Letter to the Editor on Post-Secondary Government Education

Dear Sirs:

As you will be able to see, I am just now catching up on my Chalcedon Report reading, which I thoroughly enjoy as always. I would like to briefly editorialize generally on your "Christian Education" issue (April 1999). I agree with the articles and hope they reach the widest audience among Christians. Why, in the midst of all the "conservative" and Christian commentary on the Colorado school murders, did no one ask (assuming that a few of the victims were indeed Christians, as reported): What were Christians doing in that (or any) government school and why were parents putting them there? This is surely one reason why modern Christendom is weak. But let me ask a further question, an issue not raised in (and not the immediate subject matter of) your education issue: Why do Christians have such apparent faith in modern higher education (modern colleges and universities)? Perhaps in our not yet reconstructed world there are a few more legitimate reasons to send our kids to public/private-secular/false Christian colleges than to public enemy elementary/secondary schools. But not many. Therein lies a problem. We are developing a theology of education but not applying it to higher education. I know that there will be situations for a while where the public college is the only alternative for such studies as engineering or nursing or some such area. (By the way, I also readily acknowledge that college is not and should not be for everyone: on-the-job training, apprenticeships, etc. being excellent alternative methods for a vast array of callings. However, can we say this about the study of philosophy, or history, or literature, for example, setting aside for the moment the kind of college we may advocate?) The problem is plain and simple: Too many Christians, including so-called Reconstructionists, are sending their children to "Egyptian" or "Greek" universities, rather than the schools of "Israel" even when they do not have to: that is, to say, even when the field of study is within the scope of a true Biblical college. We will not gain victory this way. If someone argues that this is a self-serving statement for the "advertisement" of Christ College, I would respond that it is only in part; I would advocate all true Biblical colleges (although they are exceedingly few because Christians bypass them for a mess of government-approved accreditation pottage, which, by the way, is one of the biggest modern lies under girding modern higher education). My point? Let's start applying our correct philosophy of Christian education to all levels, including higher education. We need to build alternative colleges and universities and then use them. Will this take time? Of course. No Biblically-thinking Christian would ever use lame (that is, unjustified) excuses for the legitimacy of public high schools. Why should such excuses be used to legitimize public/secular/not-really Biblical-so-called-Christian colleges/universities? The reconstruction of higher education is no less a worthy task than the reconstruction of other levels of education; it's time to stop talking about how good it would be to do that and to start doing it, beginning with every Christian parent and college-bound child.

Sincerely for the advancement of Christ's Kingdom,
Kevin L. Clauson, M.A., J.D.,
President, Christ College (Lynchburg, VA)