Nick Seward reports on the November conference, at St Ebbes Oxford, of the Christian Coalition for Education
‘You belong, and you matter.’
According to Stanton Jones, erstwhile provost of Wheaton College, that is what our pupils should be hearing from Christian educators, especially in the thorny areas of identity and sexuality. Professor Jones was the headline speaker at a recent Oxford conference organised by the Christian Coalition for Education (CCFE), which also included contributions from Vaughan Roberts and Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali.
Relatedness and significance
According to Professor Jones, whose expertise lies in psychology, the deepest unmet needs of the boys and girls we teach are likely to be a longing for relatedness and significance. A welter of evidence backs the biblical understanding of God’s design for families, in that the ideal environment for a child is a stable home where both biological parents are present. Where family breakdown occurs (and I write as the product of a broken home), outcomes for children are likely to be negative socially, academically and in terms of health.
As Christians we can often be heard saying ‘no’ in the public square, but the conference was a powerful reminder that we have a better story to tell our culture, and we should be confident in doing so. As commentators like Professor Glynn Harrison have reminded us, we have moved from a situation in which conservative Christian morality was broadly accepted, if not followed, to one which sees that morality as repressive and harmful.
Christian sexual counter-revolution
Professor Jones began by outlining the Christian sexual counter-revolution in the Greco-Roman world and contrasting it with the movement in our culture which began in the 1960s. This latter vision arose out of an understanding of the universe as empty, indifferent and mechanistic (‘… what we should expect if at bottom there is no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference’, as Dawkins might put it). This was allied with a vision of the human person as necessarily autonomous and free to pursue authenticity: ‘I gotta be me.’
We were presented with sociological evidence which measures the fruits of our most recent sexual revolution, that can be summed up, broadly speaking, as people having less sex and being less happy. In other words, the sexual mindset promoted by the likes of Masters and Johnson has not delivered on its promises.
Biblical worldview
Professor Jones moved on to ground the ‘better story’ in the gospel and a biblical worldview, quoting C. S. Lewis: ‘The Christian and the materialist hold different beliefs about the universe. They can’t both be right. The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesn’t fit the real universe.’
I was reminded of my favourite poem by Steve Turner, which satirises the nihilism and logical bankruptcy of that materialist outlook:
My love,
she said
that when all’s
considered
we’re only
machines.
I chained her to my
bedroom wall
for future use
and she cried.
The poem is called The Conclusion, and it is the conclusion of a world in which people are trying to put two contradictory things together: meaningful relationships in a meaningless universe. Christians have a far better and truer story to tell, grounded in the ultimate reality of a God of love who exists as Trinity, who gives human beings purpose and significance in their calling to be image-bearers.
New Gnosticism
Our current culture appears to be exhibiting facets of a new Gnosticism in trying to ground identity in sexual preference or psychological state, downplaying the significance of the biological reality of our bodies. Those identities are by their nature brittle and insecure.
The beauty of the Incarnation should help us point our pupils towards a far more durable identity grounded in Imago Dei: each human person is of infinite significance and worth simply by being human. I was deeply struck by hearing of the inner conflict of those who have struggled with a transgender identity: ‘I’m a mistake’. It’s my conviction that this inner existentialist chasm is something experienced far more widely by our teenagers, regardless of the particular challenges they face as they seek their own identities. The materialist outlook has nothing helpful to say, really. Christians have an opportunity to speak into the wreckage of our culture with a message of purpose, fall, and redemption. As Aslan says in the Narnia stories, so we might say to pupils: ‘You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve … and that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth.’
Professor Jones then led us on to consider the calling of chastity on every human life, and the constant teaching of monogamy throughout the Bible. It was helpful to be reminded of the radical nature of this teaching in the Greco-Roman world and the transformation it worked on the surrounding hinterland of promiscuity and oppression. I was again struck by the parallels with our own age; false promises of the sexual revolution lead not to a utopia of free love, but rather to exploitation and #MeToo.
Married or single
One of the most useful insights Professor Jones gave concerned the equal calling of single and married couples as image-bearers. His assertion was that celibacy and singleness had been overly exalted in the early centuries of the church, but that something of an over-correction had taken place at the Reformation in the direction of marriage. He contended that both single and married people have a high and holy calling on their lives: to be ‘bright images of Christ’, and icons of God’s faithfulness. The family mandate from Genesis 1, and the Revelation of the marriage of the Lamb, have much to say to a society longing for meaning and mired in struggles with depression, loneliness or suicide.
Finally, he outlined for us a Christian sex education, rooted in the formation of character. In this he was drawing on much of his published work, and a series of age-appropriate books written for the purpose which he has used with his own children. This rests on addressing needs, beliefs, values, skills and supports, and highlights the need for us as teachers to embody what we teach. Professor Jones has published extensively as a psychologist and I commend both his academic writings and their practical application to you, but if I were to sum up what it boils down to for educators it would be along the following lines:
• Many of the issues our pupils face in the arena of identity and sexuality stem from unmet needs in childhood
• As teachers, we cannot replace a stable family upbringing, but our love and care can compensate to some extent when this has been absent.
In a fallen world, that is a great encouragement to me as a Christian educator. It also brings home the awesome privileges and responsibilities of that role: to teach and live Gospel truth with grace, so that pupils hear that they belong, and they matter.
