2021-09-06T11:53:54-04:00

In more news about Christians being prosecuted in Finland for disapproving of homosexuality, the Rev. Dr. Juhana Pohjola, who will be tried for his part in the publication of a tract on Biblical sexuality, has been made a bishop.

On August 1, he became the bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland (ELMDF), a church body that in 2019 entered into full altar and pulpit fellowship with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

The latest Lutheran Witness has an excellent article on the subject by Kevin Ambrust, who goes into detail about the consecration, the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese, and the controversy surrounding Bishop Pohjola.

The list of participants in the service shows that Bible-believing Lutherans can still be found throughout ostensibly secularist Scandinavia.  Conservative bishops from Sweden, Norway, and Latvia were there in support of Bishop Pohjola, as were representatives from the LCMS, including president Matthew Harrison.

From Kevin Ambrust, ‘To live is Christ’: Pohjola consecrated as bishop of Finnish Lutheran Church in The Lutheran Witness:

Participating in the consecration were the Rev. Risto Soramies, bishop of the ELMDF since its inception as an independent organization in 2013; the Rev. Dr. Matti Väisänen, bishop from 2010 to 2013, when the ELMDF was a mission diocese; the Rev. Hanss Jensons, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia; the Rev. Bengt Ådahl, bishop of the Mission Province in Sweden; the Rev. Thor Henrik With, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese in Norway; and the Rev. Dr. Matthew C. Harrison, president of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). Clergy from the International Lutheran Council (ILC), the ELMDF and the LCMS — including the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Shaw, director of LCMS Church Relations; the Rev. James Krikava, associate executive director of the LCMS Office of International Mission and director of the LCMS Eurasia region; and the Rev. Dr. Timothy Quill, general secretary of the ILC — also processed in support of the new bishop.

“We Christians confess Jesus and His redemptive words and deeds as our life and salvation. Corrupt culture calls us to reject this ‘little Word’ in favor of flashy signs and woke wisdom. The consecration of Rev. Pohjola as bishop of the ELMDF, the LCMS’ newest sister church, was a witness to that triumphant ‘little Word,’” said Shaw. “How heartening to join with the faithful who boldly confess Christ and His doctrine, despite the liberal Finnish state church having defrocked ELMDF clergy, seized church buildings and brought criminal charges against Bishop Pohjola for publishing a pamphlet on divinely ordered human sexuality. Other confessional Lutheran churches — small by the world’s standards — sent their bishops to participate. Bishop Ådahl put it succinctly: ‘We are not a small church among big churches. We are the church.’ As the Body of Christ, we together receive from the fullness of His grace.”

[Keep reading. . .]

Lutheran Bishops?

You may be wondering, what’s this about Lutheran bishops?  I’m Lutheran and I don’t have a bishop.

Well, some denominations define themselves not by their teaching, as such, but by their church government.  For Congregationalists, the individual congregation makes all the decisions.  Presbyterians are governed by elders (Greek:  presbyters), which means pastors and lay leaders.  Episcopalians are ruled by bishops.  Roman Catholics are ruled by the Pope.

What makes a Lutheran is not any particular kind of church government but adherence to the doctrines set forth in the Scriptures as taught in the confessions of the Early Church and the Reformation collected in the Book of Concord.  Thus, Lutherans can be found with a number of different ecclesiastical polities.  We Missouri Synod Lutherans are mostly congregational.

Though the Reformation brought conflict with different jurisdictions, that didn’t happen in Scandinavia, where the existing churches as a whole embraced the Reformation whole.  Thus, they kept their bishops.  This meant too that they retained Apostolic Succession, with their bishops being able to trace their lineage all the way back to the first Apostles.

Lutherans as a whole don’t consider that to be important.  To be “apostolic,” as the Creed describes the church, is to follow the teachings of the apostles that they wrote down in the inspired words of Scripture.  And it isn’t so much bishops who are in a chain of laying on of hands as pastors, the pastoral office having been established by Christ and bishops simply being pastors who have been elected to a position of particular responsibility.

But Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, and the Anglicans do put major emphasis on the Apostolic Succession, to the point of insisting that “valid orders”–that is, legitimate pastors–are only those who have been ordained by bishops in the apostolic train.

Conversely, Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, and liberal state church Scandinavian Lutherans do have to recognize pastors ordained by bishops in the Apostolic Succession.

So they have to reckon with Bishop Pohjola, even if he is put in prison, and they have to recognize at some level the validity of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, as well as those of Sweden and Norway, because they are Dioceses with valid bishops.  (Some of those conservative churches that broke away from the liberal state churches had their bishops and first pastors ordained by the recognized bishops from Africa or the Ingrian Lutherans of Russia.)

Why “Mission”?

You may also be wondering why these new Scandinavian Lutheran churches have “mission” in their names.  This is something really distinct in these nations, as I explain in my post Scandinavia’s Two Tracks of Christianity.

Briefly, the Pietist movement in the Nordic countries led to a proliferation of highly-evangelical groups known as Mission Societies.  Pietism was often in conflict with Orthodox Lutheranism, especially in Germany, but in the Scandinavian countries, the state church made peace with these mostly lay-led groups, which began, with the church’s blessing, taking on aspects of the church’s ministry.

The Outer Mission groups sent missionaries throughout the world, and their highly-effective work is largely responsible for evangelizing–and planting thriving Lutheran churches–in many regions of Africa and Asia.  The Inner Mission groups focused on ministry within the nations, organizing Bible studies, running Sunday Schools and youth ministries, caring for the poor, and operating a wide range of social ministries.

These Mission societies remain highly active today.  And whereas the state church has gone extremely liberal, the Mission Societies are still theologically conservative and evangelical.  Not only that, the Mission Societies, for all of  their Pietist heritage,  have become more and more Lutheran theologically.

Studies of religion in Scandinavia look at the empty state churches and conclude that Christianity is dead.  But vital Christianity remains in the Mission Societies.   Conservatives don’t attend the state churches anymore than the secularists do.

Things have gotten so bad with the established church that the Mission Society Christians are now getting together for worship.  The parish churches meet on Sunday mornings, so the Mission services meet on Sunday afternoons.  In Finland, they are not allowed to meet in church buildings, so they meet in school auditoriums and other locales.  They conduct the Divine Service, including the Sacrament, presided over by ordained pastors who are sympathetic to the cause.

Some Mission folks have taken the next step:  breaking away completely from the state church and forming their own church.  To do this, they need their own bishops, who can ordain their own pastors.  Thus we have the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland,  the Mission Province in Sweden, and the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese in Norway.

The situation in Denmark is different and better.  According to Danish law, citizens have the right to form their own religious congregations.  So Mission Christians are doing so, thus enabling a polity more like the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. These Mission congregations can call their own pastors, who are being trained at the universities, where they have set up parallel theological institutes that conservative pastoral students attend.

As for Latvia, the Lutheran church in that Baltic Republic is the remnant of the state church that survived the persecution and co-option of the Soviet Union.  Since then, the entire Latvian church has experienced a confessional revival–to the point of reversing its former practice of women’s ordination–and is now in altar and pulpit fellowship–that is to say, full doctrinal agreement– with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  Now the Latvian church is joining the International Lutheran Council, a global association of confessional Lutherans.

For more on all this, see my accounts of my visits to Finland and to Denmark and Norway.

 

Photo:  Bishop Pohjola, with attending bishops and clergy [LCMS president Matthew Harrison on right], via International Lutheran Council.

2021-09-09T08:52:07-04:00

I have blogged about the case in Finland of Lutheran pastor Juhana Pohjola, who, along with physician and member of parliament Päivi Räsänen, will be tried for hate speech for publishing a pamphlet teaching what the Bible says about homosexuality.

Worldwide confessional Lutheranism has spoken out on the matter with a powerful statement entitled A Protest and Call for Free Religious Speech in Finland:  An International Lutheran Condemnation of the Unjust Criminal Prosecution of the Rev. Dr. Pohjola and Dr. Räsänen, and a Call for All People of Goodwill to Support the Freedom of Religious Expression in Finland.

I urge you to read it, along with the list of signatories from around the world.

We’ve already discussed the case, but I want to draw your attention to the way the statement distinguishes between the  authority of the state and the authority of the church.

It gives a distinctively Lutheran approach to the issue, drawing on the Augsburg Confession, but it shows that the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms, far from encouraging an uncritical submission to temporal governments, offers a framework for positive religious and, indeed, intellectual liberty.  It also repudiates both totalitarianism on the part of the state and theocratic rule on the part of the church.  And it offers guidelines for some of church and state issues that we face today.

Here are the relevant paragraphs (my bolds and interposition):

The Augsburg Confession (AC) states that the Gospel

does not overthrow civil authority, the state, and marriage, but requires that all these be kept as true orders of God, and that everyone, each according to his own calling, manifest Christian love and genuine good works in his station of life.  [Note the doctrine of vocation.]  Accordingly, Christians are obliged to be subject to civil authority and obey its commands and laws in all that can be done without sin.  (AC XVI, Romans 13:1-7)

But authority holds only in its own jurisdiction.  The government holds sway over externals, the Word of god over internals.  “The civil magistrate protects not minds but bodies and goods from manifest harm.  The Gospel protects minds from ungodly ideas, the devil, and eternal death.  Consequently, the powers of church and civil government must not be mixed” (AC XXVIII).  Since faith must remain free, AC XVI concludes that when the commands of government cannot be obeyed without sin, “we must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:39).”

These principles would apply to other issues.   For example, today many Christians, including many Lutherans, are rejecting the state’s authority to require masks and other anti-COVID measures.  Well, protecting bodies from manifest harm would seem to fall under the authority of the state.  That would hold true even if we think the reasons for those requirements are ill-founded.  The government, however, should not punish our inner thoughts about such measures.  Even if we disagree with mask-wearing requirements, we should probably submit to our government authorities in this, since wearing a mask and social distancing are not sins, as such.

Vaccination mandates are different.  Some Christians, in good conscience, refuse to get vaccinated because they believe the use of abortion-derived stem cells associated with certain vaccines, however remote the connection might be, makes the vaccines sinful.  That inner conviction could be a matter of religious liberty.  Some people refuse to get vaccinated on prudential grounds, because they don’t think the vaccines are safe.  That wouldn’t involve religious liberty, as such, but they could make the case that they have a right to act upon their internal ideas, over which the government holds no sway.  Christians could disagree with each other on issues like that, and they would always need to determine what is best not only for themselves but how they can best “manifest Christian love” to their neighbors.

And state mandates to shut the doors of churches are certainly different, even when the state is trying to protect “not minds but bodies and goods from manifest harm.”  For one sphere to cancel the other would violate the principle that “the powers of church and civil government must not be mixed.”

To be sure, this distinction is not always easy to apply, and it doesn’t account for all of the issues.  Our minds control what our bodies do, so our mental liberty must manifest itself in our external actions.  Still, the Augsburg Confession gives us a remarkably early assertion of intellectual freedom and the boundaries of the state.  It would, for example, rule out prosecution for “hate crimes.”  The state can and should punish external actions that harm the “bodies and goods” of someone else.  It should not, however, prosecute “hate crimes,” since it has no control or jurisdiction over citizens’ inner emotion of who they hate.  Only the gospel can get at that, not by threats of the law even then, but by working the inner transformation of faith that enables us to love our neighbors.

Am I applying the principles of the Augsburg Confession correctly here?  (Note that the test of believing a doctrine is accepting it even when it goes against one’s own inclinations.)  How else might these principles be applied, as churches and individual Christians try to sort out their relationship to the state?

 

Photo:  “Church and State” by Lee Coursey, via Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0

 

 

 

2021-06-01T09:39:12-04:00

Last year I blogged about how a Finnish pastor and a laywoman who is a member of the Finnish parliament were being investigated by authorities for teaching what the Bible says about homosexuality.  Now prosecutors have taken the step of issuing criminal charges against them and taking them to trial.  

And lest we think that such persecution of believing Christians, while regrettable, at least is a problem on foreign shores far away from us, the individuals facing prison for their beliefs have direct ties to the Lutheran Church Missouri-Synod here in the United States.

I blogged about these two cases last year in my post Criminalizing Christian Teachings about Sex.  Please read that.

Dr. Päivi Räsänen, a medical doctor and a member of parliament–who once was Minister of the Interior, no less–wrote a booklet in 2004 entitled Male and Female He Created Them (for an English translation, click the link), arguing that “Homosexual relationships challenge the Christian concept of humanity.”

Her book was published by the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland (ELMDF), a church body in full altar and pulpit fellowship with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.  Its bishop-elect is Rev. Dr. Juhana Pohjola, who earned his STM from Concordia Theological Seminary in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, an LCMS institution, where he also served as a Visiting Scholar.

Finnish prosecutors began investigating Dr. Räsänen in 2019, believing that her book–printed with the support of the Lutheran Heritage Foundation, a Recognized Service Organization of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod–could constitute a violation of the law against “incitement against a group of people.”  They also began an investigation of Rev. Pohjola, since he approved the book’s publication.

Prosecutors also found other incidents that could be considered criminal:  she posted a tweet critical of the state church for being a sponsor of the Gay Pride parade, quoting Romans 1:24-27; and she gave the wrong answer when she was invited to speak on Finnish public radio on the topic of “what would Jesus think of the homosexual?”

Now both Dr. Räsänen and Rev. Pohjjola have been formally charged.  They face up to two years in prison.

The Prosecutor General said that the book and statements from the pair are derogatory to homosexuals and therefore “overstep the boundaries of freedom of speech and religion.”

Finland, as a liberal democracy, ostensibly holds to the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion, but, according to this determination, those are trumped by the LGBT cause.  Nevermind that the book came out 13 years before Finland legalized same-sex marriage, when the issue was still a matter of debate.

Rev. Pohjola said this after he was charged:

“As a Christian, I do not want to and cannot discriminate against or despise anyone created by God. Every human being, created by God and redeemed by Christ, is equally precious. . . .This does not remove the fact that, according to the Bible and the Christian conception of man, homosexual relations are against the will of God, and marriage is intended only between a man and a woman. This is what the Christian church has always taught and will always teach.”

A European evangelical site quotes Dr. Räsänen:

Räsänen has repeatedly said “the teachings concerning marriage and sexuality in the Bible arise from love, not hate”, because “the core message of faith, i.e. grace and atonement, is founded on the Christian view of humanity seen in creation, on the one hand, and the great fall, on the other”.

She also has made clear that she supports the dignity and human rights of all homosexuals, because “the Christian view of human beings is based on the inherent and equal dignity of all persons”. . . .

The Christian politician underlined the importance that citizens in democratic countries use the fundamental right to express their opinions: “The more Christians keep silent on controversial themes, the narrower the space for freedom of speech gets”.

I met both Päivi Räsänen and Juhana Pohjola when I was in Finland for a series of speaking engagements and had lunches with each of them.  This was before their legal troubles broke out.  I was greatly impressed with both of them.  Here is a Christian living out her faith in her vocation as a public official and doing so effectively–rising in her party to be named Minister of the Interior– in a highly secularist country.  Here is a pastor who is faithfully proclaiming the Word of God and presiding over congregations whose members adhere to that Word, despite the secularism even of the state church.  I was inspired by the many devoted Christians I met there.  (See my post on the state of confessional Lutheranism in Finland.)

I believe that the opposition they face makes them stronger in the faith.  We Americans have it so much easier.  And yet, we too may someday face similar persecution.  It is already touching us Missouri Synod Lutherans because of our fellowship with the Finnish church body that is under attack.

A FINAL THOUGHT:  Is this what conservative Christians will all face if the Equality Act, which allows LGBT claims to trump religious liberty claims, becomes the law of the land?

Photos:

Rev. Dr. Juhana Pohjola, dean and bishop-elect via The Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland

Päivi Räsänen by Eurooppalainen Suomi ry, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

 

2021-05-11T20:41:33-04:00

For the fourth year in a row, Finland is ranked as the happiest country in the world.  So why do Finns and other Scandinavians rate so happy when they are also notoriously gloomy?

According to the World Happiness Report, an ambitious yearly study, in the plague year of 2020, here are the world’s 20 happiest countries:

  1. Finland
  2. Iceland
  3. Denmark
  4. Switzerland
  5. Netherlands
  6. Sweden
  7. Germany
  8. Norway
  9. New Zealand
  10. Austria
  11. Israel
  12. Australia
  13. Ireland
  14. United States
  15. Canada
  16. Czech Republic
  17. Belgium
  18. United Kingdom
  19. Taiwan
  20. France
  21. The list is interesting for lots of reasons.  (Such as why is Israel happier than the United States, despite having to live with the constant threat of terrorism, rocket attacks, and the opprobrium of much of the world?)

    But the biggest puzzle is why five of the top eight spots are occupied by Scandinavian countries?  That violates all stereotypes.  What about the “melancholy Dane”?  What about all of those jokes about the morose Norwegians of Minnesota?  As for Finland, I heard a joke about its famously introverted and reserved people and COVID, something about their reaction to the two-meter social distancing rule.  After COVID goes away, the Finns will be glad they won’t have to stand so close.

    A Finnish immigrant to the United States, Jukka Savolainen–who says that he moved to America in part because he likes to see people smile–has written an article that explains it all entitled The Grim Secret of Nordic Happiness.

    Nobody is more skeptical than the Finns about the notion that we are the world’s happiest people. To be fair, this is hardly the only global ranking we’ve topped recently. We are totally fine with our reputation of having the best educational system (not true), lowest levels of corruption (probably), most sustainable economy (meh), and so forth. But happiest country? Give us a break.

    He quotes approvingly a visitor’s description of Helsinki’s glum pedestrians:   “This is not a state of national mourning in Finland, these are Finns in their natural state; brooding and private; grimly in touch with no one but themselves; the shyest people on earth. Depressed and proud of it.”

    So why do they rank as the happiest people in the world?  Savolainen points out that the research behind the World Happiness Report asks respondents to rate their lives on a scale of one to ten, with ten representing “the best possible life for you,” and one representing the worst.  That is to say, the scale measures what people think is possible for themselves.  The Scandinavian countries are indeed prosperous and safe, with a welfare state that takes care of them.  But the key, says Savolainen, is their low expectations.  They don’t expect much, so they are highly satisfied, and, thus, very “happy.”

    Savolainen makes this observation, which makes this all of interest to this blog:  “Consistent with their Lutheran heritage, the Nordic countries are united in their embrace of curbed aspirations for the best possible life.”

    So Lutheranism is what makes Scandinavians both gloomy and satisfied?  I wonder about that.  True, Lutherans know themselves to be sinners.  They will be skeptical about any kind of earthly utopia.  They reject any “theology of glory” in favor of the “theology of the cross.”

    Then again, Lutherans believe they have been saved despite their sins by the grace of God, who justifies them freely by the sacrifice of Christ.  That takes the pressure off.  Lutherans also believe in vocation, that God is present and active in ordinary human work and relationships.  That gives meaning to ordinary life.

    Scandinavians today have a Lutheran “heritage,” but the Lutheran faith has faded considerably, with some notable exceptions.  Perhaps what remains is Lutheranism without faith, the devastations of the Law without the joy of the Gospel, the depressing parts with only a dim–but real–memory of the happy parts.  (But read this about confessional, evangelical Lutheranism in Finland.)

    And yet, there may be wisdom even in this secular version of Lutheranism.  Another word for satisfaction even in the face of low expectations is contentment.  The Word of God–another Lutheran emphasis–has much to say about this:

    I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.  I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.  (Philippians 4:11-12)

    Godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. (1 Timothy 6:6-8)

    The Scandinavians have food and clothing and much more.  Why shouldn’t they be content?

    We Americans, by contrast, tend to want more than we have and be ambitious for ever-greater success, only to be miserable when we do not attain it.  We are restless, changeable, and dissatisfied.  Though we are still optimistic that a better life is just ahead.  This aspect of our national character is part of our strength and dynamism.  But it is also why we come in on the World Happiness Report at #14.

     

    Photo:  Hamlet [the Melancholy Dane] by Nawe97, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.  With the following caption:  Sam Gregory, left, will portray the Ghost of John Barrymore and Alex Esola will portray Andy in the Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s I Hate Hamlet play this summer at the University of Colorado Boulder. (Photo by Casey A. Cass/University of Colorado) .

2020-11-10T15:05:56-05:00

 

There is now research that demonstrates the superiority of Classical Christian Education by almost every standard–academically, socially, spiritually, psychologically–to the alternatives.

The University of Notre Dame sociology department was commissioned by the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS) to do research on their effectiveness.  Notre Dame researchers, incorporating data from the larger Cardus Educational Survey, studied thousands of alumni aged 24-42.

They had been educated in six categories of schools:  public, secular private, Catholic, evangelical Christian, religious homeschool, and ACCS (classical Christian).

The study then compared the graduates in terms of their life-choices, preparation, attitudes, values, opinions, and practices.  The research concentrated on how well these adults were prepared for college and a career; their outlook on life; their Christian practices; their Christian life; their conservatism; their ability to think independently; and their engagement with the larger society.

The findings were stunning.  Those educated with a classical Christian education outperformed their peers in virtually every category, often by an order of magnitude.  See the results at this website.  Read the entire study, entitled Good Soil:  A Comparative Study of ACCS Alumni Life Outcomes.

Just to give you a few examples, when it comes to academics, classically educated students had the highest test scores; nearly 90% felt well-prepared for college; and 55% earned mostly A’s in college.  Among public school graduates, about 50% felt well-prepared and 35% made A’s.   The homeschooled students came in second to the ACCS students in earning A’s, with 45%, and yet only 60% felt well-prepared, suggesting that they lacked confidence.  Evangelical schools trailed even the public schools in A’s, with just over 30%.

This study will also be instructive for homeschoolers and evangelical schools.  All of the Christian alternatives did well when it comes to transmitting the faith, though the classical approach was most effective (90% of ACCS grads go to church at least three times a month; about 70% of the homeschooled and evangelical grads do).  Catholic schools tracked pretty closely with public schools, except they were more effective in most measures.

The classically-educated showed strong results in holding to orthodox Christian theology and moral convictions.  They also score the highest in being willing to take action when they see injustice.

What struck me most, though, is the data for “outlook on life”; that is, for their general happiness and mental health.  The classically-educated adults scored significantly higher than everyone else in measures of gratitude, hopefulness, sense that life is under control, and ability to handle suffering.  They also had more friends, with nearly 90% saying they had more than three close friends, far outstripping the private secular prep schools, with came in second at 50%.

Why would classical education help with that sort of thing?  My former student Andrew Kern, with whom I wrote Classical Education [paid link] was the one who told me about this study in a Zoom discussion we were having with some people in Finland who were wanting to start a classical school.  He said that classical learning teaches “rightly ordered thinking,” so that there is a connection with the “rightly ordered mind” that is essential to mental health.

Here is Andrew’s “elevator speech” explaining what this approach entails:  “Christian classical education is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue by nourishing the soul on truth, goodness, and beauty by means of the seven liberal arts so that the student, in Christ, is better able to know, glorify, and enjoy God.”

Here is the ACCS description of what they do:  “Classical Christian education (CCE) is a time-tested educational system which establishes a biblical worldview (called Paideia), incorporates methods based on natural phases of student development, cultivates the 7 Christian Virtues, trains student reasoning through the Trivium (Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric), and interacts with the historical Great Books.”  (The 7 Christian Virtues refers to the “natural virtues” of the ancient world–justice, self-control, courage, and wisdom–plus the “spiritual virtues” of Christianity:  faith, hope, and love.)

The Association of Classical Christian Schools, the first to bring back classical education in the 1990’s,  has been around long enough to have educated some 50,000 students in over 300 schools, giving them a big sample of adult alumni to study.  But there are other networks of classical schools as well, such as the Society for Classical Learning.   Andrew Kern operates the Circe Institute, which offers resources, teacher training, and other help for schools that want to go classical.

I also want to emphasize the Consortium for Classical Lutheran Education, an association of Lutheran parochial schools and homeschoolers that follow this approach.

I wish the ACCS study could have spun out the category of classical Christian homeschoolers, of which there are many, with a great deal of curriculum and online programs, including the Lutheran Wittenberg Academy.

I don’t know to what extent the ACCS data carries over to these other classical education ventures.  The ACCS has been doing this a long time, while many of the others are newer.  Not all students have had the benefit of the entire K-12 program.

But still, these findings are significant.  Those who want to fix the manifest problems with education in this country–including experts who say “follow the science” and educators who demand “research based programs”–would do well to consider classical education.

 

 

Image by Наталия Когут from Pixabay 

2020-05-05T17:33:27-04:00

 

Religion waxes and wanes in a culture and throughout history.  It can fade away, but it can also suddenly come back again.

That is one of  the takeaways from the American Enterprise study by Lyman Stone that we’ve been discussing this week:  Promise and peril: The history of American religiosity and its recent decline.

In addition to giving us something of a three-dimensional profile of the extent of religion in the United States and Western Europe, the study gives data about why religions decline but also what brings religions back.

As we reported from that study, the lowest level of church membership and church attendance in the history of the United States was in the 1780s, when only a third of Americans belonged to any church body and only a fifth of the population was in church on any given Sunday.  That’s far worse than today’s supposedly “declining” numbers, of 62% membership and 35% attending.

But after that religious low point at the very outset of our nation came the Second Great Awakening, which began in the 1790s and soon made our forebears the strong Christians we have always assumed them to be.

What changed?  Researchers have cited sociological factors.  For example, as we blogged about, the American Enterprise study says that the heavy-handed, politically powerful colonial churches created a backlash against faith, whereas their disestablishment and America’s new religious liberties created a climate for faith to flourish again.

But ultimately, bringing back Christianity from times of church decline requires a spiritual “awakening”–or revival, or renewal, or reformation–that has to be seen as the work of the Holy Spirit.

Indeed, such movements often begin outside of the institutional church as such–from the Reformation in the universities to the revivals on the American frontier–before having their effect in the churches.

The Holy Spirit’s work, of course, includes bringing Christians into the task.  So it’s legitimate to think, plan, organize, and take actions towards another spiritual awakening.  But, as we saw yesterday, gimmicks and simplistic solutions are unlikely to go very far.

One task, of course, is to pray:  Christians I met in the Inner Mission organizations of Denmark and Finland told me that they had been praying for revival for years.  Now it is happening, they said, not as they expected or as they had been working for, but as Muslim immigrants are coming to Christ.

“We did nothing to make this happen!” they told me.  But now their Bible Studies, their classes, and other ministries are full of people coming to them and asking to hear about Jesus.  These mission societies, themselves the fruit of an earlier Christian awakening in Scandinavia, are now sending hosts of eager new converts to conservative pastors for baptism and church membership.

 

Illustration:  A Haugean meeting [see Hans Nielsen Hauge, credited with reviving the Christian faith in 19th century Norway]  by Adolph Tidemand / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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