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.