Faithful in Our Time and Beyond

A Report of the Christ & Culture Task Force Regents School of Austin

Christians find themselves living in a challenging time and yet, find great hope in Christ and His Kingdom. Many of the most basic assumptions that used to make up a general consensus in our nation and world have been questioned, doubted , and redefined in recent decades.. The definition and purpose of the family, the role of character in political life, sexuality, race, the freedoms of religion and speech - everything seems to be in flux in the broader culture. As those foundational structures have shifted, it is important for Christian institutions around the country to define and maintain unity in the midst of the tensions that have arisen in their wake. More importantly, these organizations must maintain fidelity to their mission as the culture around them grows ever more skeptical to the authoritative claims of Scripture.

As a Christian school in the midst of this cultural confusion and change, the Regents community is not immune from these tensions and challenges. Just as families, cities, churches, and denominations everywhere have all had to face the realities of living and fulfilling their mission in this ever and rapidly changing world, we too must thoughtfully examine our role within the broader culture and hold fast to the hope and foundation we have in Jesus Christ.

In 2017, the Board established a Theology and Science Task Force to examine and help our community work through the various issues surrounding the intersection between the Christian faith and the natural sciences. That was “step one” of a two-step process envisioned by the Board to frame how we handle potentially controversial cultural topics within our school community. This document is the second step towards fulfilling that goal. The task force that has authored it was formed by the Board with the purpose of addressing the many tensions the school feels in our present age and to chart a pathway forward that is consistent with our mission to “provide a Christian and classical education founded upon and informed by a Christian worldview that equips students to know, love, and practice that which is true, good, and beautiful and challenges them to strive for excellence as they live purposefully and intelligently in the service of God and man.” In light of that charge, the purpose of this document is to equip the Regents community with a biblical and theological framework for thinking about, discussing, and engaging with the ever-changing broader culture in a way that is both faithful to the truth and loving to all members of our school community.

The committee discussed a number of guiding principles we felt would be helpful to make explicit as we address these issues.

1 Clarity

In an age that can generally be described as confusing, we hope to provide a sense of clarity with respect to what we as a school understand the Scriptures to teach as well as how we understand the implications of that teaching for us. We not only want to be understood, but to speak so clearly that we cannot be misunderstood.

2 Brevity

Given the many cultural issues we face, it is tempting to want to say something about everything. We have tried to resist that temptation and instead provide something shorter and more foundational in nature. We want this document to serve as a framework for thinking through issues rather than a list of prescriptions or talking points on an exhaustive list of subjects, which will likely not be exhaustive in 14 months, let alone 10 years.

3 Hope

Whenever we are forced to deal directly with the inevitable challenges that face us in life, there is a strong temptation towards discouragement or despair. It would be easy to grow jaded or cynical when discussing the current state of our culture, believing that nothing can change. We must avoid that temptation. Instead, we hope this document will provide hope for our community - hope that, with God’s help, we can rise to meet the challenges that face us and chart a path forward that is both faithful to God and loving to our neighbors.

Before we address any of the particular issues we face as a school, it is important that we have a clear sense of what ails us as a culture. We do not want to treat a cold with chemotherapy. Nor do we want to amputate when physical therapy is all that is required. We must, therefore, have an accurate understanding of the problem in order to address it in the wisest and most effective way possible. We also need to understand that these are not simply problems “out there” in the world. Even Christians living in 21st-century America exhibit these tendencies in our own lives and must acknowledge our complicity in them wherever appropriate.

The Task Force identified four major cultural trends negatively affecting American culture, and thus Regents culture, today:

The Erosion of Transcendent Morality and Truth

The last several hundred years have witnessed an erosion in the belief of a transcendent moral order. In previous generations there was a general sense that morality - right and wrong - was “pre-political,” that is, it existed before and independent of the civil government’s laws. Because that moral order existed independently of any particular nation, it was binding on all people at all times. Christians acknowledge that moral order as God’s law that has been written into creation and into the conscience of human beings as his creatures. Today, however, our culture has lost that sense of transcendent morality and instead sees defining right and wrong as simply the prerogative of the individual.

Furthermore, what has occurred in the realm of morality has also crept into the realm of truth in general. Previous generations generally shared an assumption that objective truth existed and could be accessed and known by human beings. Today, however, the very idea of an objective reality that has consequences for all humanity is rejected. Consequently, many now speak of “your truth” or “my truth” as if Truth itself was something each person has the power to define. Debates about ethics and reality no longer take place in a realm of shared experience and rules, but rather now there are no longer shared ideals, core documents, or common goals for people.

2 A New Understanding of Humanity

One of the most fundamental changes over the past several generations has been a dramatic shift in the way people understand the “self,” or “the way we imagine our purpose in life, what makes us tick, what makes us happy, wherein our freedom consists.” (Trueman 2020, thepublicdiscourse.com)

Rather than seeking meaning, fulfillment, and structure from outside of us - through family, nation, church, etc. - most people now define that search for meaning exclusively in terms of what makes them feel satisfied psychologically. In other words, how an individual feels about something is the only authentic, unquestioned truth to which everything around them must conform. Whereas in previous ages, happiness and meaning were found by fulfilling one’s various callings in service to others, today our culture believes happiness is found primarily in an inner, psychological sense of well-being. To put it another way: today our primary identity is based in our desires instead of our duties. In this view the primary goal of life, then, becomes to attain and protect that sense of well-being - to live “consistently” externally with the way one feels internally. What is inside is what truly matters now, and all other realities must conform to that sense of self, regardless of how incongruous they may be.

This new sense of self is communicated ubiquitously through the mass media all around us. Wherever we hear calls to “Be true to yourself” or statements like “No one can define who you are but you,” we hear a version of this shift towards a new understanding of humanity and reality. This shift has had a profound impact in a number of areas of life. For example, technology has allowed us to portray a facade in ways that were unthinkable even a few decades ago and promises to do even more as we consider the implications of the potential merging of human and artificial intelligence capabilities. Human dignity is increasingly connected with the ability to make choices and manipulate reality than any sense of divine spark or unique human condition.

A Declining Biblical/Theological Consensus

The changes above have had a profound impact upon the Christian community as well. For millennia, the Christian Church has operated on the basic assumption that human beings come into the world sinful and in desperate need for God to come to them from the outside in order to save and sanctify them. But that basic assumption is more and more at odds with the inward direction of our culture. As our attention has shifted to the importance of our inward lives and feelings, Christians have felt less connected to the institutions and practices that have shaped previous generations of believers. Why be involved with the institutional church when what really matters is my individual, private devotion to God? As a result, church attendance and membership in local church bodies has fallen precipitously even among those who still claim personal faith in Christ. The tension between being “religious” (external and therefore bad) and “spiritual” (internal and therefore good) is one manifestation of this.

But with less connection to, and in some cases a distrust of, church traditions and the rich theological reflection and accountability embodied therein, Christians are largely left to themselves to grow in their knowledge of the Lord. This has resulted in a thinning and fracturing of belief among evangelicals and an erosion of any doctrinal consensus American Christians once held. Therefore as new winds of controversy begin to blow through the culture, Christians have less and less of a common vocabulary or body of truth on which to rely in order to talk intelligently and biblically about cultural issues.

A Distrust of Institutions

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As the sense of self has shifted from the external world to the internal, one of the consequences has been a growing distrust of institutions. After all, if the way I feel is what really matters, institutions like schools, churches, or governments are often seen as hindrances to a truly fulfilling life. Such institutions necessarily place limitations on who one can be and what one can do, which runs counter to the very goal of life according to this new sense of self. Institutions that were once seen as having the responsibility to shape and mold their members into a certain kind of person according to the traditions entrusted to them are now viewed merely as a limitation to full self expression. As a result, institutions are faced with a choice. They must either change to fit the new expectations placed upon them by their new “customers,” becoming mirrors reflecting broader cultural trends. Or, they can continue to serve as molding institutions, insisting that they have something enduring and valuable to offer the world, however unpopular that may seem in our current moment.

The other key aspect leading to this development is the very fact that many institutions have publicly and notoriously failed to be trustworthy. An obvious example of this is the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church that stretched over decades, but similar institutional failure can be seen in the reaction to social media abuse prior to and following the 2016 election, the failure of regulations to prevent the massive market crash of 2008, the failure of the intelligence community in the leadups to 9/11 and then again with Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction,” among many others. For many people, everywhere they look they see incompetent or corrupt people leading institutions in such a way that seems to benefit them and their friends, but not those who the institution was designed to serve.

Our Response

What should be our response to these radical cultural changes? As a school, how can we address these issues without devolving into the polarized factions we see so often in the broader culture? Furthermore, how can we continue to be faithful to our mission as we face the pressure to change along with the culture? In order to move forward as a community, it is important for us to return to some basic principles on which our school was founded and to which we must always return for renewed purpose and vitality. Just as a tree depends upon its root system for stability in the midst of a storm, we too must reach into the riches of our own tradition to find the strength and stability we need to steady our ship in the winds of the culture. This renewed commitment to our tradition must not be seen as simply an effort to maintain the status quo. Rather, we must depend upon our tradition to move forward into the future with faithfulness. This is the path forward to be faithful in our time and beyond.

What is the purpose of Regents School of Austin? We are a learning institution with the responsibility of instructing and nurturing our students according to the truths confessed in the Christian and Western intellectual tradition handed down to us through the ages. At the most basic level, we assume that parents enroll their children at Regents because they understand their child’s need for education, formation, and shaping. In other words, children do not naturally have the basic tools they need to live fruitful, godly, and faithful lives, and our responsibility as a school - in cooperation with the families and churches represented in our student body - is to provide them with the best tools we know to exist by following our Classical, Christian, Community framework.

Regents is a Christian school. The heart of Christian education is to manifest wisdom, knowledge, and understanding by integrating learning under the reality and Lordship of Jesus Christ leading to a transformed life that lives “purposefully and intelligently in the service of God and man.” Thinking Christianly involves the believer bringing every thought captive to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Truly, “all learning, all schooling, formal or informal, simple or sophisticated – exists for the love of God and the love of man” (Piper 2010, 54). The apostle Paul shares three different times in 2 Corinthians of the importance of thinking in a Christ-centered manner and the result of being led astray from Christ when one does not engage in thinking Christianly (2 Corinthians 3:14; 4:4; and 11:3). In 2 Corinthians 3:14, Paul reminds the church at Corinth that the minds of the Israelites were hardened in Moses’ day (Exodus 32:9; 33:3, 5; and 34:9). Francis Schaeffer argues that “true spirituality covers all of life, and the Lordship of Christ covers all of life and all of life equally. In this sense, there is nothing concerning reality that is not spiritual” (Schaeffer 1981, 19).

Christian educators who are evangelical in theological orientation need to make a concerted effort to affirm those biblical insights that provide the essential authority for both theory and practice (Pazmiño 1997, 9). Unfortunately, Christian educators and schools do not always seek to put forth an effort to align Christian beliefs with the praxis of teaching. Nancy Pearcey communicates this travesty well when she says,

In many Christian schools, the typical strategy is to inject a few narrowly defined “religious” elements into the classroom, like prayer and Bible memorization – and then teach exactly the same content as secular schools. The curriculum merely spreads a layer of spiritual devotion over the subject matter like icing on a cake, while the content itself stays the same. (Pearcey 2004, 37).

A Christian educator must seek to address all aspects of the student, which may be thought of as a holistic approach to education. Kenneth Gangel communicates the difficulty of a holistic approach to education and thinking when he states,

Holistic Christian thinking does not just happen; effective Christian teachers deliberately design it. An evangelical philosophy calls Christian educators to bring culture and Christ into close union without fear that culture will destroy truth. But such practice can only happen if teachers approach the procedure with a careful balance between open-mindedness and unchallenged doctrine. (Gangel 2001, 367)

A holistic approach to Christian education and thinking is necessary for the compilation and adoption of a biblical worldview that will be practiced in all aspects of a student’s life. The integration of faith and learning is the crux of delivering a Christian education that helps students to adopt a biblical worldview in which they think and apply it holistically to their lives. The biblical metanarrative of the Christian faith of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation is foundational for laying a biblical and theological foundation for the educational endeavor committed to a thoroughly Christian education.

Creation

The first order of the metanarrative of the Christian faith is the doctrine of creation. How did everything come into existence? The question of origin is a foundational question for any worldview to seek to answer, and this is foundational for the starting point of the educational endeavor. The starting point for the Christian world-andlife view is the doctrine of creation. Creation generally refers to the events of Genesis 1, when God created the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. In Scripture, “there is a beginning of all things, and that beginning occurred when God created the world (Genesis 1:1; Job 38:4; Psalms 90:2; 102:25; Isaiah 40:21; 41:4; 46:10; John 1:1; Hebrews 1:10; 1 John 1:1; Revelation 1:8; 3:14; 21:6; 22:13)” (Frame 2002, 290). The biblical evidence teaches that God created the entire universe ex nihilo, literally “out of nothing,” creation was originally very good (Gen 1), and God created for his own glory (Grudem 1994, 262-263). Nothing internal or external to God compelled him to create (Plantiga 2002, 22).

The work of creation is attributed to God the Father (Genesis 1:1), God the Son (Colossians 1:16), and to God the Holy Spirit (Job 26:13; Psalm 104:30) (Tozer 1961, 23). The doctrine of creation provides a framework for attributing authority and origination with God (Exodus 20:11; Nehemiah 9:6; Psalms 19:1; 33:6, 9; 146:5-6; Romans 11:36). Creation is an expression of the wisdom of God and a revelation of the great mind of the triune God (Psalm 104:24; Proverbs 3:19; 8:1, 22-36; Jerermiah 10:12; 51:15; Job 38-42) (Frame 2002, 294).

The doctrine of creation provides the starting point for an understanding of the biblical worldview that is the framework for thinking about culture in relation to Christ. An understanding of the doctrine of creation is important because it is foundational in understanding other doctrines (Erickson 1998, 393). In relation to education, the doctrine has relevance for educators because “God enthusiastically and repeatedly declared what He had created as good” (Graham 2003, 28). There are two key subcategories of the doctrine of creation related to Christ and culture: human beings as image-bearers and the cultural mandate.

Human Beings as Image-Bearers

An essential doctrine of Scripture in relation to Christian education is that mankind is created as imago Dei or in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). When originally created, human beings imaged God in a sinless and perfect way towards God, towards others, and towards nature. An implication of the imago Dei, is that human beings reflect God as responsible agents and are ultimately responsible to their Creator and Ruler (Hoekema 1986, 14).

As image-bearers of God, human beings also possess creativity and can think, learn, and reason in the world. In relation to education, Nancy Pearcey states, “Creation tells us that children are created in the image of God, which means they have the great dignity of being creatures with a capacity for love, morality, rationality, artistic creation, and all the other uniquely human capabilities” (Pearcey 2004, 129). Eddie Baumann believes developing the image of God is an essential component in the integrative process when he shares, “unlike curriculum integration, developing the image of God is not only a call to know but a call to act. . . . For Christian educators, the goal of developing knowledge and reason is to prepare students to respond to God and to use knowledge in ways to bring glory to Him” (Baumann 2010, 33-34). Education should allow the student to fully flourish in the gifts God has implanted in them in their very nature.

Being an image-bearer of the Triune God also tells us that humanity is made for community. “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). There is an inextricable link between God as three persons and His imprint on us as relational beings. This is significant in the realm of education because there must be a contextual community in order to have effective relationships that leads to teaching and learning.

Cultural Mandate

The cultural mandate is significant in thinking about the created order and human beings in relation to culture. As part of the doctrine of creation, Genesis 1:28-29 is a biblical starting point for learning since humanity is called to rule the earth for God and develop a God-glorifying culture (Hoekema 1986, 14). A key task for educators is to “encourage persons to fulfill their responsibilities, ultimately with respect to their relation to the Creator God” (Pazmiño 1997, 70). The doctrine of creation provides a critical foundation for epistemology; that is, the order, structure, and validity of knowledge (Nash 1999, 388) and the way in which many subjects are taught, specifically in the area of science and the arts (Holmes 1987, 21).

A significant aspect of the cultural mandate in a fallen world is the redemption of culture for the glory of God. Ultimately, the doctrine of creation presents humankind with the impetus to carry forth the mission and calls upon Christians to connect all aspects of life to the infinite wisdom of the Creator.

The principle of stewardship is embedded in the cultural mandate. Eddie Baumann states, “Any unit of instruction that seeks to give students an understanding of how to use the content knowledge and their talents in light of God’s value fulfills the biblical mandate to educate students to be stewards – and prepares students to fulfill their biblical obligation to use their talents and resources to develop and care for others and the creation” (Baumann 2010, 34). Christian schools are called to extend the cultural mandate to apply biblical stewardship in all academic disciplines and co-curricular activities.

Importance for Connecting with the Cultural Issues Places for Agreement

• One of the major points of emphasis in our current culture is the importance of human dignity. This is a significant point of agreement between Christians and the broader culture -- human life is full of dignity and value. This is especially true at the intersections of race, gender, ability, and sexuality. None of those make someone more or less valuable or more or less human.

• We also agree with the broader culture on the importance of stewardship and cultivation of limited resources. We agree that the world is “very good” (Genesis 1:31) and that, through common grace, doctors, artists, farmers, etc. are able to produce good things and do good things whether they are Christian or not.

Challenges

• Yet modern culture, by denying any transcendence, has effectively removed any solid ground for understanding human dignity. It is typically assumed and rooted in the human ability to think about the future and create their own self-understanding (existentialism). This has led, in the rise of Critical Theory and its various off-shoots, to an overemphasis on group identity as being the source of meaning and dignity rather than the unique individuality each person shares as imago Dei

• This is one of the core differences between modern culture and Christian belief. The idea of a Creator brings with it many very uncomfortable ideas for the contemporary mind (transcendence, order, authority, and purpose being the most significant) and as such is fought at every turn. Scientists in the mid-20th century actively opposed the evidence for the Big Bang Theory for years because of its uncomfortable implication of a beginning requiring a Beginner. Furthermore, postmodernism’s major claim is the rejection of all metanarratives or overarching stories of life. Thus the Christian metanarrative is rejected at its source.

• The biblical doctrine of Creation radically challenges the new understanding of what it means to be human. Rather than denying the importance of psychological health and human dignity, the Christian worldview roots these in the transcendent reality of God’s active work in the creation of man in His image. We have value, dignity, and purpose precisely because of His stamp within us.

• Furthermore, the biblical doctrine of Creation rejects the radical anti-historical individualism of our age by rooting humanity in relationships spreading in two significant directions: vertically up with God; and horizontally with each other, especially in the family (which carries within it the hope of the future). It is in the family that we first learn about the world and God. As such, revolutionary thinkers like Rousseau, Shelley, Marx, Reich, de Beauvoir, and Firestone all seek to destroy the biological family (Trueman 2020, 262-263). Attacks against the family are also attacks against God Himself, since the family “is a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1993, section 2205).

• Our Christian beliefs about Creation inform and shape our views on homosexuality, gender identity, transgenderism, abortion, euthanasia, environmental stewardship, the death penalty, etc.

Christian

The Fall

When the Fall occurred, sin entered the world corrupting the imago Dei, but not destroying it. The biblical teaching on humanity and the human nature is summed up well by John Hammett’s categories: humans are created beings, humans are created in the image of God, humans are created as male and female, humans are created to work, humans are created for community, and humans are not as we were once created – humans are fallen (Akin 2007, 341-42). The Fall of man perverted the image of God in man in such a way that it “perverted the image of man” causing “man to now use the earth and its resources for selfish gain” (Hoekema 1986, 85). In relation to the cultural achievement of humans, the goal in a post-Fallen world is to magnify self instead of seeking to magnify God. It is pertinent to explore the effects the Fall has had upon education.

The Effects of the Fall on Education

In Christian education it is imperative to recognize the believer as a learner having a dual nature in that he is made in the image of God, but is a fallen creature. Human beings do have a nature to sin, and this nature to sin was not God’s original plan before the Fall of man. In part this means that the Fall subverts a person’s ability to understand the world fully apart from God’s regenerating grace (Pearcey 2004, 45). In other words, the Fall did affect and corrupt a person’s ability to think and reason, but does not make this human ability obsolete. The Fall has had, and continues to have, a significant impact on all of the processes involved in cognition and epistemology.

How does sin impact the teaching process? In regards to our minds, sin corrupts the entire educational process: the ability to teach, learn and garner knowledge. “Between the idea and the reality / Falls the Shadow” (Eliot). The image of God was not annihilated but perverted so that human beings now function wrongly towards God, towards others, and towards nature, but all human beings are image-bearers of God even in their unbelieving state, meaning that unbelievers are capable of making contributions to fields of knowledge. The implications for Christian education are that human beings are able to think and act imperfectly in a fallen world. The image of God practically shows up in the following areas of life: moral aspects, spiritual aspects, mental aspects, relational aspects, physical aspects, and dignity aspects (Grudem 1994, 445-49). Every Christian educator should remember these five points in relation to the student:

1. The Bible treats individuals as holistic units (Gen 2:7; John 5:28-29; 1 Thess 4:16- 17; 1 Cor 15:51-54).

2. If persons are to be fully human, they must be controlled by their minds rather than by their animal appetites and propensities.

3. The Christian educator should recognize and respect the individuality, uniqueness, and personal worth of each person.

4. There are biblical implications for the methodology and knowledge claims of our disciplines.

5. Since the Fall, the problems of the human race have not changed between the forces of good and evil. (Knight 1998, 195-97)

Importance for Connecting with the Cultural Issues Places for Agreement

• Everyone agrees that things are not the way they should be or that things could be better in terms of how humans interact with each other, with the natural world, and even understand themselves. The world is brimming with people with talent and ideas about how to improve the lot of man in the current cosmos.

• Death is a universal tragedy that reminds us of the finiteness of existence.

• We recognize in natural tragedies that Creation is groaning and running down -- tsunamis, hurricanes, viruses, etc. all remind us that there is brokenness in the world that runs very deep.

Challenges

• The greatest distinction between the Christian view and contemporary culture in relation to the Fall centers around where the problem is. Everyone is aware that people are broken. We are all Humpty Dumpty. But why? Culturally, going back to at least Rousseau, the assumption among those who have created the intellectual world in which we live is that society is to blame. “It is society and the relations and conditions that society embodies that decisively shape and . . . decisively corrupt individuals” (Trueman 2020, 115). Or, as T.S. Eliot poetically puts it in his Choruses from ‘The Rock’: “They constantly try to escape / From the darkness outside and within / By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good” (1934). If the brokenness I recognize inside me is a result of society’s structure, then creating/ restructuring/revolutionizing the proper social system is absolutely necessary and explains much of the political trends of the last 100 years. The Christian view, while recognizing that society’s can be structured better or worse, sees the primary problem as one of sin inside us. We have to be changed before we can change society. Jesus gives us this example clearly in how he rejects the contemporary Jewish view that the major problem the Jews had was the Romans, rather He taught, lived, and died, recognizing that it was the Devil and Sin, which leads to death, that are our greatest problems (see Mark 2:1-11 and 8:31-33 among others).

• Because of the shift towards ‘psychological man’ in a therapeutic world, modern man generally seeks to resolve internal discord through therapy and counseling. Modern culture tends to encourage people to turn to the couch before the confessional. And counseling can be used by God to help bring order to the interior discord people feel as fragmented beings in a fragmenting world. Yet when it is misused, it can sometimes lead individuals to “look inside yourself and find out all the answers to your problems.” The Fall certainly leads to brokenness in our psychology, but the pieces can only get put back together and function properly when they are pointing in the right direction (Christ) and fueled by the right source (Holy Spirit) (Lewis 1952, 163).

• Our Christian view of the Fall informs and shapes our understanding of homosexuality, transgenderism, ethics, abortion, euthanasia, environmental stewardship, politics, the death penalty, etc. We believe good things have been broken.

Redemption

The plan of redemption unfolds throughout the Scriptures and centralizes in the person and work of Christ. Redemption is achieved through God’s plan of salvation through the person and work of Jesus Christ. The term redemption literally means to “buy back” or “to buy free.” There are universal applications to God’s redemptive activity in Christ, and one of the spheres of redemption affects knowledge, which is directly related to education. Graeme Goldsworthy notes how important this redemptive activity is to epistemology when he states, “The process of redemption involves the restoration of the right way of thinking because the human mind is as much the object of regeneration as is the body or the soul” (Goldsworthy 2002, 173).

Redemption is connected to creation and the Fall because there is a sense in which “all educational pursuits should be characterized by, and lead to, a sense and experience of wholeness” (Graham 2003, 25) which is the restoration of the original vision for humanity before the Fall. Nancy Pearcey sums the concept of redemption in relation to the cultural mandate in a fallen world well when she states, “The term redemption does not just refer to a one-time conversion event, it means entering a lifelong quest to devote our skills and talents to building things that are beautiful and useful, while fighting the forces of evil and sin that oppress and distort the creation” (Pearcey 2004, 49). Furthermore, “Each child should understand that God has given him or her special gifts to make a contribution to humanity’s task of reversing the effects of the Fall and extending the Lordship of Christ in the world” (Pearcey 2004, 129). All school curricula, indeed all learning activities, should be a pursuit towards wholeness and unity. In a fully Christian school, Donovan Graham states, “Fractured, piecemeal knowledge and experience would be anti-normative” (Graham 2003, 25). In relation to redemption, the doctrines of soteriology (study of salvation) and sanctification are necessary to explore in relation to learning.

Doctrine of Salvation: Justification and Sanctification

Salvation is the deliverance from death, sin, and Satan through the shed blood of Jesus Christ by belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of one’s life (John 3:16). It involves the defeat of the king of this world, Satan, and the restoration of the true King, Jesus Christ. He earns this title through His taking the sin of His people onto Him, taking it to death, and then raising Himself to new life. The centrality of the Christian story of redemption must be the linchpin of truly Christian education. We should see other stories that involve similar deaths and resurrections as in some way mimicking or preparing the way for the Christ story where myth becomes fact. Not only must every teacher claim a relationship with Christ in His Kingdom, but the ultimate goal of our school is to make disciples who are effective servants of Christ and His Kingdom while living “intelligently in the service of God and man” (Regents Mission Statement).

Sanctification, like salvation more broadly, is primarily and initially a work of God Himself. Once we have been stirred, we can then participate in the work of growing in holiness, which is the work of the Christian life. This is the work of repairing the damage sin has wrought in our lives and bringing every area of our lives under the lordship of King Christ. In regards to education, sanctification is described well by the Apostle Paul: “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5). Our students will be faced with all kinds of arguments and evidence brought against them to destroy and deny their faith, to corrupt their morals, and dishonor their Lord. Christian education must give students the knowledge both of information, but also the skills to know how to respond to sophisticated arguments with their own.

The doctrine of sanctification also reminds us that none of us here are completed projects. Sin exists in all of us. Grace also exists in all of us, including the pagans and non-Christians that we read and study. While in God’s common grace non-Christians are capable of both good teaching and learning, since they are capable of applying God’s principles to their lives without knowing it, a Christian school seeks to hire professing Christians who connect their own learning and teaching to the process of sanctification God is working out in their lives and encourage their students to bring every thought captive to the redeeming power of Christ.

Importance for Connecting with the Cultural Issues Places for Agreement

• This is not the best of all possible worlds in the sense of being perfect. We do not currently live in heaven or pre-Fall Eden. We live in a world governed by entropy, where things wear down, where people get sick and die, where institutions that should protect the vulnerable do not, and where chaos is always lurking to destroy what we have laboriously built. Ourselves, our families, our schools, our local communities, our governments, our nation can and probably should be better than we are.

• This creates a longing to be “saved,” whether by someone else or by our own efforts. We all desire to be seen by others as “good people” who “do the right thing,” and this comes from our unique sense of history moving towards a destination and intuitively recognizing our role in helping this process along.

Challenges

• As with the Fall, the divide on the issue of Redemption comes down to where do we look for the needed change. And the answers are the exact opposite of each other, and the last category. Whereas the culture sees the cause for brokenness as almost exclusively residing in external things: systems of oppression; societal structures; and outdated, irrelevant, and life-denying moral rules, they tend to see the hope for redemption as being almost exclusively internal to the individual. They have all the resources they need inside them to “be the change” the world needs. “Man is born free but is everywhere in chains” (Rousseau 1762) is a pithy way of explaining how our natural good state gets corrupted/enslaved by society, so if we can just get back to the “original” place, we’ll be healthier and able to do the necessary things that society is preventing us from doing.

• On the other hand, Christianity says that salvation can only come from outside of ourselves. God alone can save us. Our own best efforts lead to nothing but destruction and futile failure. God Himself must enter history, take the punishment of sin, and then put death itself to death by triumphing over the decay and entropy of the grave.

• This creates problems for the secular culture because, if true, it places demands on us as individuals. We must do something as a result of this rescue. God might want something from us in response to His salvation -- He might feel as though this rescue gives Him the right to ‘order us around’ and ‘tell us what to do’ (Exodus 20). Of course, this is exactly what Christ, the new lawgiver, does. We are to take up our cross and follow Him (Luke 9:23); His followers are told to “go and sin no more” (John 8:11), among others.

• Our Christian beliefs inform and shape our views on marriage, grace, justice, ethics, sexual/gender orientation and behavior, psychology, politics, etc.

Consummation

The final category in the biblical metanarrative is consummation, which refers to “the return of Jesus Christ, the arrival of the new heaven and the new earth, the dawning of resurrection, the glory of perfection, and the beauty of holiness” (Carson 2008, 64). In the world of education, it is easy for teachers and students to be overly preoccupied with the present, whether in terms of content, grades, or college admissions. However, Christian education is ultimately kingdom education, and the Christian message reminds believers of a glorified future.

In essence, for the Christian, the doctrine of eschatology (study of end times) is about the already-but-not-yet (Ladd 1993; Schreiner 2008), a reality in the individual life of the believer and the corporate life of the believer being identified in Christ. It is about living a realized presence of being wholly justified before God in Christ and looking forward to a future glorification that awaits believers in Christ (Rom 8:30 and 1 Pet 1:13). In understanding education achieved with the kingdom of God in mind, it is important to understand the fact that “the kingdom is already here, inaugurated by Christ, but is not yet fully come” (Mohler, 2011, albertmohler.com). This means we both expect our children to live as Christians in the world and that they will fall short of the standard, as will all the teachers, administrators, and parents connected with the school.

Christian education should always point to the future hope of eternal life for, in all subjects, “[f]or now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). Consummation motivates a Christian educator and student to continue to seek to acknowledge the truths God has placed in the world in order to redeem the culture for Christ. This desire for culture-making is a byproduct of the already-but-not-yet aspects of the Christian faith.

The application of the biblical narrative culminating in consummation is significant because it reminds parents, teachers, and students that seeking ultimate fulfillment in this life is futile. Only through obedience to Christ can we bring glory to God in this fallen world.

Importance for Connecting with the Cultural Issues Places of Agreement

• History is moving in a direction. We have been told for a while that there are “right” and “wrong” sides to it. This implies a guiding hand or principle that is moving history towards some culminating point. Even a materialist like Marx had his heaven, he just called it the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and placed it at the end of the historical dialectic of economic development.

• Everyone knows the importance of hope. Hope is a belief that the future can and will be better than the present. This is common to Christians and non-Christains.

Challenges

• In a sense, the great intellectual and narratival challenges of our day can be simply understood as a struggle between our species’ beginning and end. Is what ultimately shapes us The Origin of the Species or “The Destiny of the Species”? Is it more important what is pushing us forward, our animal-nature and brokenness, or is it what is pulling us inexorably forward, the work of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit that is remaking us into perfected images of God? Is it our origin or our destiny that is most important in shaping our perspective on how we think about the value we place on earthly pursuits? The postmodern turn has called into question all metanarratives but its own, and as such even the Christian narrative of Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation is under attack. This is hugely important for our understanding of what it means to be human.

• Our Christian beliefs regarding consummation inform and shape our views on history, grace, justice, ethics, student behavior, psychology, the role of politics in the life of the believer, etc.

Formation of Virtue — The Good Conservation of Truth — The True Method — The Beautiful

Being a Christian school means that every teacher and staff member is committed to Christian discipleship, both for themselves as well as in mentoring their students, regardless of subject area. There are no ‘neutral’ subjects that are somehow outside the lordship of Christ. The Christian worldview is a holistic view of the world -- everything is different because of the revelation of Christ.

But in addition to finding our primary identity in our commitment to Christ, Regents is also a classical school. Being a classical school involves much more than simply a teaching method, however. It means that there is a body of truth that has been handed down to us that we believe is vital to pass down to the next generation. We have a particular view of the past. Rather than viewing the past as a hindrance to personal growth and self expression in our new age, we understand the past to be formative for the future. The past is a source of wisdom that has the power to shape us into faithful people. In other words, the Great Works, thoughts, and writings of the past provide us with a structure in which we must find our place. We see further because we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Does that mean the past is without error? Of course not. The men and women before us were limited in their perspective, mortal, frail, and often profoundly wrong on important matters. All the consequences of the Fall discussed above applied to them as well. When we discover such errors in our study of the past they ought to be appropriately acknowledged and corrected, but only after careful consideration. We must beware the attitude that simply being a modern person somehow makes us more intelligent than people in past ages. Before we can move forward in adapting within our tradition, we must first understand it.

Distinctively, Regents is classical in three key ways:

1. Intentional instruction towards virtue and skill throughout our program;

2. Receiving and passing on the intellectual and cultural traditions of Western Culture, Art, History, and Philosophy; and

3. In the method of teaching from and through the Trivium of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric.

These are all, in the present day, fundamentally conservative ideas. While much of contemporary education is dominated by the belief that “the world [is] so much raw material out of which meaning and purpose can be created by the individual,” as a Classical school and community we “regard the world as having a given order and a given meaning and thus see human beings as required to discover that meaning and conform themselves to it,” (Trueman 2020, 39). The necessity of and desire to be conformed by and in harmony with the True, Good, and Beautiful is a hallmark of the uniquely classical vision of our school.

Importance for Connecting with the Cultural Trends

• All four of the core negative cultural trends noted previously are at work in the world of education. You might even be able to say that they have come to prominence in the world in large part because of their success in academia.

• Modern education has fully bought into and supported the erosion of morality and truth. With the individual child’s felt sense of happiness now at the center of the educational universe, the idea that education exists to mold or shape one into a useful member of society has gone out the window. Instead, schools become places we attend to perform at (rather than be formed by) and which are used as stepping stones to further personal aspirations. While this obviously inverts the significance of the institution itself (it’s gone from molding to launching pad), it’s rooted in the loss of transcendent morality and truth.

• As increasingly militant secular spaces, it is obvious that they have worked hard to both undermine and overthrow the biblical understanding of the culture, both in terms of destroying its foundations through radical skepticism while also sowing discord through challenging long-accepted understandings of scriptural teaching on just about any topic you can think of. K-12 education has become more about activism than conforming children to social rules and norms of the adult world.

• The changing understanding of the nature of humanity is also a big part of contemporary education. Youth is seen as pure and innocent, with a wisdom of purity with which they can instruct their elders. As a result, many contemporary schools have become places of affirmation rather than education. Each student is expected to express their authentic individuality through how they dress, speak, and act such that each lives authentically their ‘own’ life (Taylor 2007, 475).

Formation of Virtue — The Good

Vir is Latin for “man” and as such virtue defines the qualities that makeup a true human. In connection with our understanding that there is a nature of things (including humans) and order and meaning present in the world, it follows that there are standards of behavior that are proper to human nature -- these are called virtues. Behaviors that are contrary to human nature are called vices. Any education that fails to instruct in and give opportunities for students to practice virtue and avoid vice tends to create “men without chests” where they have head knowledge but haven’t been formed in the virtues. “We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful,” (Lewis 1943, 26).

Virtue did not cease to be important with the coming of Christ. In fact, for many Christians the pagan core, or cardinal, virtues (justice, prudence, courage, temperance) were the foundation on which the uniquely Christian virtues (faith, hope, and love) are built. We have to first become as good as the best pagans before we can then become Christian seems to be the idea. We are all being shaped into something slightly different from what we were in the past. We are all either moving closer to Truth, Goodness, and Beauty or away from those things. As a school, we aim to do everything in our power to conform our students to the image of Christ which is true virtue.

The successful application of a learned skill, whether verb agreement, basic addition, or rhetorical devices, is often the first step towards virtue. The modern classical movement is rooted in Dorothy Sayers’ 1947 essay The Lost Tools of Learning. For tools, we could easily understand “skills” because she is referring to intellectual tools that help any student learn something new. Since virtue is a habit of life, learning basic intellectual skills and habits provide the opportunity for learning how to be virtuous more broadly. The confident knowledge of capability based upon honed skills allows a learner to step into any new situation without fear.

Importance for Connecting with the Cultural Trends

• Nietzsche preached the “trans-valuation of values” by which he meant the complete inversion of moral norms whereby what people in the past thought was good is actually bad and vice versa (Trueman 2020, 54-55). Our society, through its wholesale embrace of the goal of psychological happiness, has largely agreed with Nietzsche. Traditional norms and moral expectations, rooted in what are perceived as outdated or irrelevant views of transcendence (whether in God or some other external moral order), are no longer guides to proper behavior but are rather oppressive restrictions on personal behavior and thus excessively encumbering to personal psychological happiness.

• The changing nature of what it means to be a human “self” has also significantly altered what it means to be a “good” human. The shift from duties flowing from community relationships (both familial and more broadly) to an internal “felt” sense of psychological well-being has radically altered each individual’s understanding of their role in the world and thus what is expected of them. People expect to be happy, and anything that interferes with that is seen as both wrong and unnatural. Thus what one thinks of as “being the right thing to do” has far more to do with my own feelings about it (how will I feel doing this or after I do this thing?) than with any objective sense of this is what properly formed good people do in this situation.

• The obvious moral failures of prominent Christian leaders (Ravi Zaccharias being the most prominent recent one) has led many to question whether the Christian faith or Biblical revelation is actually capable of making someone good.

• Declining biblical literacy and sense of authority is very important in this respect -- to some degree we all find ourselves like Eve in the Garden being questioned by the Serpent: “did God really say?” and when we don’t know our Bible well, we may not even know what God has said to do (or not to do) and thus live our moral lives in a vacuum, that is filled with competing loud and attractive ideas for how we should live.

Conservation of Truth — The True

Classical education is by nature conservative -- it seeks to conserve, develop within its deep tradition, and pass on the inheritance of the ages. We have 13 years to pass on the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of 3,000 years of the Western Cultural tradition. This is reflected even in the name of the school -- Regents. A Regent is one who rules in place of the king. They are not the king and cannot make new rules but are there to enforce and hold fast the order set forth by the king. Every classical educator must be committed to knowing their subject and passing it on to their students.

Another reason classical education is inherently traditional is because of its belief in and commitment to Truth. Eternal and unchangeable, Truth is something we discover and then live in light of it. While certain things are true in the sense of being accurate (2+2=4, the Battle of Waterloo occurred in 1815, etc.), and these things are taught, these basic factual truths point towards greater Truth in terms of Justice, Courage, Love, etc. The Truths, by virtue of their eternality, are also infinitely deep -- we are always, like in Narnia, pushing “further up and further in” to them. Then from the depths of our knowledge, which we have achieved through our own efforts and guides who have led us there, we turn and guide our students deeper into their own understanding of the Truth under consideration.

Importance for Connecting with the Cultural Issues

• Like with the lost transcendent sense of morality, the idea of Truth has been significantly watered down in the last decades. For many people, truth-claims are seen as manifestations of cultural power being wielded to keep the oppressed down. While originally a criticism levied against religious institutions, with the rise of postmodernism, all claims about objective truth are seen as representations of cultural or racial supremacy. This means that the very idea of there being objective knowledge that transcends culture is oppressive. This fits perfectly with the rejection of any view of transcendent truth that is the overarching cultural air we breathe.

• With the above, the rise of the “psychological self” as the center of knowledge makes Truth inherently relative — we each have our own ‘truth’, and it is not connected with any external sense of meaning or reality. This places a massive burden on the shoulders of every individual to not only determine their own sense of self (who am I?) but also their own understanding of reality — they can get no help from anything outside of themselves because there is nothing that can be fully trusted to not give way when relied upon (the failure of institutions is really important here as well).

• Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) and that the greatest of all commandments is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). The mind is designed for finding Truth, and when we find Truth we find Jesus, who is the Word of Truth because He is the eternal Word of the Father who is Truth Itself (John 1:1). In an age of confusion and lies, telling the truth is not only revolutionary, it brings light into dark places and exposes falsehood for what it is. It is vital that our students know what is True, can articulate it well, and have the courage to speak it and live in light of it in a rapidly darkening world. Matthew 5:13 (“You are the salt of the earth”) is also important here, because it speaks to the role Christians must play as preservers of that which is True and Good in a particular culture.

Method — The Beautiful

What we believe about art and beauty shapes the way we build the world around us, which then shapes our souls and what we imagine the world to be like. Beauty should be the merging of the true and the good in physical and/or verbal expression (ideas take on flesh), but when the transcendent vision of the former is lost, beauty becomes personal and influenced by preference rather than universal forms. When we say we teach by and through the Trivium, we mean that every subject has a Grammar (basic knowledge), Logic (proper interconnections between discrete pieces of knowledge), and Rhetoric (properly applied knowledge) AND that we teach the specific subjects of Grammar (basics of language structure), Logic (connection of ideas based upon properly used Grammar), and Rhetoric (the art of persuasion or the means of making the ideas most beautiful and attractive to a particular audience). Lessons and units in each division frequently progress from Grammar to Rhetoric as students take ownership of their learning and improve their ability to articulate in their own words the ideas and connections they are making.

Furthermore, classical education is not just of the head, but also of the heart. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” (Augustine, Confessions) and “the human heart is a perpetual idol maker” (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion). Classical education lives in the tension of these two quotes. Our hearts are restless and seeking after that which will truly satisfy it, but in our search for that, we create idols that we think will satisfy but never ultimately do. The classical model guides us towards rightly ordering our desires so that our hearts orient towards True North. It does this by giving students tools to know, love, and practice that which is True, Good, and Beautiful and recognizing that all those things come ultimately from God.

The Trivium guides us to recognize distinctive patterns of human learning which are applicable to all subjects. Classical education is not simply about giving students a set of ideas or confidence from having read hard, old books, but it is about giving students tools to actually learn on their own. Aristotle said that “all men by nature desire to know’’ and it is through the application of the Trivium that all learners guide their natural curiosity towards actual knowledge. Classical education through the Trivium gives students the ‘teeth’ they need to bite into something solid and fill their desire for knowledge, while through its emphasis on prioritizing truth, goodness, and beauty guides students towards those things that can actually fill (real food as opposed to junk food). We believe that the classical model finds its fulfillment in the Christian worldview. To paraphrase Paul, what they sought after but never quite discovered, has now been made known through the revelation of Christ (Acts 17:2331 and 1 Corinthians 13:12). And because God is a God of community, both within Himself as well as in His desire to have a people to share His blessings with, we find that learning occurs best in a community of disciples all seeking to fulfill the two great commands of Christ: love of God and love of neighbor using our whole being: heart, mind, and will.

Importance for Connecting with the Cultural Issues

• Like with morality and truth, the idea that beauty has standards external to “me” is anathema, or in our modern context, denounced. Cultural elites today use their cultural power to destroy the sacred things of those who believe in transcendent order and beauty. A famous example of this is Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, where he displayed a crucifix submerged in his own urine as a work of art. These “deathworks” (Philip Rieff’s term) represent “an attack on established cultural art forms in a manner designed to undo the deeper moral structure of society . . . Deathworks make the old values look ridiculous” (Trueman 2020, 96-97). Pornography is another example of a “deathwork” because it “repudiates any notion that sex has significance beyond the act itself, and therefore it rejects any notion that it is emblematic of a sacred order” (Trueman 2020, 99).

• In education, the method through which students learn is an important aspect of developing beauty, one of its features being order. Classical education should be orderly, clearly guided, and moving towards further understanding of and application of truth, goodness, and beauty — any one of which can serve as the entrance point towards moving a student towards God, who is both the source and the destination of each of these. We might even say that Grammar appeals to Truth, Logic to Goodness, and Rhetoric to Beauty.

Community

The Importance of Communities

The Community of the Family

The Community of the Church

Communities of Shared Interests

One of the problems the Task Force identified above is the prevailing distrust of institutions we find in our world today. As society has become increasingly individualistic, institutions like the family, the church, and even the state have become, in the eyes of our culture, at best, unnecessary, and, at worst, suspect and potentially harmful to the flourishing of the individual. In effect, what we see today is a reaction against the idea that human beings were created to live within communities that shape and form us. Instead, the society at large views people merely as individuals who seek out and participate in communities only to affirm their previously-chosen identities (Trueman, Rise & Triumph of the Modern Self, 48-49, 56-64). Thus, one of the purposes of this document is to help restore our trust in the institutions and communities that we believe are vital for our spiritual, social, and educational flourishing.

But before we delve into the topic of “community” it is important to define what we mean by the word. “Community” has become a bit of a buzzword in many circles, and so it is helpful for us to be clear about what a community is and what it is not. We use the word “community” to mean a group of people formally connected to one another through commonly held beliefs, attitudes, interests, or goals. The depth and permanence of those formal connections will, of course, vary from community to community. For example, in the nuclear family, the formal connections between the members of that small “community” are very deep and designed by God to be lifelong. While other communities, such as the Regents community, the formal connections will naturally be looser and more temporary based on season of life and other factors. They will even vary from member to member depending on one’s role within the community (i.e., staff and faculty members will naturally have a different relationship to the school than parents). Nevertheless, communities are not every group of people who have an affinity for one another, but for the purposes of this paper communities are those groups who have some formal connection to one another and who live out that connection in the context of their everyday lives.

The Importance of Communities

God created us to live in community - that is, bound together with other human beings pursuing common interests and goals. Sin created a number of challenges to this part of our human condition that are important to note. We already noted in the Diagnosis section above that individualism is the reigning assumption of our current culture. To the extent that we allow the stances of individualism to influence us we will either be skeptical of communities altogether or constantly drift from one to the next in order to suit our needs at any particular moment. Communities will be approached with a consumerist mentality: “What does this community have to offer me?” rather than an attitude of service: “How can I serve the greater good through this community?”

Two additional challenges to genuine community should also be noted. The first is our tendency to retreat to our various cultural “echo chambers” - networks of news channels, social media accounts, podcasts, etc. that only reinforce our previously held beliefs rather than challenging us with new information and viewpoints. Such echo chambers make genuine dialogue and understanding - key hallmarks of healthy communities - difficult because we all enter into conversations convinced of the correctness of our own position rather than seeking to listen and understand one another. This mentality has led to the rise of “anti-communities” - groups defined not so much by what they are for, but by what they are against. Second, we should also note our tendency to place unrealistic or inappropriate expectations on our various communities. When we expect an institution or group to provide us with things for which God has not designed it, then we will inevitably be disappointed. Such disillusionment can lead to cynicism, weariness, or an overall distrust in institutions generally. When the nation of Israel trusted in kings and military power to achieve what only God could, it inevitably led to disaster. We should heed those same warnings as we think through the expectations of our communities.

In light of these challenges, we want to reiterate our belief in the importance of the right kind of community for our spiritual well-being. But why is community so important? As discussed earlier, humanity is created in the image of God. God himself is triune - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - which means we bear the image of a God that exists eternally in community. It should come as no surprise then to hear God say in the creation of man: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Therefore, being part of a community is not simply something we choose to do. It is part of who we are as God’s image bearers. In some sense, we will never be who we were made to be unless we are meaningfully connected to other human beings.

Communities also provide us with avenues for service. When asked to summarize God’s commandments, Jesus said, in essence, love God and love your neighbor (Matthew 22:34-40). Communities are the contexts in which we will be called to carry out God’s commandments. We will encounter real people with real needs that we will be called by God to meet to the best of our ability. As the broader culture continues to encourage us towards individualism, self-expression, and a self-centered view of reality, real life communities will provide one important antidote that will encourage loving service towards others.

Finally, communities help reinforce the values, practices, expectations, and beliefs that we hope to pass down to the next generation. As our children grow they will naturally want to know how their family’s beliefs and practices fit within the world as a whole. Communities of real people provide the models that will make the Christian faith either more plausible and attractive or less believable. We desire Regents to be a place where what we say we believe is actually lived out in practical ways so that students might see that living the Christian life is not only possible but also desirable. Through their interactions at school our children will see not only their parents living out the beliefs they teach at home, but also teachers, administrators, other parents, and peers putting their faith into practice in tangible ways. Those interactions will play as important a role in shaping our children as the instruction in the classroom. This assumes, of course, that a Regents education is not a “data dump” where information is transferred into our kids’ heads. Rather, the physical proximity and presence of community members is essential to our mission as a school because education is an embodied experience.

To summarize, we were made for community. Communities and the institutions in which they take shape play a vital role in shaping who we are and in providing us with opportunities for loving service. We are all shaped by a wide range of communities, some we choose and others we don’t, so it is important for us to think deeply and intentionally about the various communities we inhabit and how best to carry out our responsibilities within them.

The Community of the Family

The first “community” we should acknowledge is the community of the family. God instituted the family at the beginning of the world when he formed the first human beings and commanded them to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Ever since the beginning of time, the family has served as the basic building block of human society - the primary community in which children are to be nurtured and developed. The families at Regents recognize that while they continue to have the responsibility to teach their children, they are able to fulfill that responsibility more faithfully by banding together with other families who share the same desire. Thus, Regents derives its educational mandate from the families who make up the student body and ultimately carries out its mission under their direction.

The Community of the Church

The family is not the only community that ought to have a role in our life. The new creation inaugurated by the work of Christ is expressed institutionally in the present age through the ministry of the church. It is “the household of God” (1 Timothy 3:14), “the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12), and the instrument through which God is communicating the message of the gospel to the world (Ephesians 3:10). Jesus promises to build his church over all the powers of hell that will be set against it (Matthew 16:18). In fact, the church will be the only institution that will carry on into the new creation! The Bible assumes in a number of places that Christians will be part of local churches, subject to their leaders, and eager to use their spiritual gifts to fulfill the many “one another” commandments that only make sense in the context of a life lived together with others (see Hebrews 13:17; 1 Thessalonians 5:12; Romans 12:4-8). This means that being a part of and involved with the ministry of the local church is not an optional extra for Christians, but something foundational to our spiritual health and well-being.

One of the important and crucial ministries of the church is the ministry of accountability or discipline. In Matthew 18:15-19, Jesus lays out the steps Christians should take in resolving conflicts with one another, beginning with a private conversation between the two opposed parties. When that process fails, however, he commands the conflicted individuals to “tell it to the church,” which assumes that these two Christians are part of a church to whom they could go for additional help in resolving their conflict. Moreover, the Bible explicitly charges church leaders with the responsibility to watch over and shepherd the people who have been entrusted to them by Jesus (1 Peter 5:1-5). In other words, God has designed the church to be the community that is primarily responsible for the loving care, accountability, and spiritual discipline of his people.

Additionally, it is important to remember that Regents is not a church, nor is it connected institutionally with any particular denomination. The decision to remain a school that exists separately from the church has many important implications. Most of all, it means Regents will seek to support the church, not supplant it. In the same way that the school seeks to respect the institution and autonomy of the nuclear family, it will also do so with respect to the ministry of the church. We do not want the activities, studies, and events we offer to become so all-encompassing in the lives of our families that they either do not have time for real involvement in their local churches or see no need for it since they feel as though all their spiritual needs are met through their involvement with the school. Instead, we want to see all our Christian families, students, and faculty meaningfully involved in one of the many excellent churches here in Austin. This also has implications for the content of our school’s doctrinal statement and the classroom instruction that flows from it. The Regents doctrinal statementarticulated in Article II of the school’s Bylaws - seeks to be rooted in the truths confessed by the Christian church for over two millennia, particularly the truths set forth in the ecumenical creeds of the early church (e.g., The Nicene Creed). Thus, when it comes to doctrine, Regents follows behind the church as a supporting organization rather than seeking to be doctrinally novel or entirely independent from the church’s historic confession.

Communities of Shared Interests

A third and final “community” should be mentioned alongside the family and the church. In reality, this “community” is actually a group of many communities that make up the remainder of our life. We call these “communities of shared interest” or “common communities.” These are the many communities that develop as natural extensions of our life as it’s lived out in the world. Examples include:

• Occupational: vocational societies, labor unions, relationships with work colleagues

• Political: political parties, governmental organizations, lobbying groups

• Geographical: neighborhoods, homeowners’ associations, apartment complexes, national citizenship

• Interest or activity-based: country clubs, fitness groups, sports leagues, academic competitions

• Common experience: grief groups, addiction recovery

• Educational: Regents involvement, university alumni associations

These types of communities, of which the Regents community is a part, enrich our lives significantly by providing a number of different outlets for connection, formation, and service. In many ways, involvement in these communities occupies much of our time and energy over the course of any given week. So it is important that we have a healthy perspective on the time we invest in them.

First, it should be clear that these are legitimate and God-glorifying communities. Even though many of them lack any explicit, religious purpose, they do not exist in a separate, sealed-off realm that is somehow removed from God’s involvement or care. Rather, we serve God when we give our time and resources to these communities, and he is glorified when we do. At the same time, however, we should note that even though these communities are legitimate, they are also temporary. They are important, but not of ultimate importance. When Christ returns, his bride, the Church, will inherit the new heavens and the new earth, which will be a place that will not need civil government or political parties (hallelujah!). The temporary, provisional nature of such communities ought to temper our expectations of them, and also encourage Christians to maintain an appropriate level of emotional detachment from the goals of these communities. Our only ultimate hope is in Christ and his enduring kingdom, not in the progress of even the best of our temporary communities.

We should also recognize that these communities are common. Unlike the church, which is a community made up of those who profess faith in Christ, these communities allow for the involvement of all kinds of people regardless of their religious profession or lack thereof. Civil government is perhaps the clearest example of this. All people living within a certain geographical area are subject to the civil government’s jurisdiction, regardless of religious or ethnic identity, and the government is responsible to structure itself so that it can provide its services for that common and varied constituency. This means that when we participate in these communities we do so alongside our non-Christian friends and neighbors. We can do so with thanksgiving for the ability to link arms in a common purpose, but also with an eye to be able to share with them our ultimate hope of Christ and his gospel.

Practical Steps

See — What do the Scriptures say?

Discern — What have other wise Christians said?

Seek — Unity of the Spirit Act —How do I then live?

Because we have many denominations represented within the Regents community, it is only natural that we will have differences of opinion. Given the acrimonious nature of debates in our society, and a growing trend toward “tribalism,” it is important for us to strive to be a community where faithful Christians can disagree with humility and civility. Regents is a public square for our faith, which is a natural part of living in a community that gathers on a regular basis. We have numerous conversations on the plaza, at sporting events, and in carpools. There is a communal nature to our conversations and community. In light of this, Colossians 3, Ephesians 4:1-7, and Galatians 5:22-24 capture the kind of community we want to be: charitable, patient, loving, humble, forgiving, and honest.

In the following section, we offer some practical steps for our community to live by. As stated in the classical section of this document, we have a rich history and tradition to draw from, and we value the wisdom of those who have come before us living out a Gospel-centered worldview.

See: What do the Scriptures say?

As Christians, our first reaction to controversial issues ought to be to return to God’s word. God has given us the Bible for our good. He has revealed Himself, His plan of salvation, and His will for us in the Scriptures. We neglect them at our peril. Because we seek to saturate all we do as a school with the Scriptures, the application of Scripture should feel as natural as breathing.

A robust understanding of the Bible helps believers understand and apply texts faithfully and according to its God-breathed meaning. Studying the Bible should be more than an academic activity of the mind. Yes, our minds are involved, but our intent should be knowing God better - knowing his heart for us and for his creation. “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope” (Romans 15:4, NIV).

When we approach the Scriptures, there should be a three-fold process: reading, interpreting, and applying. When it comes to reading Scripture well, we should take into account the different literary styles, recognizing that Scripture sometimes describes how things really were rather than being prescriptive about how we should live. Relatedly, we must remember that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (1 Timothy 3:15), which means that it does not contradict itself. We must read any Scripture in light of the other Scriptures as a holistic tapestry about God’s plan for the redemption of His world through Christ.

Interpreting Scripture means making sure that we properly handle the text in light of the whole counsel of God. Much of Scripture is very clear, and we should not be blinded by our “feelings” when we know what the will of God is. We should also keep the overall narrative structure in mind - not “cherry pick” a verse from one part of Scripture and assume it applies immediately and directly to us. For instance, Job’s friends give him some very wrong advice. It would be incorrect to pull verses from Job’s friends’ speeches that are not true concerning who God is.

Discern: What have other wise Christians said?

Ironically, the interpretation of Scripture can lead to conflict among Christians. What do we do then? Thankfully, we are not the first Christians to experience this problem! Christians for two millennia have wrestled with the truths of Scripture as they faced the cultural and theological challenges of their own day. While some of what we face is new, a brief survey of church history will reveal that our issues are not entirely new. We have much to learn from the past, and we ought to lean on them.

But where do we go? One of the first places ought to be the confessions or statements of faith of Bible-believing churches. Why? Regents is a non-denominational school, and it has retained that interdenominational identity deliberately in order to be a place that is open to Christians from many different church traditions. We would be wise to lean upon the collective wisdom of godly men and women who have interpreted the Scriptures within the context of communities of faith. These are not the idiosyncratic views of one influential individual. Rather, these confessions represent the collective wisdom of many godly and learned Christians and provide rich, deep reflection on a number of enduring biblical truths.

We realize that there are many issues we may face today that are not dealt with in the Bible, at least not directly. In those cases, we will need to seek the Lord for wisdom in applying the principles found in Scripture to our current age and lean upon the reflection of wise others in order to make good decisions. We also encourage you to seek the wisdom of our community - talk to your Pastor or to parents who have older children. We live in an age that allows for the rapid transmission of ideas, yet we sometimes neglect the wise and thoughtful conversation of discerning believers.

A practical first step to understanding Regents, should be to consult our Statement of Faith, which is found in Article II of our Bylaws. Next, read the specific documents that have guided Regents in its theological statements, such as the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy and the Nashville Statement on Sexuality.

Seek: Unity of the Spirit

As we converse with those around us, we must remember to seek unity of the Spirit. In Paul’s letter to Timothy, we are told to continue to “preach the word” and to be “ready in all seasons to reprove, rebuke, exhort with patience and teaching” (2 Timothy 4:2). He goes on to say we need to avoid “foolish controversies” which “breed quarrels. The Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to all, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, and correcting opponents with gentleness” (2 Timothy 2:23-25). Being “able to teach” connects back to the personal and interpersonal spiritual disciplines listed in the sections above.

In addition here are some practical steps to further unity between families in our community:

1. Just as you were reconciled to God, be reconciled to your Christian brother or sister. We must do all we can to avoid “foolish controversies” as we seek unity of the Spirit (Ephesians 4:1-6).

2. Pray and examine your own heart. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal your own sin, responsibility, misunderstanding related to any dispute. Ask the Holy Spirit to guide your understanding of not just the situation, but also to correctly teach you how the Scriptures speak truth on the subject.

3. If there is disagreement leading to a broken relationship, meet with the other individual in person whenever possible. Approach the conversation prayerfully and with a desire for reconciliation. Humbly pursue forgiveness where needed. If the issue is unresolvable, agree to work toward restoring the relationship, even where an agreement cannot be met. Agreement is not always the goal. Restoring relationships is the goal.

4. Avoid gossip at all costs. Ephesians 4:29 says “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” If ideological differences are the spark, then gossip is the wind that spreads the wildfire of disunity.

Act: How do I then live?

Individual: grow in spiritual disciplines

Each Christian is charged to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13). Scripture and Christian practice through the centuries tell us there are spiritual disciplines, or practices, that are central to growing in Christ-likeness. These disciplines are not merely attitudes or feelings. They are in fact things Christians do. The Holy Spirit does the work in us, and spiritual disciplines can make us more sensitive to the Spirit’s work. Being more like Jesus and being with God are the goals of the Christian life. Transformation of our hearts and minds happens through this beautiful work of the Holy Spirit in us.

Living in community with Christ followers through the local church is also an essential spiritual discipline. The tethering of believers to one another acknowledges that our relationship with Jesus is personal, but not private. As mentioned in the previous section, living in a community with other believers is healthy for growth, accountability, and mutual encouragement.

Family: strengthen understanding of Scripture and truth; teach children to think and act Biblically in everyday situations

Parenting is about discipleship. Study the Bible regularly as a family and attend church together faithfully. Seek to understand the Word not merely for acquiring knowledge and practical application but with a heart set on knowing God. Thinking Biblically is modeled to our children from an early age. This is an example of how our faith is personal but shared through the relationships we have with others, most importantly with our children. In our families, we must communicate how we measure choices and decisions against God’s Word. Based on this foundation, make intentional time and space for speaking with your child. Ask questions and encourage their questions. This should begin early to set the stage for later discussions when cultural issues get harder. Do not be afraid to talk about hard things in age appropriate ways. The world considers no topic off limits in terms of your kids, so we should not either. You should be the primary voice speaking with them, not the broader culture. We should actively teach our children what living with a Christian worldview looks like. This includes preparing them for living counter culturally in a world hostile to the Kingdom of God. We are the ones who must equip them with the tools and reasoning that will allow them to face hard questions and remain Christ followers. This can be practiced in the home by actively and intentionally discussing movies, shows, songs, media, and news. Knowing what your family is “consuming” is essential to knowing what to ask.

Community member: charitable communication on campus and beyond Charitable communication within a community assumes the best in the other person and also works to understand the heart of the other person. It is charitable to confront sin and address incorrect theology out of love when it is presented. “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17). If we are not holding each other to the truth of God’s Word, we are not sharpening each other.

Living peaceably (Romans 12:9-10,18) and confronting sin (Luke 17:3) can seem at odds with each other. We know that agreement within the family of God is not always possible. As disagreements arise about what the Word of God says or does not say, as sin clouds emotions and feelings are hurt, it is imperative that we address the grievances and division quickly, filled with the Spirit with the goal of reconciliation and restoration of relationship.

As a practical step, we encourage all families to closely study the school’s Comprehensive Grievance Policy in the Standard 20-21 section 3.5. When resolving disputes within the Regents community, we will use this policy to hold each other accountable to Biblical reconciliation.

Spiritual Disciplines operate in our lives through three main arenas (from Celebration of the Disciplines by Richard Foster):

While economic growth and technological innovation are making our material lives easier, culturally the times are growing dark. Cultural tides seem to be against us. “All the old buoys which have marked the channel of our lives seem to have been swept away,” as Lord Esher put it nearly 110 years ago on the eve of World War I. But we know that we are not alone. The same God who made a way for His people across the Red Sea, who protected Elijah and David in the wilderness, who entered into the fiery furnace, and who Himself went down to Death only to rise as conqueror of it, goes with us, before us, and around us. As Christians, we must be people whose lives are characterized by hope. 1 Peter 3:15 is not just about apologetics -- it is about the posture of life we are to take; and as the world becomes darker and people search for meaning in strange places, being a people marked by hope will raise questions just as much as it will raise conflicts with those who despair.

Faithfulness is not simply about holding fast to a set of beliefs — faithfulness requires doing that which is demanded of us which includes not just complaining about the world, the culture, and the Devil as souls perish in droves around us. As Gandalf tells Frodo, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” We might render this as “we all have to decide what to do with the time that is given to us.” We, both as individual Christians as well as a community of faithful disciples of all ages, must be bold witnesses to hope in our cultivation of culture. It is our responsibility as Christians to be the spark of light and hope in the darkening world.

We cannot defeat something with nothing. We must offer an attractive and plausible holistic vision of the human good that our students, our children, will want to embrace. Of course, we have a decided advantage in that we are not only offering a unique vision but also a true one. Reality as we know it shouts the glory and power of God while all the stories in human history either point towards or reflect the story of Christ. Every day, every new venture into the world of the unknown, brings us “further up and further in” to the True Story, the True Fairy Tale, the True Romance of which everything else is but a pale copy. Christ our King invites us to participate with Him in the defeat of evil, the healing of the sick, and the salvation of souls, both our own as well as of many others.

The mission and vision of Regents School of Austin has always been to be a place where Christians are formed more deeply in the Christian worldview. While, as an educational institution, we focus on doing that with children, we also strive to be a place where families, of our students and our faculty members, are shaped by, in, and through a consistently applied Christian worldview to all subjects. We humbly offer this document as a tool to help our community towards accomplishing those ends and pray that the fruits of our efforts will bless generations of Christians through the work of this school. We hope that all who come into contact with this school grow in their desire to serve others, and their Lord, more faithfully, intelligently, and purposefully.

Soli Deo Gloria!

The Christ and Culture Task Force

Will Davis

Mark Franz

Scott Moneyhon

Carly Ochsendorf

Dan Peterson

Joshua Simmons

Sabrina Stuckey

Rose Usry

Bryce Waller

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References

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Scripture References

Old Testament

Genesis 1

Genesis 2

Exodus 20:11, 32:9, 33:3-5, 34:9

Exodus 20:2

Job 26:13, 38-42

Nehemiah 9:6

Psalm 19:1, 33:6, 90:2, 102:25, 104:24-30, 146:5-6

Proverbs 3:19, 8:1, 8:22-36

Proverbs 27:17

Isaiah 40:21, 41:4, 46:10

Jeremiah 10:12, 51:15

New Testament

Matthew 5:13

Matthew 18:15-19

Matthew 22:34-40

Mark 2:1-11, 8:31-33

Luke 9:23

Luke 17:3

John 1

John 5:28-29

John 3:16

John 8:11

John 14:6

Acts 17:23-31

Romans 8:30

Romans 11:36

Romans 12:4-8

Romans 12:9-10, 18

Romans 15:4

1 Corinthians 13:12

1 Corinthians 15:51-54

2 Corinthians 3:14, 4:4, 11:3

2 Corinthians 10:4-5

Galatians 5:22-24

Ephesians 3:10, 4:12

Ephesians 4:1-6, 29

Philippians 2:12-13

Colossians 1:16

1 Timothy 3:14

1 Timothy 3:15

2 Timothy 2:23-25, 4:2

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17

1 Thessalonians 5:12

Hebrews 1:10

Hebrews 13:17

1 Peter 1:13

1 Peter 5:15

1 John 1:1

Revelation 1:8, 3:14, 21:6, 22:13