In June, Bethlehem College and Seminary participated in two classical Christian school conferences hosted, respectively, by The Association of Classical & Christian Schools (ACCS) and The Society for Classical Learning (SCL). These two national organizations support a rapidly expanding movement of classical Christian K-12 schools around the United States.[1] As more families rediscover the Christian and classical alternative to modern education, there has been an explosion of not only new classical K-12 schools, but also many supporting organizations like ACCS and SCL. Bethlehem’s participation has been growing too. Last year, ACCS recognized Bethlehem as a Certified Classical College, and this year SCL invited Chancellor John Piper to speak as the opening plenary on their conference theme: the preeminence of Christ.
But why, you may be asking, is Bethlehem participating in conferences designed primarily to support K-12 education?
Quite simply, we share the same vision for the mission and the method of education and recognize the urgent need to recover that classical vision for education in today’s culture. Classical education aims to educate the whole person for lifelong flourishing.[2] At Bethlehem College, we aim to spread a passion for God’s supremacy in all things by forming mature young men and women to witness for Christ with wisdom and wonder for the rest of their lives. Such a vision has a much broader purpose than modern education because it has deeper formative aims. Much of American higher education today places job training and career networking as the purpose of education. While these are valuable secondary effects of a good college education, they cannot be its primary aim. Those secondary benefits have no lasting value if you lose the primary purpose of education. What does it profit a young man or woman if they gain the perfect job after graduation yet lose their soul in college? While marketable skills and heart formation should go together, when you put the secondary good of job skills above the primary purpose of heart formation, you lose both. We educate for heart formation not mere career credentialing. Bethlehem loves the fact that a growing number of families and K-12 schools share this vision for the mission of education.
Such a mission, though, must correspond with a method of education that best achieves it. Classical education seeks to achieve its mission by leading students to encounter goodness, truth, and beauty in “the accumulated wisdom of the ages.”[3] At Bethlehem College, we describe our method as studying the Great Books in light of the Greatest Book for the sake of the Great Commission. Since we believe “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” are hidden in Christ (Col 3:2) and scripture is God’s special revelation of himself, we look to God’s Word as our final authority in education. Yet, God has revealed himself not only in his Word but also in the World he has made, including in great works of the liberal arts throughout the ages. Studying such great books encourage habits of mind and heart that offer a foundation for lifelong learning.[4]
As a distinctly classical Christian college, then, Bethlehem aims to serve and influence this likeminded movement of K-12 schools and their supporting organizations. We are serving the movement, first, by finishing the formation of classically educated high school students. Parents and students looking for an education that aims to build on, rather than undermine, the good foundation they received in high school can trust a classical college like Bethlehem because it shares the same mission and method of education. Students can expect to go further up and further into the great conversation as they discern how to live well beyond their parent’s household. Yet, second, Bethlehem also aims to serve the classical Christian education movement by equipping its next generation of teachers and leaders. Bethlehem graduates already are teaching in local classical schools like Hope Academy, Agape Christi Academy, Knox Classical Academy, and Valor Classical Academy. But they also have gone to serve at schools across the region from Fargo, North Dakota to Kenosha, Wisconsin and across the nation from Austin, Texas to San Diego, California. And many more graduates are educating their own children at home with rigorous, classical curriculums. Bethlehem’s new Emphasis in Classical Christian Education launched this summer aims to accelerate and deepen our capacity to serve this movement with likeminded, well-equipped teachers and leaders and parents.
Yet, Bethlehem aims not only to serve but also to influence the movement. As we partner with local schools and national organizations, we will continually declare that the goal of educating the whole person can only be fulfilled when teacher and student alike pursue their happiness in God. Pastor John’s Christian-hedonistic message to nearly 1400 classical school educators and leaders at the Society for Classical Learning last week celebrated the truth that true education must serve man’s chief end, which is to glorify him by enjoying him forever. Bethlehem’s mission to spread a passion for God’s supremacy extends to our efforts to serve this movement when we call its leaders and teachers to celebrate the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. Join us in praying for increasing influence on this movement in generations to come as we educate its graduates and equip God-entranced men and women to be its future teachers and leaders.
Zach Howard, Ph.D.
Academic Dean & Assistant Professor of Theology and Humanities
PRAYER REQUESTS
- Pray for our the alumni preparing to teach their first classes this fall.
- Pray for full classes this fall for our college, seminary, and evening programs.
- Pray for the search for our next Director of Admissions.
- Pray for our students and faculty as they rest, travel, and study this summer.
[1] Keri D. Ingraham, “The Surging Growth of K-12 Classical Education | RealClearEducation,” March 1, 2024, https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2024/03/01/the_surging_growth_of_k-12_classical_education_1015509.html. For a longer-form, if slightly dated, analysis that names key leaders and institutions, see Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra, “The Exponential Growth of Classical Christian Education,” The Gospel Coalition, June 15, 2017, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-exponential-growth-of-classical-christian-education/.
[2] Definition adapted from Brian A. Williams, “Introducing Principia and Classical Education” in Principia: A Journal of Classical Education 1:1 (2022), 2.
[3] Williams, 2.
[4] See also James McGlothlin, “Bethlehem College and ‘Classical Education,’” Bethlehem College and Seminary, April 21, 2023, https://bcsmn.edu/classical-education/.