A Christian Counterrevolution | by John Rushemeza – June 13, 2025
Education is a ministry of the family and the local church.
One of the most common rebuttals to the idea that Christians should remove their children from public schools is: “What about low-income families? What about single parents? What about children with special needs?” People argue they cannot afford to homeschool or send their kids to private schools, and private schools often lack resources for special needs.
These are valid concerns, but they have also become the greatest excuse for why many Christians, especially leaders in local churches, refuse to condemn the public school system. Instead of seeing this as a crisis for the Church to address, many leaders retreat, saying, “Parents can decide how to educate their kids. That is not our realm. God gave the children to the parents, and it is their responsibility.” Just like that, the Church removes itself from the equation and places the burden either on the individual parent or on the government.
Public schools are often framed as a public good. They provide employment, a place for kids to go and learn, and are considered beneficial to the community in various other ways. This is why many believe Christians should support, reform, and be involved in them. However, this reasoning overlooks a foundational issue: the Church has been convinced that the education of children, especially those between the ages of one and 16, is not its responsibility. It has led us to believe that reading, writing, arithmetic, and understanding the world fall outside the Church’s domain. The Church is expected only to tell children that Jesus loves them and that accepting Him will get them into heaven. The realm of formal education, it is assumed, belongs to the government.
This deception occurred gradually. Early Christians did not carefully consider Scripture’s teachings on education. Instead, they assumed that since their communities were made up of predominantly Christian, the government schools in their communities would hold fast to the Christian values and worldview. Over time, however, these schools became secular humanist institutions. As the population grew, especially in urban areas, the political and social elites realized they could control and use these institutions for their own aims. This led to a system rooted not in Christian discipleship but in social control and indoctrination.
Agustina S. Paglayan in her book “Raised to Obey: The Rise and Spread of Mass Education” makes the bold claim that the expansion of primary education was primarily driven by political elites’ desire to instill obedience and maintain social order, rather than by aims to promote literacy, economic development, or democratic values. In her article “Education or Indoctrination? The Violent Origins of Public School Systems in an Era of State-Building” Professor Paglayan says,
“As historians have extensively documented, advocates of the expansion of state-regulated primary education argued that the state had a stake in how children were raised—what moral values, manners, habits, and aspirations they developed—because this influenced the state’s stability. By shaping children’s moral character, primary schools could instill respect for the state and its laws, preventing violence, crime, and dissident behavior and promoting long-term political stability…Primary schools, proponents argued, would foster long-term order through three main mechanisms. First, schools could convince the masses from a young age to be content with what they had. Teaching values of moderation and self-sacrifice, and inculcating the belief that happiness resulted from accepting one’s lot, were common goals of primary schools throughout the nineteenth century. Second, schools could shape behavior by instilling fear of punishment for misbehavior, or conversely, by promoting rewards for proper behavior. Stealing, vandalism, quarreling, cheating, lying, and cursing were typically punished, as were questioning the teacher, speaking out of turn, or disobeying school rules or teachers’ instructions. Sitting quietly and completing tasks as instructed were praised publicly. School punishments and rewards sought to teach children that their behavior had consequences and that obedience, compliance, and respect for existing rules and authorities were in their own best interest. Third, proponents argued that schools could cultivate unconscious habits of compliance and deference simply through repetition. The mere act of attending school every day and following schedules, routines, and rituals, like marching in silence from classroom to breakroom, would make individuals internalize from a young age what constituted good manners and civil behavior.”
The good professor her not only does her due diligence but she provides receipts to support her claims, and she is not the only one making these same claims. There are people within and outside the church who have made the same case in the past and the question is, why hasn’t the evangelical church listened?
In my view the Evangelical Church not only failed to listen but even more importantly she failed to ask the most fundamental question: What does the Bible say about who is responsible for education? In other words, under who’s jurisdiction is the task of education? Today, because of that failure, most Christians believe it is not the Church’s job to educate children. Not realizing that before the government got involved, all education was the responsibility of the family and the local church. The Church was central, teaching children to read, write, and prepare for life from a biblical perspective. The church also set up institutions of higher education. Most Americans do not realize that many if not most of our elite colleges and university today were established by Christians.
The belief that the government (public) education system is necessary persists in part because people say, “we pay taxes, therefore the least the government can do is provide a free education for our children”. But those who say this are #partoftheproblem. Why? Because the very system that promises to “educate” children in exchange for tax dollars does so by assuring parents and churches that it’s perfectly acceptable to entrust their children to the state, freeing them to focus on missions, outreach, and other ministries. In doing so, the responsibility of education, one of the most important assignments, is handed over to the government. This arrangement is, of course, both convenient and cost-effective for local churches, as it spares them from the complexities and messiness of managing a school or a network of schools.
What most Christians do not realize, but what the social and political elites understand very well, is that education in all forms is discipleship. They understand that as Lincoln is believed to have said “the philosophy of the classroom in one generation becomes the philosophy of government in the next generation”. Moreover, many Christians today do not realize that God has not assigned the role of education to the state. Education is inherently religious, therefore the jurisdiction of the family and the church.
As a society, we have come to see academic instruction as completely compartmentalized from Christian faith formation (discipleship). In reality, all education is religious,1 and if all education is religious, then regardless of the form, “education is discipleship” in one faith or another. For this reason, I do not separate the elements of academic instruction (erroneously called “secular”) and spiritual discipleship or faith formation efforts. When accomplished together they are complementary, but when they are compartmentalized, they are at enmity one with the other.- (Dr. Douglas J. Pietersma, The Pastor’s Role in Education)
Some churches claim they would rather support existing Christian schools than start their own. Others worry their congregations would resist funding a private school since they already pay property taxes to the local government, a significant portion of which goes to the school district. This mindset is a microcosm of a much deeper problem; the Church no longer sees formal education as part of her mission. Reform efforts focus on inserting Christianity into public schools, praying for revival in classrooms, pushing for Bible to school clubs not realizing that the system itself is biblically unsanctioned in the same way a state church or religion is biblically unsanctioned. The solution here is not to merely reform the government system but to reclaim education once against as a ministry and responsibility of the family and the local church.
Many pastors and Christian leaders avoid addressing this because it is too complicated, too expensive, and too risky. I once approached a pastor whose large, well-resourced church could easily start multiple schools. He said, “This isn’t what God is calling us to do.” The only reason why the man of God or a group of men (and women) of God would come to this conclusion after seeing the damage caused by the state-controlled systems is due to the simple fact that to them this is optional. In their minds, God says nothing about this therefore they do not feel obligated to do something. This is obviously false because God says plenty about Education. But again, it is only optional because we have decoupled formal education from spiritual education. But If education is discipleship, then we have no choice in the way, we do not outsource Sunday school to the government, we cannot outsource formal education.
To make things right, we must first train our leaders to have a biblical theology of education. Most seminaries do not prepare pastors to think about education. Few pastors are trained to develop a Christian philosophy of education or to contrast it with secular models. Seminaries should teach future leaders that God has spoken about how children are to be educated and that He expects churches to play a significant role. There should be mandatory courses on the biblical theology of education. When you really think about it, there is no ministry more important than the ministry of equipping future leaders to think biblically about everything.
Believers across this land agree that what we really need in this country is a spiritual revival. However, we must be prepared for such a revival. We prepare by reclaiming the idea that education is discipleship and a ministry of the family and the local church because she is the pillar and foundation of Truth (1 Timothy 3:15). Otherwise even if we get a revival, it would not be sustained long term as long as the enemies of God continue to disciple our children. Right now, even children from Christian homes are being discipled by secular humanist institutions that seeks to oppose and undermine the faith of their parents.
To be a city of a hill the church must once again lead our communities by taking on the most important assignment which is to educate and train the children in our communities. Coalitions will need to form. Churches must collaborate. New nonprofit organizations may need to be created. But it all begins with a conviction—this is a crisis, and the Church must act. We must be done ceding ground and begin reclaiming what the enemy stole. If you are up for this task, WELCOME TO THE COUNTERREVOLUTION.