The Collapse of American Education (Pt 4) – The Founders on Christianity & Classical Education

July 26, 2024

The Collapse of American Education (Pt 4) – The Founders on Christianity & Classical Education

Sam Kastensmidt

July 26, 2024
11 Minute Read

See Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this series.

Americans have been conditioned to believe several lies about education. In this series, we have shown that (1) our modern system of education is failing miserably in all respects; (2) a religious education is academically superior to a secular education; (3) graduates of religious schools tend to enjoy a myriad of mental and emotional health benefits; (4) the Church is not an impediment to the advancement of education, but rather its driving force throughout history; and (5) American schools and universities were never intended to be godless institutions. In our last article, we discovered that our nation’s oldest universities were almost entirely founded as Christian institutions. In today’s article, we will examine how our Founders explicitly desired a classical, Christian education for future generations.

Many Americans have been conditioned to believe that our Founders wanted to prohibit the government from promoting or encouraging Christianity in the classroom. Secularists contend that the Founders were determined to establish a nation of religious neutrality, which is a philosophic impossibility. But like so many of their revisions of American history, this is a demonstrable lie. The Founders not only allowed religious influence in American education, they encouraged it, they funded it, and they even codified it.

The Founders not only allowed religious influence in American education, the encouraged it, they funded it, and they even codified it.

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Encouraging Christianity in Education

One year after the Constitution was ratified, Samuel Adams, the Father of the American Revolution, wrote his cousin, Vice President John Adams, to celebrate the potential of America’s future.

Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls—inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity…. leading them in the study, and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system.

Benjamin Franklin argued that Pennsylvania’s students should learn the “excellency of the Christian Religion above all others—ancient or modern.” He suggested that law students should learn that the basis of all law was “delivered first and with best warrant by Moses.”

Gouverneur Morris, a signer of the Constitution who spoke more than any other figure at the convention, argued that “education should teach the precepts of religion and the duties of man towards God.” ^[1] Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration, called for “the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.” James McHenry, another signer of the Constitution, believed that a desire to improve the nation “pleads most forcibly for the general distribution of the Holy Scriptures.” Noah Webster, the Schoolmaster to America, published the first American dictionary in 1828. In the foreword, he declared that “the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed.”

Funding Christianity in Education

If the Founders wanted to prohibit government-funded endorsements of Christianity, why did they go to such great lengths to undermine their own objectives? George Washington allocated financial resources to the Delaware Indians, so they could learn about Jesus. “You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ,” he wrote. “Congress will do everything they can to assist you in this wise intention.”

In his 1797 Inaugural Address, President John Adams urged Congress to support “every rational effort to encourage schools, colleges, universities, academies, and every institution for propagating knowledge, virtue, and religion among all classes of the people.” Adams was also the primary author of the Massachusetts state constitution. In Chapter 5, Article I, Adams recorded the state’s motivation for advancing education in Massachusetts. He wrote, “The encouragement of arts and sciences, and all good literature, tends to the honor of God, the advantage of the Christian religion.”

President Thomas Jefferson used taxpayer funds to build churches and to pay the salaries of missionaries sent west to the Indian tribes. He approved the allocation of taxpayer funds to maintain “a perpetual mission among the Indian tribes” for the purpose of “instructing them in the principles of Christianity.”

Codifying Christianity in Education

The public encouragement of religion was also codified in the legal code. In 1787, only two years before the Constitution was ratified, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance.

Sec. 14, Art. 3 – Religion, morality, and knowledge—being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education—shall forever be encouraged.

James Madison, the primary architect of the U.S. Constitution, presided over the District of Columbia School Board. In 1813, he received the first progress report of the area schools. It boasted, “Fifty-five [students] have learned to read in the Old and New Testaments… 26 are now learning to read Dr Watts’ Hymns.” If the Founders intended to strictly forbid the government’s encouragement of Christianity, it would be unthinkable to incorporate the Bible and a hymnal as primary elements of the curricula.

Our Founders grew up using textbooks filled with Christian teachings. The New England Primer, first published in 1690, was one of America’s best-selling books for more than a century. It sold five million copies during the 18th century, when America’s population never exceeded four million. That would be the equivalent of selling 425 million books today. In addition to plentiful references to scripture, The Primer sought to forge Christian character in its students. Consider its daily pledge (a medley of biblical commands) to be recited by students.

I will fear God, and honor the King; I will honor my father and mother; I will obey my superiors; I will submit to my elders; I will love my friends; I will hate no man; I will forgive my enemies and pray to God for them; I will as much as in me lies keep all God’s Holy Commandments; I will learn my catechism; I will keep the Lord’s Day Holy; I will reverence God’s Sanctuary for our God is a consuming fire.

Christianity was not stripped from education following the Constitutional Convention. The Primer remained the most popular and best-selling educational resource until Alexander and William McGuffey published The McGuffey Reader in 1836. In an essay promoting the importance of Christian education for the nation, William McGuffey wrote:

The Christian religion is the religion of our country. From it are derived our prevalent notions of the character of God, the great moral governor of the universe… Its maxims, its precepts, its sentiments, and even its very spirit, have become so incorporated with the mind and soul of civilization and all refinement, that it cannot be eradicated, or even opposed, without imminent hazard of all that is beautiful, lovely, and valuable, in the arts, in science, and in society.

This book sold more than 120 million copies prior to 1920. It was officially adopted as a public school textbook by thirty-five states—even though it instructed students to place their trust in God.

At the close of the day, before you go to sleep, you should not fail to pray to God to keep you from sin and from harm…. Put your trust in Him; and the kind care of God will be with you, both in your youth and in your old age. ^[2]

Congressional Report on the Founders’ Intentions

Any claim that our Founders wanted to prohibit the endorsement or promotion of religion ignores their own words and actions. In 1854, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee issued a report affirming the vital importance of promoting Christianity in the public sphere. They concluded: “At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged… It must be considered as the foundation on which the whole structure rests.”

“At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged… It must be considered as the foundation on which the whole structure rests.”

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Christianity was not merely ornamental; it was considered the bedrock of our nation. So the committee warned against secularism, boldly declaring: “Had the people, during the Revolution, had a suspicion of any attempt to war against Christianity, that Revolution would have been strangled in its cradle.”

Most Founders believed that Christianity was the only foundation to secure the liberties of our Republic. They were obsessive on this point in their writings and speeches. They had been trained to recognize the essential role of religion in safeguarding liberty and promoting public virtue.

The Importance of Classical Education

Although Christianity was considered the most important element of education, the earliest colleges and universities were not merely seminaries or Bible colleges. They also sought to plunder and promote the wisdom of antiquity’s greatest minds. This classical approach to education produced exceptionally brilliant men, men shaped by both Jerusalem and Athens, by the sacred and the secular.

The Greek historian Thucydides believed that history could be defined as philosophy teaching by example. Using this brilliant premise, to find the best philosophies, you should identify the greatest societies of history and characterize the underlying principles that set them apart. Our Founders combed through the writings of history’s greatest civilizations to find the most brilliant political philosophers and statesmen who wrote about liberty and governance. Before the Constitutional Convention, James Madison asked Thomas Jefferson to “send from Paris crates of books on world government, the law of nations, history, and political theory.” ^[3] Though the Bible was, far and away, the most cited resource of the Founders in their political discussions, they also looked to the brightest minds of antiquity (i.e. Greece and Rome) and the Enlightenment era.

In his book, Climbing Parnassus, Tracy Lee Simmons argues that the Constitution’s framers were “the wisest, best-read public servants to preside over any government since ancient times.” ^[4] The brilliance of these men stands in stark contrast to embarrassing deficits of today’s political leaders. Modern elites, intoxicated by the woke spell and only capable of seeing past evils, now treat wisdom from the past as innately inferior or immoral. They see the Bible and the Constitution as outdated relics of a primitive era. Under this logic, our ancestors have nothing to teach us—except what not to do.

But our Founders humbly revered the wisdom of the ancients. They wanted to learn from those who had come before them. As a child, James Madison, the chief architect of the U.S. Constitution, consumed Virgil, Horace, Justinian, Caesar, Tacitus, Lucretius, Phaedrus, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plato even before enrolling at Princeton where he studied theology under Reverend John Witherspoon. George Washington was inspired by the conservative Roman senator Cato the Younger. He even invited comparisons between himself and the Roman general Cincinnatus. John Adams regularly cited the works of Cicero and Polybius. Alexander Hamilton took the pseudonym “Tully,” which was a nickname given to the Roman philosopher, Cicero (i.e. Marcus Tullius Cicero).

When Noah Webster described the books consuming the minds of America’s youth during the era, he wrote, “The collections which are now used consist of essays that respect foreign and ancient nations. The minds of youth are perpetually led to the history of Greece and Rome or to Great Britain; boys are constantly repeating the declamations of Demosthenes and Cicero.” In his research, Simmons discovered that the Founders often cited these figures during the Constitutional Convention. “These men had read and digested Polybius, Aristotle, and Cicero,” he explained, “and they used the ancient luminaries to frame and illustrate their ideas before the assembly” ^[5]

An Appeal to the Church

We have squandered the beautiful inheritance handed down from our forefathers. These exceptionally brilliant men framed the American form of government, the most prosperous and longest enduring constitutional republic in world history, by finding a brilliant synthesis of forged wisdom from the Bible and the greatest minds of antiquity. If we want future generations to flourish, we need to help our children understand the immeasurable value of their inheritance as Americans. And there are encouraging signs that we are moving in that direction. As public schools continue to hemorrhage students, there has been an enrollment surge in homeschooling and private religious schools. Perhaps most encouraging is the impressive momentum behind enrollment in classical Christian schools that embrace the same model utilized by our Founders. Currently, 677,500 students are enrolled in classical schools, a number expected to more than double to 1.4 million by 2035.

As our nation collapses under the weight of its own folly and arrogance, the Church must reclaim its historic position as the leader in advancing an education that affirms the authority of the Bible and reveres the wisdom of those who’ve come before us. Future generations are worthy of that fight!

FOOTNOTES

[1] Sparks, Jared, ed. Miscellaneous Correspondence during the Residence of Mr. Morris in Europe. Boston: Gray & Bowen, 1832.

[2] Westerhoff, John H. McGuffey and His Readers: Piety, Morality, and Education in Nineteenth-Century America. Fenton, MI: Mott Media, 1982.

[3] The Federalist Papers, edited by Isaac Kramnick, Penguin Books, London, England, 1987, p. 29.

[4] Tracy Lee Simmons, Climbing Parnassus: A New Apologia for Greek and Latin. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2002.

[5] Ibid.

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Sam Kastensmidt

Sam Kastensmidt serves as the Pastor of Education at Rio Vista Church in Fort Lauderdale, FL. He graduated from the University of Florida in 1999 with a B.S. degree in Finance, and he went on to graduate from Knox Theological Seminary (M.Div) before being ordained in the Presbyterian Church in America. He has published several books including two biblical textbooks: Christ from Creation and Christ in Creation. Prior to becoming a pastor, Sam worked as a writer for Coral Ridge Ministries, a teacher at Westminster Academy, and the Headmaster of Bethany Christian School. In addition to being a pastor, Sam is the host of The Bible Show Podcast and the Under the Hood video series on YouTube. He is married to Laura with four children.

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