Are Christian Schools Training Christians or Americans?

Jesus made clear that we pledge allegiance only to God. But some Christian education pledges allegiance to the world too.

How do we rightly understand the people who stormed the Capitol last month? MSNBC analyst Mehdi Hasan, soon after the riot, wrote that we must ask, Where were they radicalized?

Hasan’s answer was right-wing news and social media, a frantic feed of Fox and Facebook. But in a column for Religion Dispatches, Chrissy Stroop pointed to Christian education as well. Citing a Huffington Post report that connects rhetoric from former President Donald Trump with lessons in widely used Christian textbooks produced by Abeka Publishing and Bob Jones University Press, Stroop argued “conservative Christian” schools are “sources of radicalization” with a “toxic influence” that contributed to the seditious violence in Washington on January 6.

On the one hand, if Stroop’s broad verdict is right, I should have joined the Capitol mob. I am a product of Christian primary education—even used Abeka books. Still, I can’t argue with Stroop’s basic contention that the mushrooming visibility of Christian nationalism in American evangelical circles requires new scrutiny of Christian schooling. The question I keep returning to is this: Are our schools training Christians or Americans? Read More

I have had similar thoughts about a homeschool curriculum that has been advertised on Church Leaders and other Christian websites. The ads showed two blond-haired, blue-eyed children, the Statue of Liberty, and the American flag and no Christian symbols. The two children were in their teens and drawn in a style reminiscent of the Hitler Youth posters of the 1930s and 1940s--Aryan youth, Ubermench. Based upon the ads, I was prompted to wonder what this homeschool curriculum was teaching. I am a historian by training if not by vocation and I have studied the Hitler Youth movement in Germany and I am familiar with their propaganda posters. The similarity of style was striking. Coincidence? Maybe? 

A number of "Christian" schools here in the South  were originally launched as private academies for the children of parents who were opposed to the segregation of public schools and since that time have been morphed into "Christian" schools purportedly teaching "Christian" values. 

While some Christian schools may play a role in the radicalization of the "alternate-right," I suspect that the main culprit is the internet. I have been a student at the local state university for more than five years and I have noticed a segment of the student body has been exposed to Neo-Nazi thought and values. I heard one male student tell a female student in the hallway that he was a Nazi. He appeared to be trying to impress the girl, but judging by her reaction, I do not believe that she grasped what he was saying. I gathered from a member of the staff at the university that anti-Semitic, Neo-Nazi videos may be viewed on You-Tube as "Christian" videos, Her husband often viewed them and she was asking me questions about whether the views expressed in them were really Christian views. 

White supremacy has always had its supporters in the South (and outside the South too) and the South has produced some outspoken Neo-Nazis like David Duke. However, the blending of white supremacist,  Neo-Nazi, and nativist thought with what its adherents calls Christianity but is devoid of Jesus' influence and an extreme form of patriotism could irreparably damage orthodox Christianity in the United States.  All Christians could be tarred with the same brush. For this reason I believe that orthodox Christians need to tone down the political rhetoric online and in the pulpit. Our Lord did not commission us to spread a particular political ideology or promote a particular politician and to make converts to that ideology or supporters of that politician. He commissioned us to spread the gospel and to make disciples of all people--followers of himself, not a politician. That is the task which he has entrusted to us, not the establishment of a Christian version of the Islamic Dar al Islam in the United States.