I am constantly amazed by how little church history I received through 16 years of formal Christian education. Either things were never mentioned, or were brought forth in a way that passed right through me. For instance, I graduated not really knowing what the Orthodox Church even was. If I had received information from the New Testament tracing forward, I would have a much deeper appreciation and understanding of the church itself. Instead, I received a narrative disconnected from that lineage; there were the early churches mentioned in the Bible via Paul, then SHAZAM - suddenly we are in the 16th century. I suspect this shameful information gap created student skeptics because we were expected to identify with a modern church born from nothing short of a Big Bang. It’s no wonder there is a lack of respect for doctrine. (I feel a blog series here, folks!)
I went through a system focused on Calvinism (TULIP was mos def on the test). Other than a biased caricature of Arminius when pitted against Calvin, the schools offered little information on anyone else in the tradition as a whole, Martin Luther being an example. Of course we knew about his 95 theses pinned to the cathedral bulletin board - the spark that caused the wildfire of the Reformation that blazed across the globe. But virtually no context was given surrounding that ex nihilo event, thus there was no understanding of how Luther and Reformed theology utterly changed the world, beyond doctrine.
One of the world-changing sectors Luther seized was education. The 95 theses were posted in 1519; Luther was already a notorious authority figure by 1524 when he wrote to German rulers about educational reform:
“Dear rulers … I maintain that the civil authorities are under obligation to compel the people to send their children to school…. If the government can compel such citizens as are fit for military service to bear spear and rifle, to mount ramparts, and perform other martial duties in time of war, how much more has it a right to compel the people to send their children to school, because in this case we are warring with the devil, whose object it is secretly to exhaust our cities and principalities of their strong men.”
Luther is suggesting that preparation for spiritual battle is training the mind. (I did not realize that my own feelings on spiritual warfare - hence my series of posts on the trivium and critical thinking - were Luther’s as well, 500 years before me!)
THE BIRTH OF THE MODERN WORLD
Though dealing with the devil might be the esoteric driving force to educational reform, Luther had more practical purposes as well, like believing literacy should be available to all - regardless of class and gender, which were dividing factors among those who received education at the time. This is massive: universal education may very well be the linchpin that turned history’s wheel into what we now call the “modern era.”
Here’s a quote from the New Yorker article actually titled, “How Martin Luther Changed The World”:
It has often been said that, fundamentally, Luther gave us “modernity.” Among the recent studies, Eric Metaxas’s “Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World” (Viking) makes this claim in grandiose terms. “The quintessentially modern idea of the individual was as unthinkable before Luther as is color in a world of black and white,” he writes. “And the more recent ideas of pluralism, religious liberty, self-government, and liberty all entered history through the door that Luther opened.”
Here’s where my research got sticky. Some articles spoke nobly about Luther and his desire for not just an egalitarian education, but also for religious autonomy in the sense that by being literate, one can read and interpret the Bible for oneself. This makes sense considering his beef with the Catholic Church was about corrupt authority - the Pope seemingly positioning himself above Christ in the sense that salvation depended upon church-sanctioned operations and duties rather than God’s grace alone. In fact, Luther only arrived at this truth by studying the Bible for himself during a torturous time in his life as a priest, angry at God for demanding Sisyphean penance from His people.
I will grant Luther mad props for delivering scripture to the people by going as far as translating it from Latin, which only elites could read, into the German common vernacular, and utilizing the newly invented printing press for wide dissemination (definitively the technology of the modern era).
However, other articles showed the dark side of this educational reform. In an “out of the frying pan into the fire” scenario, citizens may have escaped the clutches of the Catholic Church only to find themselves under the coercion of the Reformers, which, according to these sources, was unrelenting and punitive.
The motive behind education was actually to indoctrinate all into the Protestant/Lutheran church. By getting the state involved, corporal punishment could be carried out legally against Catholics, Jews, infidels, and heretical sects of Protestantism...here are the devils Luther says education will battle against.
One glowing article about Luther says:
Martin Luther gave the masses the impetus to question every form of authority, to realize that God’s Word is accessible to them too and therefore liberating.
Question every form of authority...except his?
An opposing quote states:
The defense of religion became … not only the duty of the civil power, but the object of its institution. Its business was solely the coercion of those who were out of the [Lutheran] Church.
Luther seemed to be creating a theocracy, insisting on obedience to the state, which was administering Protestant beliefs. He adamantly proselytized absolutism. In 1530, he declared:
"It was the duty of a Christian to suffer wrong, and no breach of oath or of duty could deprive the Emperor of his right to the unconditional obedience of his subjects."
Prussia became the exemplar of this model, which went as far as fining and imprisoning the non-compliant. At the time, the Prussian educational model was likened to an army, though in modern analogy, it is often likened to the factory. This model came to the North American colonies through the influence of another Reformer, John Calvin.
Calvin was in Geneva in the mid 1500’s during an uprising against the Catholic Church and the non-Protestant government at the time. He was appointed chief pastor of the city, a governance position that married religion and political power. Thus when Calvin began establishing schools in the area, it’s easy to see how he and his followers naturally dovetailed obedience to authority with education - a blend of God and country. There was corporal punishment to Catholics and “heretics” in Geneva and surrounding areas; in Scotland, where Reformer John Knox was said to have sanctioned the death penalty to those who refused his Presbyterianism.
Regardless, men all over Europe flocked to John Calvin institutions, known for their exceptional studies, which, as a graduate of Calvin College myself, I can vouch is an educational reputation that still holds true today.
What I couldn’t seem to understand was how there could be a more free-schooling system in the early United States when the colonists - Puritans - were Calvinist and Presbyterian to begin with. Digging further, I learned there were ideological differences between colonists in the southern and middle will-be states, and those of New England. Even within New England there were differences between those considered “Puritan” and “Pilgrim.” It was the New England Puritans, with that Protestant perfectionism that established the strict compulsory model, who wanted to ensure a base-line of good citizenship and knowledge of the Bible, thus placing emphasis on education. No wonder that New England is still considered the epicenter for intellectualism in the United States, with the greatest concentration of elite schools.
WHEN THE CREATED TURNS ON THE CREATOR
It begs the question: when the tipping point occurred in compulsory education away from obedience to the state being synonymous with God and rational thinking, to obedience simply being a functional egalitarian citizen...did the Protestants lament the system they endorsed? As public schooling in America becomes increasingly secular - not only stripping God out but replacing Him with antithetical ideology on a runaway train...did they ever think: we’ve created a monster? We now have material in schools that many Christian parents disagree with, yet are forced under law to send their children to these institutions. Some families who push back have experienced metaphorical stake-burning as unbelievers in the system through expulsion and public harassment. Some find alternatives, but those involve time, money, and resources not available to all.
Maybe now I understand what lurks in the abyss between the first century church and its 16th century rebirth that my teachers avoided like a medieval plague: the ghosts of our faith heroes riddled with hubris, and the charred remains of the unconverted, embarrassingly un-gospel-like. And now what’s at (the) stake: young impressionable minds.
Whether you are a fan of Luther or not, one thing is for sure: he was a fiery, zealous man who often shot off his mouth to great offense. Nonetheless he changed an entire religion and arguably the Western world by his willingness to stand defiantly against the undeniably powerful and dangerous Catholic Church. He was excommunicated and risked being burned at the stake but refused to recant his Catholic heresies. Does this boldness, and the monumental effects of the Reformation, excuse what sounds like the birth of state sanctioned compulsory education?
I wanted to make sure I pointed out the argument that there may be a dark side to the roots of religious education lest those in defense of Christian private schools argue that indoctrination is either less prevalent at these institutions, or has a means therein to a righteous end.
I hear the “not all schools”/“not all teachers”/“not all Protestants” push back, and as I stated in an earlier post on this subject, I do not intend to make sweeping generalizations. But honestly: what is the rationale of a sanctioned curriculum? And who is allowed to add to or subtract from it? Is it truly useful to simply regurgitate particular data and rank a person’s capability with a number through standardized testing? Should the subject matters taught be a parent’s decision, or (crazy!) the student’s? And coming round to what we discussed in the previous post, is there an agenda to move away from critical thinking of the liberated individual toward social conditioning for the obedient citizen - be it pagan or Protestant?
I’m just asking. Because if Luther makes a valid point about the battle ground of spiritual warfare being the mind, what we put into our minds and how we interpret that information is of utmost importance.
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