Educating for Christian Rulers:
Creating a New Paideia (part 2 of 2)
Brett King, RMCA Headmaster
In this Perspectives, we continue the exploration of T.M.
Moore's article, "Educating for Christian Rulers, Creating a New
Paideia." In part one, Moore introduced the concept of
paideia, the idea that the broader culture and community are
potent and influential educators. Moore continues to explain that a
complete understanding of the Gospel is essential if Christians are
to combat the caustic influence of the modern American paideia. Enjoy!
The contemporary American is educated by his paideia
no less than the Athenian was by his. The weakness of American education
is not that the paideia does not educate, but that it educates to the
wrong ends (emphasis added).
The fact is that contemporary educators, in cahoots with
power-preserving politicians, have, through the schools, foisted a worldview
on the American public that is dramatically at odds with the paideia
that nurtured the founders of the republic. As Forest McDonald, Barry
Alan Shain, and others have shown, the aim of education in pre-revolutionary
America was the nurturing of a people who would create and inhabit a
novus ordo seclorum, a new order of the ages, a social, political,
and cultural expression of the divine economy. Indeed, as McDonald writes,
"so habituated were Americans to thinking in Protestant terms that
few could conceive of a civil order in any other way."
How precisely opposite to the worldview and paideia that
are churning out the getters-and-spenders-and-good-times-seekers who
are the product of contemporary American education! The present system
is succeeding marvelously well, but there's nothing new under the sun
about this civil order of self-seeking and self-indulgence that is the
fruit of all those hours spent in the classroom.
The present paideia is likely to continue unfazed
and unchanged by critics, at least in the short term. But if that paideia
is ever to change, it will require the infusion of new thinking and
courageous new leadership--political, educational, and familial--at
every level of society. Those new leaders must be developed by a different
paideia, with a perspective and worldview more like that of the
founders and less like that which obtains today. Until we nurture a
generation of men and women who order and prosecute their lives according
to a divine perspective and economy, we can only expect the
present system of education to continue its preferred course, creating
cogs for the economy and voters for the ballot box, while the culture
continues its rapid slide into relativism, materialism, mere sensualism,
and decadence. What we need, in short, is a generation of Christian
rulers.
Creating a new paideia to replace the present
materialist enterprise will require, in the first place, a recovery
of the biblical Gospel. For nearly three generations now, church leaders
have nurtured a community of the followers of Christ who believe that
the Gospel is primarily Good News about forgiveness and peace. Because
of what Jesus has done we can be forgiven of our sins and know peace
in this life and peace evermore in heaven. That's the "Good News."
But the Gospel is not merely about forgiveness
and peace. It is about the kingdom of God--the rule of Jesus Christ.
The Gospel of the kingdom--of His rule over the nations in a divine
economy of righteousness, peace, joy, and Spirit-filled power for transformation--was
the Gospel Jesus preached, the reality He came to bring near, the curriculum
with which He instructed His followers, the agenda He is advancing at
the Father's right hand, and the gift and message He entrusted to the
community of those who want to follow Him. The Gospel of the kingdom
is about Jesus ruling the world according to the Law of God, by the
gracious power of His Spirit, making all things new and putting all
things under His feet to reconcile them to God with honor and glory.
The Gospel is about Jesus ruling and instructing us to pray for the
success of His rule and to take our place in helping to advance that
rule as a royal priesthood unto God (1 Peter 2:9-10).
Until we begin preaching and teaching the Gospel that
Jesus proclaimed, we will not be able to raise up a generation of Christians
who rule their own lives--under the heavens--and realize in all their
labors the growing presence of Jesus' rule of righteousness, peace,
and joy in the Spirit.
The article above has been edited for space. The complete article can be accessed at www.breakpoint.org.
