The Christian education thread is fascinating and I think has
everything to do with the transformations in the CRC through Synods
2022 to 2025.
1. The CRC has followed the broader trend (see Ryan Burge on Catholic
clergy who would and wouldn’t officiate at a SSM) of youth WITHIN the
church going traditionalist on certain key markers. Boundary markers
are always indicators, often selective but yet important.
2. There is no question that the conservative turn of the CRC saved it
from the sort of numerical institutional collapse the RCA is suffering
from. This seems beyond argument.
3. The marked difference between the thriving of CRC Christian day
schools compared to the relative and opposite performance of CRC
churches should be a focus on analysis for us. While the CRC never
gained critical mass in Sacramento to begin a Christian School
movement looking around at other places as noted in the CS thread
seems safe to say. After anecdotal conversations in Chicagoland and
Whitinsville MA (a large and a small CRC colony cluster) CS growth in
many cases has FAR outpaced church growth. CS growth is what is
fueling church growth in the Sunlight example that recently hosted a
significant conference. Why?
4. The growth of CRC-CS is complex but on the whole, as Bill H pointed
out part of a larger conservative revitilization and reaction to what
has been happening in public education in America and probably Canada
too. As Nate pointed out our schools aren’t filling up people aligned
with CRC confessional particulars but rather many who would be more
easily associated with movement conservatism and anxiety over social
changes culturally. One interesting note on the CS thread is Dawn’s
promotion of it given her outspoke criticism of the conservative pull
within the CRC. The CRC Christian schools is an direct result of
people fleeing the re-education of American (and Canadian?) children
along the lines of the new sexual orthodoxies practices and policies.
If there is an area of public life where the promotion of the new
thinking regarding human sexual diversity has flourished it is in
public education and this has motivated a lot of wall building and
spending with respect to enclosures of preservation especially in
education of younger children. That’s part of the reason Christian
colleges that are numerically thriving are small and very conservative
rather than moderate or progressive.
5. There is no question the movement around Trump is more conservative
on sexual issues than Trump himself. Trump is usually tagged as a
homophobe but Trump has never really been a culture warrior on issues
of sexual purity or traditionalism. He even removed the anti-abortion
plank from the Republican platform in 2024. In this way the TDS of the
left has obscured a more nuanced and accurate reading of how Trump
himself is being used by people often more conservative than he is and
this is true in the CRC and beyond. In my most recent conversation
with the identical twins separated by Trump I got the answer I
expected from the conservative brother who would have liked to vote
for Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio than Trump. JD Vance is another great
example. Many of these guys in terms of human sexuality are far more
like religious conservatives than Trump and have used Trump as the tip
of the spear to pursue other issues Trump himself might not be
passionate about. Trump’s a venal guy and he’s never really been a
traditionalist on human sexuality beyond being traditionally
promiscuous.
This frustrates Trump’s political rivals because he has been used by
conservatives to put together a coalition that has effectively blunted
the progressive post-war consensus like nothing else we’ve seen
before.
At the same time most public school education is controlled at
different levels than the federal government, which has been a policy
of Trumps (destruction of the Dept. of Education) putting public
education much more on the state and local level politically.
The CRC diaspora maps differently from the US right/left mapping so
we’ll see CRC red pockets in deep blue areas like Chicago and
Massachusetts. This too will tend to fuel CRC CS growth.
6. Nate’s comments about CRC CS growth and confessionalism is
important. In many places RC schools have done well too. The movement
conservative public can be pretty flexible on the confessional
questions. Fights over RC schools have been way more fierce than over
ours partly because it was not uncommon to find RC schools in places
like the SF bay community that weren’t really teaching ANY RC social
doctrine. Attempts by some conservative clergy to reign this in have
gotten a lot of press in the last few decades. “How DARE the priests
say X and Y about sexual minorities in their schools” or in Sacramento
kicking out the Only-Fans mom paying for her kids RC school tuition by
making sexy videos for paying clients.
The Protestant CS area has long been Evangelical (looser on
confessional lines like infant baptism) and the preservationist pull
on our schools, plus the structure (parent-board-owned and operated)
has allowed that flexibility, unlike in the church. The dynamic being
clearly seen in RC schools (the Orthos haven’t grown to this level yet
allowing them to just ride the Homeschool movement which is a piece of
this too) makes this a decidedly Metagelical phenomenon.
The Christian Smith Notre Dame First Things piece is an interesting
artifact in this whole question. Why won’t Notre Dame be more
confessionally RC? As I noted before AGE is an important aspect of
this and the dynamics at the college and especially graduate levels
will be very different from elementary and high school levels on terms
of parental control and motivation.
While CRC churches are struggling CRC schools were ideally located in
many respects to ride this wave, and many of them are.
Last point.
We are probably, slowly, seeing the evolution of the new metagelical
elites in America.
As noted in a previous posting for the liturgical-sacramentalist
traditions strict confessional flexibility is an asset not a
liability, to a point.
We’ve already seen that as a politician you can do anything you want
in your public life and your priest or bishop won’t cut you off from
your sacrament. Joe Biden and JD Vance get served regardless of their
politics or policies. Pete Hegseth could get in trouble with his “Doug
Wilson church” in a host of ways Biden and Vance never would, or even
Putin for that matter.
It’s interesting how different paradoxical nuances intersect to create
particulars out in the real world. CRC particulars have created a
“sweet spot” for numerical growth of our schools but not our churches.
The CRC’s confessional rigor and polity helped it avoid the RCA
debaucle, but the RCA flexibility helped it for while take advantage
of other Evangelical dynamics when it was growing swiftly among
conservative evangelicals (church growth RCAs didn’t require Infant
Baptism, see the ARC) until all of that growth fled when the
Evangelicals couldn’t overcome the RCA constitutional polity.
There’s a lot going on here. pvk
Leadingchurch.com 