A History and Assessment of the Christian School Movement

Ken Rathbun

I am writing this article as an informal, perhaps semi-autobiographical, narrative. I do not consider this the history of the movement, but rather a history. My orientation to the Christian school movement happened in the 1970s when I began my schooling in Omaha, Nebraska, at a small Christian school that was connected to a local Baptist church. I went to kindergarten there, and both of my parents taught in the school. I learned to read, write, and interact with classmates and learned respect for my teachers.

Though that is my beginning in the Christian school movement, its history pre-dates me by many years. Depending on how you think about it, a case could be made that Christian education dates back many hundreds of years. State-established public schools as we know them originated much later. But as I recall hearing many times growing up, the Christian school movement’s immediate context in the United States was the 1962 ruling by the Supreme Court to ban the practice of sanctioned prayer in public schools. The reason for this judgment was that such prayer was a constitutional violation of the First Amendment. Of course, the establishment of Christian schools pre-dated this ruling by several decades, but many people back in the 1970s pointed to this decision as one that galvanized believers as a call—and for some, even a duty—for parents to have their children educated in a Christian environment by Christian teachers.