The myth of the “secular” classroom

A few weeks ago, the energetically concerned citizens of Westerville, Ohio, urged their local school board to kick out a Christian group offering free Bible classes to public school children. LifeWise Academy is a nonprofit organization that takes students off-campus during their “free period” for Bible instruction. It’s free (for families and schools), voluntary, and effective. A study released in October 2023 showed schools that offered LifeWise saw improved attendance and decreased rates of in-school and out-of-school suspensions.

But after NBC News covered the rapid growth of LifeWise earlier this year—to more than 300 schools in a dozen states—the Westerville City School Board “grew concerned.”

The program, according to the board, was distracting. Its strongest argument against LifeWise was that some kids opted in to the program and other kids didn’t—and differences like that are, they claim, very dangerous. They could incite social pressure.

It’s hard to take that argument seriously, which is why I don’t. I think this dustup was a pretty straightforward proxy for a bigger political fight between those who believe Christianity and public education are fundamentally compatible and those who believe they are in conflict. The irony of the latter view is that without Christianity, there would be no public education.

I earned my journalism degree at Ohio University, just about an hour away from Westerville, a suburb of Columbus. OU was founded in 1804 in what was then called the Northwest Territory. The college first existed in a single building, a charming brick colonial named Cutler Hall that still stands today at the center of College Green. The building was named for Manasseh Cutler, founder of the university and one of the founders of the state.

Cutler was a medical doctor, a lawyer, and a minister who said starting a public university in the new territory was his top priority.

Historian and author David McCullough, in The Pioneers, his book about the settling of Ohio, says this was a profound cultural moment: “That such emphasis be put on education in the vast new territory before even one permanent settlement had been established was extraordinary. But of even greater importance was the fact that outside of New England there was then no such thing in the United States as a system of state-supported schools of any kind. … Before the year was out … it would be specified that a section in each township be reserved for common schools.”

Cutler and the rest of Ohio’s founders—much like their contemporary, Virginian Thomas Jefferson—believed free public education was essentially and inescapably Christian.

“We have just ground to hope that religion and learning, the useful and ornamental branches of science, will meet with encouragement, and that they will be extended to the remotest parts of the American empire,” Cutler preached in a sermon on Aug. 24, 1788.

The idea that we might somehow “separate” the pursuit of the knowledge of God’s physical world from knowledge of His moral order is a futile one. Yes, we can teach kids geology and long division without explicitly citing the author of those truths. But the weightier things are more difficult to plagiarize. If public school boards like the one in Westerville are concerned about problems like social pressure and bullying and kids being distracted or struggling in class or not having their “social and emotional” needs met, perhaps more emphasis—not less—on character formation is needed.

To that end, I and my forebear—the good Rev. Cutler—might recommend that the school board not remove the one hour during the school week in which these students may have an opportunity to learn the virtues of patience, temperance, joy, peace, self-control, kindness, and love.

This little suburban drama in Westerville is a timely reminder for Christians who are seeking the good of their neighbors that “playing by the rules” of progressive government officials will never be enough. We can’t dot our i’s and cross our t’s into cultural approval. This, as Jesus said, shouldn’t surprise us. But it could embolden us to reclaim the pride of our heritage—that it was by the grace of our God and His saints that our country values education at all.

Ohio University is not a Christian institution. Nevertheless, at the northwest corner of College Green, there’s a stone archway every student must sooner or later walk beneath. On the arch are etched these words from Article III of the Northwest Ordinance: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” It’s not there by accident.