Letter to the Editor,
On the national, state and county levels I am coming across lots of discussion about school choice. While some of this leans on learning styles of the students (e.g. public schools are better for more socially engaged students, whereas home schooling and micro-schools provide education better for students with less tolerance for high stimulus and socially intrusive environments), much of the debate hinges on religious education.
I suspect that this tension goes back to the 18th and 19th century, with both the progression of the Enlightenment era and evolution of branches of science. Previously, within Natural Philosophy one would pursue theological knowledge along with studying God’s creation in biology, chemistry, physics, etc.
Issac Asimov, renowned for his science fiction stories, wrote history narratives. One from the late 1960’s is on the fundamentals of physics. Real zingers on human “discovery” of atoms, gravity, thermodynamics, etc. What I enjoyed most were the stories of how observant people used the tools of the day to reveal the underlying principles of how creation works. Many of these people were religiously oriented.
For instance, Galileo, while kneeling and reciting Catholic prayers felt his breath on his folded hands and wondered what stimulated the movement of air across his hands. He looked up and watched the sway of the light fixtures, eventually noting that the wind coming through open windows corresponded with the movement. This lead to his writings on the atomic composition of air which allowed these invisible particle to push against each other as they heated up and cooled with the rising and setting of the sun.
BTW, the Greek word that Paul uses for the Holy Spirit is the same as breathing in, “inspiration”. That breathing in (of air and the Holy Spirit) leads to life, the ability to act, and the breathing out, which Galileo felt on his hands while praying… just saying…
The gentry class hired tutors, often priests, to teach their children who could progress to the universities which were affiliated with various religious denominations. Merchants might also educate their children, usually in their trades with apprenticeship training. Under enlightenment ideology, some began to call for universal education of children, even enslaved families’ children, in “elementary” schools. Often these were affiliated with religious groups and used Bible teaching.
BTW, Fredrick Douglas, as an upstart teenager, gathered the discarded slate boards and chalk from his owner’s children, took them to other enslaved children and taught them how to write Bible verses. When confronted about violating Maryland laws prohibiting educating these children, he confessed that the wanted them to know the ways of the Lord… just saying…
By the middle of the 20th century, with a divide developing in society between the concepts of “secular” and “sacred”, states began restricting overt Christian teaching in public schools. When I attended school, the teachers could slip in some religious concepts as “comparative religious education”.
For thousands of years, most religious education was focused on what the scriptures’ lessons were. Jewish traditions of debating the Torah and Talmud, Catholic orthodoxy over heresy, Islamic prophecies were the content. In the 18th and 19th centuries, science oriented researchers began asking different questions about the Bible: who wrote various texts? What are styles and genre of the texts and do these give clues about how these originally functioned within the social, political and religious structures? When did an individual write a specific text, rather than scribes who compiled oral traditions, such as the Greek physician Luke is considered to have done with his Gospel and Acts of the Apostles 30-40 years after the fact?
All of this scholarship heaped confusion on local pastors and congregations which saw these academic inquiries as undermining church teaching. In the early 20th century, Lyman and Milton Stewart funded pastors and theologians to write a series of essays, The Fundamentals, later compiled into a book format. Their organization sent these essays directly to churches, bypassing the academically oriented colleges and seminaries. His interest was refocusing church teaching on the basics of Christian theology and tradition, rather than academic pondering on topics that he did not believe were helpful.
He also started the trend of independent Bible College, founding Moody Bible Institute near Chicago. Numerous denominations followed suit with their own Bible colleges. His fundamentalist movement grew into the larger evangelical movement, gave Billy Graham and Jerry Farewell some traction, while these movements cast doubt on academia. Eventually, Rush Limbaugh would launch his attacks on academia with his “junk science” jokes, which morphed into everyone distrusting everyone else’s fake news.
If I spiral any further, the question may not be whether to choose public, parochial, micro schools, pod-casts, or home schooling, but choosing how much you trust your sources.
Oscar Larson
Baker
