The heart of the matter is a redefinition of what the Christian school is in the first place. Many Christian schools in my estimation have qualitatively changed. They have become essentially secular and accidentally Christian. And note again that this has happened so slowly that many would simply recoil in horror at the suggestion that their local Christian school is secular.
Here is how I am defining the "Christian Secular School:" The Christian secular school is the school that relegates rich theological instruction to either a quarantined segment of the school (like the rugby team... so isolated that it can never define the school), or so dilutes theological instruction as to make it academically irrelevant, or it just blatantly eliminates it by stripping theological instruction from the academic program altogether by entrusting it to the discretion of English and History teachers in their spare time, always in the name of "integration." This new integration becomes how some piece-meal theological realities of Christianity are folded incoherently into the prerogatives of the excellence paradigm, which can take on various forms, including the classical model that boldly claims its model rejects syncretism. We are losing the coherent and interpenetrating magisterium of The Holy Bible and the creedal confessions, and with them we are losing theological depth and direction in these schools. In short, the "Christian Secular School" is focused on excellence, defined as high SAT scores, AP scores, prestige of college admittance rates, scholarships and the like. This definition can affect other auxiliary programs of the school, such as athletics and the arts. Those programs will contribute to the excellence of the school if there are championships, attention, prestige and scholarships.
That is the excellent "Christian" school today. How did we get here? Like any massive shift, it took some time and multiple points of leverage. General doctrinal ignorance has done its part in this. The constituency doesn't know or appreciate theology, and therefore the product adjusts to the market. Even Christian educators don't think theology can be the epistemological (truth, knowledge and authority) center of the school because Christian theology is so desperately fragmented, at least according to their educated perspectives (sarcasm font). "Which theological system will be used?" it is asked. It is amazing how self-congratulatory the people who ask this question can be. The force of the question alone is apparently so insightful that nothing else is required to eliminate theology and replace it with excellence as the unifying principle of the school. Remember that many of our educators in Christian schools are products of secular universities, and have not in the remotest sense developed a robust apologetic for Christian truth in their own disciplines. The result is that administrators, parents, and the teachers themselves default to a kind of tacit agreement that aristocratic advantage can at least serve as a place of unity for the "Christian" school.
Secular drift has also played a role here. Our "Christian" culture has become largely secular, and not just in places like the two coasts. Technology has been used to homogenize the culture in the direction of secular compromise. People are motivated in secular ways. And so some other set of motivations besides fidelity to Jesus and his teaching must sustain the Christian school. Excellence was chosen because it works, and it can be done loosely "in the name" of Christ.
Postmodern culture has deeply influenced Christians, and it has done so through their art primarily. The notion that truth is a private matter is almost as universal as the notion that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," even among self-professing Christians. Again, the claim that Christianity is just the sober truth is not just doubted; it is offensive to people, many of them self-professing Christians. They ask us--and it is most likely that these are Christian educators asking this with stern authority-- "whose Christianity?" How strange that the same religion that stood up to the dominance of Greek and Roman Paganism and even Judaism, boldly calling them lies, now can only muster the bravery to assert that we have a few opinions about some things. That of course is a threat to no one! And that is the reason some Christian schools take a lowest common denominator approach to theological studies. They offer such vague and subjective teaching in religion, or such mythical and literary supposition, that precisely no one will be offended (or informed). That way, the energies of the school can be focused on a new holy trinity of excellence: Academics, Athletics and The Arts.
But what is at the heart of this is that the idolatrous "Christian Secular School" is measuring excellence in purely quantitative terms. It is relatively better than the public school at doing the same work. Add more high scores, or more championships, or more AP classes, and you have the school of excellence. It is no longer defined by any form of qualitative antithesis to the public school sector; it is only quantitatively better. The great private school is now only a better and more expensive public school with academically non-threatening religious language in mission statements and sentimentality and classes and chapels unnaturally appended to it.
That is why I suggested that it is only "accidentally" Christian. What I mean is that what now defines the school is excellence itself and not Christ or His truth. If you doubt this, imagine the religious instruction of the school changing, so that it became more liberal, or more diluted, or more devotional, or less Trinitarian, or more subjective, or was eliminated with a pledge to have other teachers take up the slack. The question is, would there be a massive exodus of families from the school provided the school was still quantitatively better than all the other schools in the city? Perhaps the better question would be, would anyone even notice?
It is depressing to say all of this, and I know that I am not right about all of the schools that go by the name Christian. Here is a question for Christian parents in closing: Is it more important to you that your kid master Christian theology or master the necessary skills to do well on the SAT? One is tempted to bat the question away by saying that we should aim at both, but the question is one of priority. Which will the parents sacrifice to ensure? Which will the parents be relentless in encouraging their young people to pursue? In the pursuit of the former will one perhaps have to pursue the latter and does that work in reverse? If I aim at Christian truth, rightly understood, will I aim at excellence on the SAT? If I aim at excellence on the SAT, will it lead to excellence in Christian theology as a matter of course?
