Davison's Doodle

Education and Reformation

I’ve thought for a long time that education and access to higher education is a unique characteristic of my denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).  Our founders and the two generations that followed them opened colleges and universities to make education accessible and possible.  I’ve often said that an educated laity is the ongoing reformation movement within Christianity.  An educated laity keeps the clergy, however he or she was educated and whoever ordained her or him, contextually relevant and honest about what is biblical, what is American history, what is right because it is right, and what is not.  It is what Catholic priests and nuns seeking to serve the common good have done for a long, long time.  They made sure people could read, write, and reason.

But, education can be hijacked by those that want to do revisionists history for their own political and religious purposes.  Evidence of this is the Texas State Board Board of Education whose membership is systematically removing known science and history for an evangelical Christianized version as equal to the scientific method.  No wonder other nations are leading the world in educational standards.  Is education strictly without bias?  Well, no and yes.  Some disciplines at least name their bias as part of the educational process.  Is it no surprise that the so-called “evangelical” institutions like Oral Roberts University or Liberty University or Regent University and countless other smaller spinoffs have taken to promoting education, based on their particular Christian theological perspective of God’s salvation plan for humanity, as a way to enlist membership and grow their own as Liberty ‘s website claims, “Training Champions for Christ.”  Their’s is a design to put their warriors for Christ into places of leadership that effect us all.  This is not education that betters the common good.  It is education that brings about legislation seen in Virginia and other states whose leaders are doing their best to circumvent settled federal law about contraception and abortion.  They are doing little to address poverty and these men cannot fathom that effective birth control, affordable health care, and quality non-sectarian education is the best way to lower unwanted pregnancy.  It’s about opportunity.  Here is a good article from the New York Times about education and equal opportunity.

Equal Opportunity, Our National Myth
By Joseph Stigltz | The New York Times | Feb 16, 2013

President Obama’s second Inaugural Address used soaring language to reaffirm America’s commitment to the dream of equality of opportunity: “We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else, because she is an American; she is free, and she is equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own.”  The gap between aspiration and reality could hardly be wider. Today, the United States has less equality of opportunity than almost any other advanced industrial country. Study after study has exposed the myth that America is a land of opportunity. This is especially tragic: While Americans may differ on the desirability of equality of outcomes, there is near-universal consensus that inequality of opportunity is indefensible. The Pew Research Center has found that some 90 percent of Americans believe that the government should do everything it can to ensure equality of opportunity.  Click here to read more.