian education is based in this same idea of covenant, and this broader idea of a faith community: that it extends beyond the boundaries of the family and of the individual church. As members of faith communities that value children as fellow members, we should cultivate a posture towards education that sees it as part of our task to bring up children in the fear and knowledge of the Lord—and one that also sees Christian education as extending beyond Sunday school lessons.

Of course, I have other, more specific reasons why I value Christian education. The chief of these other reasons is tied more particularly to the brand of Christianity I’ve grown up in and practice. I’m a longtime veteran of Christian Reformed schooling—after a brief stint with the Lutherans as a preschooler, I attended Christian Reformed schools from pre-kindergarten through college. There’s probably a joke about over-indoctrination in there somewhere—and I still remember, with amusement, the look on a study-abroad housemate’s face when I casually mentioned my grade-school travails as a member of the “Calvinettes” (my church’s version of Girl Scouts, basically, but with more Jesus and even more Calvin). And well, it is a little creepy to name young girls’ groups after dead theologians. That aside, though, and despite its rough patches and frustrating months and years, I’ve come to really value the ways in which being a part of Christian schools has helped shape and frame the way I see my life as a Christian outside the walls of a church building.

I most value an idea from one of Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper’s speeches, oft-quoted (the idea, not the speech) in the halls, classrooms, and advancement materials of my undergraduate institution, Dordt College.

“There is not a square inch,” Kuyper writes, “in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”

I love the rich meaning of this statement for many reasons, both personal and theological, but the reason most significant here is an educational one. One of the implications of this statement is that no part of the world is outside of God’s love and care; no part of the world—its flora and fauna, its ecosystems and landscapes, its people and their cultures, or the products of human creativity—none of these is not worth attention and study. The realities of the Gospel and of the Christian’s—and the Church’s—life in relation to that Gospel, then, are not only things we learn in church and then apply outside of it. We learn these realities in the world outside our church buildings, too. We train our children in them. They are part of the narrative of Fall and Redemption that permeates our lives, our homes, and our communities—and also our schools.

Of course, it’s important to recognize, too, that the other educational options open to parents are also incredibly tied to community. For example, and perhaps most obviously, as homeschooling takes place in the actual home, the community most emphasized for homeschoolers is the individual family unit, often in some connection to religion. Sometimes, the religious connection is explicit; for example, the Christian homeschooling advocate, veteran, and practitioner Israel Wayne sees Christian homeschooling as a way parents transmit their Christian worldview to their children.

Public schools emphasize the civic community. Ideally, students are guided there toward becoming critical thinkers about, and engagers in, civic action and discourse. There’s a whole body of scholarship about this topic. Henry Giroux, for example, argues in Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life that public schools must be “democratic public spheres,” and “places that provide an essential public service in the construction of active citizens”; for Giroux, public schools are central to “the maintenance of democratic society and critical citizenry.”

The community of the family, of course, is incredibly important—for all people, not just for homeschoolers and their parents. The civic community, and the patient, charitable, critical knowledge needed to engage in it, is also very important, and as citizens of earthly kingdoms, we should encourage and value public schools and help them to do their work well. And of course, there are valid criticisms to be voiced about Christian education, too. Christian education can be isolationist, a way to separate our children from the secular world—and from the people in that world to whom we are called to minister in love. Emphasizing our membership in faith communities can estrange us from other communities to which we belong. Some might object that Christian education could result in less-than-excellent education. Plus, Christian education is expensive.

All these points are valid, and the Church needs to consider them when its members think about how to best fulfill their responsibility to its children. But it’s also important that we remember that as Christians, our involvement in family and civic communities exists beneath the umbrella of our belonging in a much wider community, one not bound by time, space, blood, or citizenship. Over our families, over our states and over our schools, Christ cries: “Mine!”

And so, I want to encourage the members of that wider community to shift, a little or a lot, their posture toward the idea and practice of Christian education. I want us to recognize that the responsibility for our children’s education is not something only their parents should be concerned with. And I want us to define—or, for many of us, continue to define—“Christian education” in ways that mean more than what our children learn in Sunday School—ways that seek to learn about and spread God’s peace in every square inch of creation.

When I stand at a baptism, or in front of a classroom at the Baptist university where I teach, I’m performing two incredibly interrelated things. In one, I promise to help guide a child—a part of the Church. In the other, I put those words in action in one way particular to my vocation and training. And though, clearly, I’m a product of the educational model I’m promoting, and clearly, as a teacher myself, it’s no surprise I am invested in educational questions even though I have no children myself, I also think that it’s a grave mistake for Christians to scoot the topic of education off to the side when they graduate for the final time, or until they have school-age children, or to think it’s a concern limited to teachers and parents. The education of the Church’s children is, in many ways, the Church’s responsibility. After all, Christ not only put children first in his ministry—he’s claimed the whole world, and all of us are his.

Julie Ooms teaches and works on her PhD in English at Baylor University.  She’s writing a dissertation on American war literature, but she also likes teaching writing and reading comic books.  A longtime veteran of Christian education, she’s happy to be involved in Christian higher ed, and to be able to explore the connections between religious faith and learning.  She lives in Waco, Texas with her cat, Book.

Illustration courtesy of Seth T. Hahne. Check out Seth’s graphic novel and comic review site, Good Ok Bad.