Christian Free Schools - a good idea?

My church is in the process of putting in an application to open a new school, under the Free Schools legislation enacted by the Coalition government. It would be an all-through school (i.e. covering ages 4-18), open to all and with a curriculum founded on the Christian world view. This has led many in our congregation to think carefully about whether establishing such schools is a wise effort or not. While there are objections that need to be answered, my conclusion is that establishing such schools should be an absolute priority for churches and church groups across the nation. I will consider and respond to objections in a sequel post.

While there are doubtless others, I would propose six major justifications for seeking to launch new Christian Free Schools (CFSs henceforth):

1. CFSs mobilise the church to thorough and active involvement in education. The central truth of the Christian faith - that Jesus is Lord - demands that his followers (i.e. the church) seek positive involvement in all spheres of life, whether that be the grand pursuits of politics, scientific discovery and spiritual well-being, or more 'everyday' things such as cookery, sport and coffee mornings. Thus education - the instruction of a human into all truth and flourishing - must surely be close to the heart of the Christian call. The church must be actively involved in education if it is to fulfil its mandate of being 'Christ's body on Earth'.

2. CFSs return revelation and reason to the heart of education. It is not too much of a simplification to say that the whole weight of western thought (and consequent civil development) rests upon two pillars: Proverbs 1:7a - "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" and the philosophy of Aristotle. Or to put it another way, upon the dual strands of revelation and reason. Revelation in the sense that what we can know about the world we know because it has been revealed by God, and all our endeavours to understand the universe will warp, reduce and ultimately fail to make sense of things unless we keep God as an unmoving banner over it all; reason in the sense that we have been given rational minds able to assess moral, social and material questions with agreed and rational method. This marriage of the ancient revelation of God and Aristotelian method has marked Christian thought throughout its history. Sadly, these epistemological foundations seem little understood or practised in much of mainstream education. Instead there is a dangerously utilitarian drift that sees education’s core goal as teaching that which is needed ‘to get by in the world’: the skills to make money and the opinions that will keep us from offending. I’m not at all suggesting that education should be all theory and no practise, but when it all is utility that is not anchored in the wider development of the whole human within a cohesive framework of thought, we educate our children as if they were robots and not humans. This is a shameful error, and one which will reap negative social consequences. A free school has the freedom to teach the classical disciplines that are vital to rectifying this error – epistemology, logic, philosophy, reason and theology.

3. CFSs challenge the view that the state has ultimate authority over the education of its people. Throughout history the right and responsibility to educate a child has been commonly understood to rest with its parents or guardians; this of course does not mean that the parents have to be the sole providers of education, but they have the authority to decide what kind of education their child gets. Different ages have seen guardians send their children to a remarkable range of institutions or to none, and theirs is the ultimate burden to ‘make or break’ the child. This right and responsibility was challenged by both the right- and left-wing totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century, and sadly became the mindset of many (including, critically, many in positions of power) in the social democracies that emerged after those dark years. That the state provides education is a positive to be celebrated – indeed fee-less Free Schools would not be possible without state support for education – but when that provision becomes, whether by design or by culture, a hegemony over the responsibilities of guardians rather than being subservient to it, we are in a dangerous place. Not that this has necessarily happened in every LEA-run school, but survey after survey is showing a growing gulf between parental aspirations and the on-the-ground reality of education, and a new wave of schools that offer something different and come closer to meeting parental aspiration must be seen as a social good, as it will encourage guardians to truly think through how their child ought to be educated.

4. CFSs are a powerful reverser of social deprivation. Free Schools are able to set their own admissions policies, and thus able to positively discriminate towards those from areas of relative social deprivation. There are no ‘catchment’ areas to speak of. By committing to taking in an over-sized proportion of those from less privileged backgrounds into a high-quality educational environment for a period of upto 14 years, a significant improvement in the well-being of those students (and indeed their families and communities) can be confidently forecast. It is a route out of the ‘post-code’ trap, where middle class families are able to monopolise the best of state-provided services through their mobility advantages over the poorer.

5. CFSs offer vital flexibility of curriculum, teaching personnel and method. This is at the heart of the Free School vision, with each school being able to propose their curriculum, their staffing strategy and pattern of school life with remarkable freedom. This gives wonderful flexibility for schools to cater to any in-demand style of school that simply does not exist in a particular locality, and to shape the school according specific local needs. For example, there are high levels of economic stagnation in the North East of England, so a new Free School could particularly work on the development of entrepreneurial skills and vision amongst its pupils.

6. CFSs allow the most powerful educational resource of all to be unleashed - the gospel. The gospel Jesus Christ is not only the most important thing for every human to know, but due to its transformatory nature it is also the deepest and most powerful source of social capital. A school whose staff, pupils, practises and philosophies are rooted in the gospel will experience the wonderful fruit that Jesus promises such a grounding will bring – a true community of love, a community where all are valued, a community of joyful discipline, a community with purpose, a teleos community. I’m sure most guardians in the land would jump at the opportunity to send their children to such a school free of charge.

So, I'm praying our application to open a Free School is approved, and that many more Christian Free Schools would emerge across the United Kingdom.

What is the gospel?

On a recent long car journey, I listened to two thought-provoking audio interviews with Kevin de Young and Greg Gilbert, hosted by Mark Dever. They touched on a number of issues, including the question of 'what is the gospel?'.

Currently this questions is being robustly debated within evangelical Christianity. Given the movement is defined by its allegiance to the gospel, getting a right grasp of the gospel is a vital undertaking. Here is a basic summary of the two differing definitions of 'the gospel' on which the debate tends to centre:

(1) In order to define the gospel we need to look to the ministry of the disciples and the work and language of 'kingdom' used by Jesus in the gospels. Therefore the good news is essentially that Jesus is Lord and his kingdom is here for all who want to get on board.

(2) In order to define the gospel we need to look at the apostolic writings in the New Testament which focus in on the death of Jesus, describing it as a substitutionary death on our behalf. Therefore, the good news is that there is a way for us to be forgiven by God for our wrongdoing, if we repent of sin and trust in what Jesus has done for us.

The interviewees contend that the first position is not a description of the gospel while the second position is, while acknowledging that more could be said. Their rational for this position is that the apostles have a right to authoritatively interpret the work of Jesus in a way that we don't, citing John 15:26. On this point I agree. They also assert that position 1 is in fact not good news, as it makes no provision for reversing our rebellion against God, and therefore Jesus' Lordship is very bad news for us. On this point again, I agree.

However, on the broader assertion that position 2 is an adequate statement of the gospel, I disagree. Whereas position 1 speaks of Jesus' Lordship without speaking of his redemptive work, position 2 speaks of Jesus' redemptive work without speaking of his Lordship (interestingly echoed in the difference in emphases in Catholic and Reformed theology). This isolates God's work of redemption from his universal and eternal work, which makes no sense to unchristianised ears. So while I would not label position 2 as 'not the gospel', it appears to be an incomplete and perhaps even incomprehensible gospel.

So, what is the right way to define the gospel while remaining faithful both to the teaching of the gospels and the apostolic writings, and indeed to the whole sweep of scripture? I would argue that two preliminary things need to be established in answering this question; firstly, the attempt to divide the teaching of the gospels and the epistles is to create a false dichotomy - Jesus said much about his redemptive work (e.g. John 3: 14-18) and the apostles don't 'underplay' the Lordship of Jesus (e.g. Ephesians 1: 18-23).

Secondly, the best way to outline the good news of Christianity is in fact to outline the whole historical narrative from God's pre-creation existence through to his establishing of the eternal perfect kingdom(via creation, fall, the promise of restoration, the incarnation of Jesus, his life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, the sending of the Holy Spirit and the work of God's people while awaiting his return). Therefore, any attempt to summarise the gospel will inevitably not be able to say everything, but must do justice to the heart of this wonderful narrative. Such a summary is a good and useful thing to have a grasp of, as we might not always have the opportunity or clarity of thought to outline the complete narrative in a conversational setting. And as aforementioned, a clear gospel outline is essential for confessional unity amongst Christians.

Here then is my attempt to define the gospel in a way that summarises the heart of the Christian message, uniting Jesus' lordship with his redemptive work, as succinctly as possible:

The good news of Christianity is that God is real, he is good, he is loving, he is just and he wants a relationship with humankind. One day he will banish all evil from Earth and establish an eternal kingdom of joy where all people who trust in him will forever live. But the shock is that rather than trust in him, all of us have rejected God's rule over our lives through preferring to do life our way, through worshiping and treasuring things above God, and through not living as we know we ought to have done as moral beings. This rejection of God has led to all the evil and imperfection that has plagued the Earth throughout history and that plagues life today. It resulted in bringing the greatest enemy of all upon us - namely death. Having rejected God, all humans rightly face God's judgement for this rebellion. But God, out of his love, didn't want to leave humankind in this state, and sent his son Jesus to the Earth to call us to turn from our sins and live with God as our Lord. Yet Jesus came not only to call us back to God but also to make that possible, for God being a just God couldn't overlook our wrongful rejection of him without punishing it. And Jesus made that possible by dying on a cross in the place of every human, taking the wrath of God that we deserve to face. Having died, God raised Jesus from the dead, guaranteeing the achievement of the cross, the overthrow of death and the reversal of the sad decay of the Earth. But this work of Christ isn't a get out of jail free card for everyone; rather we have a choice to make - do we receive the good news of life in Christ though trusting God's promises of forgiveness and setting our hearts against wrongdoing? Or do we continue living with ourselves as lord and reject or ignore the work of Jesus? The first leads to a true knowledge of God and everlasting fulness of life, while the second leads to judgement, death and a parting from all goodness.

Thoughts?