Classical Christian Education’s Egalitarianism Problem

It wasn't long ago that the idea of homeschooling your children was more or less a fringe idea . Just think of the stereotypes of homeschooled children typically bandied about in popular culture that homeschoolers are the socially awkward offspring of religious fanatics , unable to talk to girls or navigate the most basic of social settings .

They probably only watch productions from Focus on the Family and almost definitely ritually burn Harry Potter books each October , but only in celebration of Reformation Day , of course , not Halloween . But in recent years , our culture has undergone a seismic shift in attitude and perception surrounding public education , homeschooling and even private schooling .

A growing number of families are choosing to opt out of the public school system , seeking alternative educational pathways , ranging from homeschooling to cottage schooling , to co-ops and classical Christian private schooling and beyond . Take just homeschooling , for example , which has seen a remarkable surge of late .

As of the 2024 school year , approximately 3.7 million students in the United States are being homeschooled , accounting for about 6.73% of all school-aged children . This represents a significant increase from just the 2018 to 2019 school year , when just 3.7% of students received academic instruction at home .

In the year 2000 , only 2.2 percent of school-age children were homeschooled . The trend is marked , isn't it ? Running parallel to this trend is the growth of classical Christian schools in America . These institutions offer a more traditional liberal arts education grounded in Christian values .

The number of such schools has expanded markedly as well , with over 1,500 now operating across the country . Notably , more than 250 of these have opened since 2020 , reflecting a robust demand for this new or should we say old educational model .

Several factors contribute to this educational migration , noting the continued failure of public school to reliably produce mature and intelligent , let alone literate , adults . Parents have increasingly sought out environments that provide rigorous academics , moral and character development and a curriculum that reflects their religious and ethical views .

Even quite average parents have grown wearied by the constant indoctrination of their children with leftist dogmas in the average government school , of their children with leftist dogmas in the average government school .

These parents have gone out in search of alternatives en masse , whether it is the flexibility and warmth of homeschooling or the structured rigor , order and camaraderie on offer with classical Christian schools . These alternatives have clearly grown in their appeal Again , not just to the fringe extremes of society but to the average American .

It's no secret that we here in Ogden have labored along these exact lines , founding St Brendan's Classical Christian Academy , a full primary and secondary school attached to our local church .

We're huge believers in the importance and critical importance of Christian education , even refusing membership to families who refuse to give their children a Christian education in some cases . This is something we see as a command from God , not a mere matter of preference .

No , you don't have to send your kids to our school , but you do have to give them a Christian education lest you disobey God's instruction to fathers in passages like Ephesians 6.4 .

Much of the momentum behind the rise of homeschooling in general and classical Christian education in particular can be traced to a growing dissatisfaction with modern educational theory , pedagogy , practice , curricula and even guiding presuppositions . Parents are increasingly questioning the alleged improvements to education that came along with the 19th , 20th and 21st centuries .

They are more and more looking back over their shoulders into the much earlier history of education and seeking the wisdom of past epochs and ages . Proponents of classical Christian education can often be found lamenting the misguided goals of the modern education system , rejecting even the outcomes they are aiming to produce .

For example , on February 17 , 2025 , jeremy Wayne Tate , ceo of Classical Learning Initiatives , wrote the following critique of even conservatives when it comes to the goals of education . Quote this is an impoverished vision for education . For millennia , the telos , or goal of education never changed . The goal was always moral formation or the cultivation of virtue .

This isn't just one of many problems . It is the problem behind the civilizational decay we have been witnessing across the West . You can fix every other problem , but if education fundamentally has the wrong goal , the nation will die . Cs Lewis argues that when education is beaten by training , civilization dies .

He was referring to classical education , the only kind of education that existed until radical progressives hijacked education in the 20th century . Conservatives need to wake up , end quote . Tate makes some important and interesting points , the kind of points you will hear from nearly any advocate of a return to classical Christian education .

Education cannot be reduced to mere utility , can it ? We can't think of education as simply the thing which allows us to do another thing that earns us income . Education must transcend the mere practical .

It must aspire to the formation of a whole soul , to the cultivation of a whole person who is able to love God with his whole body , mind , soul and strength , lest we reduce the human person to a mere economic animal or a piece of industrial machinery . And yet here we run into some challenges .

As with many works of resourcement and recovery of things lost from times past , we often run into complexities that don't sit nearly as neatly as we'd like into the real world , our actual time and even our own presuppositions and instincts . We are all of us prone to oversimplification , special pleading and magical thinking .

For example , dr Stephen Wolfe brought a fascinating layer to the discussion in a reply to Tate's post on X writing quote there's an egalitarian impulse in classical education . Advocates who can't see that get a job must be the end of universal education . Education for moral formation is traditionally a privilege for the few , not a right to the many .

We can make universal education more moral , but the end for most people is getting a job . That's the real world . Most people are average and they don't need to read Plato or be able to recite Antigone in Greek .

End quote See , one of the hidden reefs under the surface of the history of classical and Christian education is the at least to us moderns offensive reality that for most of history , the vast majority of the populace simply wasn't educated in the way we think about education today .

Education beyond the most basic rudiments was typically reserved for the clergy and the nobility , for priests , pastors , bishops , statesmen , lords , kings and courtiers . Most people , in most places and in most times , were educated in the duties directly needful to their household , trade and community .

Boys grew up and learned the trade or business of their fathers or other men in the community or nearby community . Girls grew up and learned to help in the management of their household , in child rearing and many aspects of the family , trade or business as well .

Literacy rates in the West were often below 10% , with some estimates sitting at 5% or lower in many regions . Until the 1500s , urban centers often boasted higher rates as much as 20-40% , and the invention of the printing press in the 1400s and its subsequent adoption certainly helped as well .

But it nonetheless remains true that prior to the 1600s , education looked very different for the average commoner than it does today . Right around the middle of the 17th century , though , we begin to feel the first waves of oncoming change rumbling in the cultural undercurrent .

One influential voice leading the change , a voice tragically few are aware of today , is that of John Amos Comenius . You could argue that as Francis Bacon was to science and René Descartes was to philosophy , so Comenius was to .

Could argue that as Francis Bacon was to science and René Descartes was to philosophy , so Comenius was to education in terms of influence , though , he's far less known than either of those other men today .

In fact , comenius' greatest work , Didacta Magna , the Great Didactic , is modeled on the systematic approach of both Bacon and Descartes as it pertains to his own field of education .

Born in 1592 in Moravia , part of the modern-day Czech Republic , comenius was the youngest child of Protestant parents who belonged to the Unity of the Brethren , a movement which served as direct predecessor to what you may have heard of the Moravian Church .

Orphaned at a young age , he lived with relatives and faced financial hardships that delayed his formal education until his late teens . Despite these struggles , comenius showed great intellectual promise . He studied at the Latin School of Prerave and later attended the Herborn Academy and the University of Heidelberg .

At Herborn , he was influenced by the emerging Pan-Sophic movement , which sought to organize all human learning into a cohesive whole . This vision would later inform his educational theories . Comenius' life was profoundly shaped by the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648 , a devastating conflict between Roman Catholic and Protestant factions in Europe .

As a Protestant minister and educator , he found himself a target of religious persecution . So in 1621 , he lost his home personal library and many of his early writings when Roman Catholic forces overran his town . Forced into exile , he eventually settled in Leszno , poland , where he led a Protestant school and began formulating his ideas on education .

During his exile , comenius wrote Didactica Magna , a comprehensive treatise on education that argued for systematic universal learning . In this work he all cities and towns , villages and hamlets should be sent to school . End quote . This statement was radical for its time .

As previously noted , in the 17th century , formal education was largely reserved for the nobility and clergy , while commoners received little to no schooling at all . Nobility and clergy while commoners received little to no schooling at all . Comenius rejected this status quo , insisting that education should be accessible to all , regardless of social class or even sex .

His reputation as an educational reformer spread across Europe . He was invited to advise whole governments in Sweden , england , the Netherlands and Hungary on school reform in Sweden , england , the Netherlands and Hungary on school reform . His innovative teaching methods influenced the design of national education systems in these countries and more .

He wrote what is possibly still his most well-known work , orbis Pictus , a children's textbook that served as the first widely used children's textbook with pictures , which quickly spread across the whole continent and endured for centuries in dozens of countries .

At one point , he was even offered the presidency of the newly founded Harvard University in the American colonies , though he ended up declining this position . Instead , he continued his work in Europe , writing and publishing extensively on education and theology . His later years were marked by further hardship .

In 1656 , during a war between Poland and Sweden , roman Catholic forces burned his home in Leszno , destroying many of his unpublished manuscripts . He eventually relocated to Amsterdam , where he spent his final years compiling and publishing his educational theories . Though he died in 1670 , comenius' influence endured .

His ideas laid the groundwork for modern education , and his advocacy for universal schooling foreshadowed the eventual development of public education systems worldwide . For example , the system he outlined in Didactica Magna is the exact analog of our current system of education in the US , with our kindergarten , elementary school , secondary school , college and university .

Part of the move towards universal education almost certainly arose from the Protestant focus on the priesthood of all believers , the notion that all believers are priests unto God .

You can see how an emphasis on this doctrine would naturally lead to the conclusion that , as priests , all saints must be able to read and handle the scriptures , a task requiring , at minimum universal or near-universal literacy .

This is evident , historically speaking , in early American colonial efforts at universal education , which were heavily influenced by religious and moral concerns , particularly in Puritan , new England .

One of the earliest and most significant educational laws was the Massachusetts Bay Colony's 1647 Old Deluder Satan Act , which aimed to ensure literacy so children could read the Bible and resist the influence of Satan .

The law required towns with 50 or more households to hire a teacher to instruct children in reading and writing , while towns with 100 or more households were mandated to establish a grammar school to prepare students for higher education , such as Harvard College .

This act laid the foundation for the tradition of publicly funded education in America and demonstrated the colonists' belief that widespread literacy was essential not just for religious but also for civic life . But it wasn't just educational theorists and Protestant doctrinal development which drove the transformation of education from the few to the many .

Technology also played a massive role , as it did for many other aspects of human life and societal ordering . The second and third order effects of the first and second industrial revolutions transformed the world of education .

The first industrial revolution ran from 1760 to 1840 , bringing mechanization , steam power and a proliferation of factories to the West , but especially Britain . The second , from 1870 to 1914 , brought advancements in steel , electricity and mass production across Western Europe and the US .

With the rise of factory jobs and industrialization , along with a huge boom in printing and publishing of cheaper books , newspapers and pamphlets , literacy rose as well . By 1850 , britain boasted nearly 70% male literacy and 50% female literacy . The US exceeded those numbers , with some regions hitting 80% literacy .

By 1880 , school attendance became mandatory in Britain , with the US following suit in most states throughout the 1800s , leading to near-universal literacy by the turn of the 20th century in the West . Society was being transformed , but the transformation would take even deeper root in the early to mid-20th century .

The Great Depression of 1929 to 1939 played a pivotal role in this transformation , a role of which many today are totally ignorant . Most of us today assume that the idea of educating most of our children through age 18 , and often longer , extending well into the mid-20s for many , is fairly ordinary . This couldn't be further from the case .

Though most states had compulsory education laws by the early 20th century , it was during the 1930s that compulsory education was extended through secondary school , effectively keeping students in school through high school .

Think about this Prior to this occurring , something like 70% of US students didn't continue their formal education into high school , but entered the workforce or took up work in the home .

But during the Great Depression , in an attempt to keep young men in particular out of the workforce and thereby prevent them from competing for scarce jobs with older men who were seen as being in greater need of the available work , states began to require schooling all the way through high school .

The result by 1940 , more than 75% of teenagers were in high school . Today , nearly 90% of teens will graduate high school , and even higher if you control for certain outlier groups like Native Americans . What's the point of all this ? Many of these changes are , of course , positives .

Universal literacy allows men and women of all stations to drink at the deep wells of scripture , history , philosophy and beyond . The human soul grows to the size of the beauties it beholds . We were made to grow into greater and greater glory by the contemplation and beholding of our God , as Solomon teaches us in Proverbs 4 , 7-9, .

And she will exalt you , she will honor you if you embrace her , she will place on your head a graceful garland . She will bestow on you a beautiful crown . Yes and amen . But we must acknowledge something that we moderns are often quite reticent to make eye contact with .

In the transformations of the last three centuries , we've moved many ancient landmarks set down by our fathers . Centuries we've moved many ancient landmarks set down by our fathers and , if we're honest , the results haven't always been glowing . As another proverb warns , do not move an ancient landmark that your fathers have set .

It is essential for the wise to understand why a landmark was laid down prior to casually casting it away . We should therefore embark on the difficult and sometimes painful journey of self-reflection on these very issues . Maybe it would look like working through thoughts and questions like these .

Throughout much of history , formal education was primarily reserved for the clergy and the nobility . The reasoning behind this was not arbitrary , but rooted in a deep understanding of social order , vocation and the hierarchical structure of God's creation .

Education was not seen as a universal right , but as a tool for shaping leaders , theologians and statesmen , those who would guide both the church and society .

The modern world , however , has largely abandoned this model in favor of universal education , a system that assumes all people should spend the first 18 plus years of life in formal schooling , often with little regard for their natural aptitudes or future roles in society . Was this unqualifiedly wise ?

Did we adequately account for the hierarchical nature of God's world when we moved these landmarks ? Have we misunderstood the hierarchical nature of God's very gifting in the world ? Did we overestimate the usefulness of devoting so many years to academic study for nearly everyone in society ?

Perhaps , instead of assuming that all must be trained in the same intellectual disciplines , we should ask whether the average man truly benefits from learning Latin all the way into early adulthood ? Do not move the ancient landmark that your fathers have set .

The landmarks of society , its roles , structures and traditions ought not to be thoughtlessly discarded , but preserved and understood . The shift toward universal education , however , has often ignored this wisdom , assuming that one broad educational system can fit all .

One of the driving notions of our current understanding of universal education is that anyone may become anything . You can do anything you set your mind to , we tell ourselves . But in the world God actually made not all men are called to the same station , same vocation and the same heights .

God distributes his gifts variably and unequally , whether we like it or not . Some are meant to lead , some to teach and some to labor with their hands . Some are given ten , some five , still others one talent .

Now , every man is called to lead , at the very least to lead himself , to rule his own spirit , to order his own thoughts , loves and desires into the obedience of faith . But not every man is called to be a leader of men , an intellectual , a pastor , a statesman , a judge .

To make it seem as if this is the case may seem to us to be kind , but it turns out rather to be an unkindness . Speaking of sacred cows , let's add another wrinkle to the conversation Sexed , piety and vocation . We're Christians , and one thing that means is that we don't believe men and women are infinitely interchangeable humanity units .

Though all of the saints share in many vocations , there are critical distinctions between the vocation of the man and the vocation of the woman . In the home , the church and society , the man is called to lead , rule and protect . In the same , the woman is called to submit , to help and to nurture .

I just said that without a lot of nuance , but let me put it another way that I think will help you grab onto the truth I'm trying to communicate . Another way of putting this would be to say that we are not preparing our daughters for the same thing as our sons , that we are likewise not preparing our sons for the same thing as our daughters .

Now , yes , both are headed for glory in Christ . Both are set to receive the inheritance of Christ . There is certainly a broad foundation of shared and equally applicable subjects of study and knowledge that we must deliver to both , a shared inheritance we ought to diligently bequeath to both our sons and our daughters .

But if we would make men and women of God , we must also distinguish . Even glorified men and glorified women will yet be men and women . How does this show up in our modern systems of education ? How does it show up even in our classical Christian schools , in our homeschool co-ops ? Are we adequately distinguishing or are we unhelpfully muddling ?

Have we given each the right measures and tools to succeed in obedience to God's calling ? These are challenging questions and certainly not simple ones . How do we balance the goods of universal education with its pitfalls ?

How do we maintain an instinct to give our hearty amen to the world of unequal gifting , hierarchy and variation , spoken by God into his creation , but yet also love and serve and care for the brethren , regardless of capacity , gifting and calling .

How do we train our boys to be men and our girls to be women , not muddling them into a gray , homogenous lump of indistinctness and confusion ?

In this episode of the King's Hall Podcast , we'll work through some of these questions and more questions that we ourselves have been asking about the nature of education , the glories and the challenges of classical Christian education , and some of the ways in which we think about learning from the wisdom of the ancient landmarks that even modern classical Christian

education has sometimes neglected to examine . We'll interrogate some of the presuppositions guiding the way we moderns think about education , even things that we consider to be obvious and unqualified goods in our day , like universal education . How can we make Christian men and women who are prepared to do their duties glorify God and love the good , true and beautiful ?

How do we account for God's varied distribution of gifts and callings ? How do we address some of the pitfalls of modern education , even the modern versions of ancient educational paradigms that are on the rise in our nation today ? The King's Hall Podcast exists to make self-ruled men who rule well and win the world .

I'm saying something other than I'm saying the things I said , not all the things I didn't say . Let me just get ahead of that right now . Can you just keep that clip on file ? I'm saying all the things I did say , not all the things I didn't say .

We're gonna give them all the ammunition we can yeah , but they could also come to the conference june 12th through 14th .

We have to have a certain kind of leadership in the 21st century if we're going to recover , yeah , the American spirit of greatness . We can't have women of either sex , no .

Jay jay day otherwise to non-insiders he's known as jay chase davis , but jay jay day is going to be there . We're going to have some panels , live haunted cosmos . There's gonna be a concert , singles mixer , passers , breakfast , vip hangout , business mixer .

There's like more stuff than we've ever done , a lot of it geared at hanging out with others and networking , more than just sitting and listening just to clarify I will be , uh , doing the concert myself .

And so if you just stop and you say look at education across America simple question is it working ?

With subjects like this , the instinct is always going to be to oversimplify and try to basically say it's all good or it's all bad , and we have to resist that because I think when we're talking about universal education from a Christian perspective , societal perspective , we're talking about something that , on the one hand , if properly defined and with the right

safeguards and we're aware of certain pitfalls that are possible , universal education is an ideal . It's a good ideal , Like I do think that the Protestants were right in the 17th century and beyond in developing this concept of universal education from the priesthood of all believers . I think that's true .

We should want our girls and our boys to grow up to be women and men who are able to read , interact with the scriptures directly , reason well like we say at St Brennan's a lot to think well , read well , write well and speak well , within the boundaries and varied giftings that God gave them in particular . So I think that's definitely a good goal .

We should want that . But then , on the other side , I think of some of the wisdom of past ages that we've erased with some of the things that came along with the rise of universal education .

I'm not saying they're necessarily causally related , but we've certainly embraced things like egalitarianism , We've flattened out the world in terms of hierarchy and we have embraced ideas about mankind that simply aren't true .

They're not how God made the world , Like the idea that anybody can become anything , that everybody has the same amount of talent , everybody has the same amount of an aid , you know whatever . That's just not true . And also , looping in the sextpiety discussion , that men and women are interchangeable and that we should educate them identically .

I kind of like what John Milton talked about in one of his you know Paradise Lost . He talked about one of his educational treatise . It was like Tractatus , something about education , and he talked about how he wanted all he had daughters and he wanted them all to be literate and well-read and that sort of thing .

But then he actually warned about a ditch he's like . But I also don't want them to lose track of essentially their particular vocation as women , and that's the kind of wisdom that I think we're in danger of losing .

We've certainly lost it in terms of popular culture , like the background average of universal education in the West , but I think we've also even lost it or degraded it significantly in the world of Christian education , classical Christian education , homeschooling and many other areas .

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Like we take it as that is , you know , to Brian's point , it's like a natural right for everybody somehow that they would do that , or even that that would be good . So do you see this as helpful in the way we've thought through education as a society ?

Mathematics like , who could say that's , that's really a bad thing ?

But I think the universal education system we have now , while it's not working in one sense , it is working in another sense and that is to produce what we have Like this is it's not accidental that we have the , the , the people that we have now , the educated people that we have now and we'll probably get into , like voter demographics that we have now , the

educated people that we have now we'll probably get into , like voter demographics and into , like gender or sexual confusion and things like that . It's really been used to undermine Christian values and Christian principles and things like that . So it is working and it isn't working Depends on the measure that you have .

Working and it isn't working depends on the measure that you have , but as a as a standard , like one of the one of the things that Brian read in the cold open was the Puritan instinct , with the desire and actually the government , uh oversight of mandating education for , for people , for young , young people , so that they knew how to read , so they could read

the scriptures . You know things like that . I think universal education is great . If you were to take our current system , though , I would say it's not great because it's of what it's producing , and so if you were to have the standpoint that you know , you could define education . It's multifaceted .

One of the ways to look at education , though , is to say that it's it's liberating in a way that , like it , separates you from the beasts .

You know you have your image bearer of God , and as such , you can do things like think and create and communicate and build and all of these sorts of things , and so what education does is it actually frees you from the confines of , like bestial man versus , you know , ascendant man , and I know that's rife with all sorts of problems .

You know evolutionary stuff and things like that , but but but the point is like education actually does liberate you , it gives you the ability to think into reason , and it does transcend from like basic man into , into , you know , a different sort of man , a man that can read the scriptures , you know , a man that has access to knowledge and everything like that ,

and so we should desire that to a degree for every person as the continuing education . I also think that Brian read this in the cold open . You know that the assumption that every person would be in school until their twenties I think that's pretty crazy . I think that's actually insane . Why ?

Well , part of the reason is because , uh , because of the industrial revolution , the motives to actually educate people further in their lifespan into an older age remove them from the workforce .

It does things like it extends adolescence so that men and women are no longer maturing at a rate that they did in the past , and you can see this with the stereotypical basement dweller in millennial world is really where you saw this , where millennials are staying with their parents into their mid twenties and into their thirties .

Obviously , those millennials are now older , but I think the trend will definitely continue because you can't even work until you're what ? 16 ? It really depends on the job , but you can't even get employment at this point . So it extends that adolescence .

It removes this idea of responsibility and being a productive member of your family , because your job is now school in perpetuity . It does something else too it creates people that are really good at school and the metrics of school .

So you have a very strict task list , you have your syllabus , you have your daily assignments or weekly assignments , you have your readings assigned and everything like that . You're force fed everything that you're given , preparing for tests , and so then you go out into the workforce and it's like here's your , here's your realm of responsibility , Get this job done .

And you're like well , how , what am I supposed to do ? Like you didn't give me the reading , you didn't give me the test , and so it's not actually creating people who have the ability to think which is one of the things that Brian said about our students is being able to think well , about our students as being able to think well .

They're not able to actually interact with a world outside of a high school or university , you know sort of environment . So I mean , I could ramble on all day about that . But essentially , summarizing universal education I think is a good thing , but it depends on your measure .

And I think this is what stephen wolf one of the things he was getting at in his critique of , uh , jeremy wayne tate , I think , is his name , um his he said a very boilerplate classical christian education thing , which is the criticism that modern education , in a way that wasn't normative in history , was primarily geared towards getting you a job .

So that's the way most moderns think about education . He's right to push back on that , because that is an impoverished view of education . You're basically reducing man to an economic machine or an industrial machine , piece of industrial machinery , and you're not actually thinking about his moral formation , the ordering of his loves , all of these things .

What Stephen Wolfe is pushing back on , though , is that , in our society , when you add in something that , while Jeremy Tate is correct about , historically , that's not how they thought about education . While Jeremy Tate is correct about historically , that's not how they thought about education .

But wait a second , if we're going to be doing a resourcement about what education was like in times past , let's make sure we recover the whole thing , because , also , education wasn't universal . It didn't have to be about how to get a job , because all of the people who were doing it already had a job , their nobility , they were clergy and nobility .

So the masses , the commoners , they didn't have the luxury , the time , the money and the lack of a need to work to make a living . In the same way , to go about and learn , basically , multiple languages interact with all of the classic works to excel in . These are specific skills of those trades , rhetoric , logic , some of these things .

So what modern classical education and classical Christian education , especially of the Protestant variety , has done is to say , okay , but hang on , we're all saints , we're all , we're a kingdom of priests . So we all , to an extent , have a need to have these kingly abilities .

The book of Proverbs was also written quite particularly to educate young men to be kings . Solomon , that's what he was doing . They were his sons . However , god saw fit to give the Proverbs to all of us . So apparently there's wisdom there that we all need .

Maybe all of us are supposed to be kings on some level , we're supposed to rule our own spirit , but then when you get so true king , so true king .

It's when you take that there's a two-step here , though , that egalitarianism has done , particularly theological egalitarianism has done , and it is to misunderstand how that truth works out in its application into the earthly kingdom . Right , we see it with sext piety . We see it all over the place , with people saying there's neither male nor female .

Therefore , stop , you guys , stop emphasizing all these distinctions between men and women . They're taking a theological truth that is true of our status as saints . There's no distinction between a man and a woman before God in terms of their inheritance , and that's true .

Wives , submit to your husbands . Children , obey your parents . Onesimus , go back to like slaves , obey your masters .

So what I think Stephen is getting at is a couple important things , and it's really where the idea for this episode came was like , that's something we've been talking about a lot is how do we honor both of these truths as they relate to each of the realms they live in , without flattening everything when it's applied to the earthly kingdom ?

So how do we , yes , educate all of our people , men and women , boys and girls , to be able to perform the duties of saints , which is a high and lofty duty to contemplate their God , to have whole-souled ability to glory and revel in the God that made them and the world that that God made Absolutely .

We need to do that , but then also , how do we make sure that we don't muddle them all together and eliminate all distinction in the same way the theological egalitarians did with everything else when it comes to like , but in terms of the practical , they actually most people do have to go get a job , and so universal education by its nature must prepare the

average person for the duties God gave them and most of those people , one of the big duties they're going to have . At least , we believe that the men ought to be thinking I have to go get a job , I have to go get a job .

What classical Christian education , in its rhetoric , often does is it minimizes the variegation and hierarchy in the world when it comes to that and they say basically yeah , but everybody will be benefited from getting 12 years through age 18 of classical Christian schooling and then an additional four years of a liberal arts degree because it will make them great

leaders and thinkers and whatever they then go do and put their hand to in terms of vocation and I think that's overblown I actually think the average person does not need a four-year liberal arts degree , at least post-secondary school , and that the average person actually should really be shifting into thinking about their vocation and duties whether the vocations of a

man or of a woman somewhere around secondary school I mean junior high , high school somewhere in that not waiting until they're 22 to 24 , but somewhere in secondary school we should start really branching out and saying and I think , look at how God made the world .

That's also the time when boys and girls begin to enter into their physical distinction , in particular with puberty . Little boys start to become young men , little girls start to become young women .

At that point we really need to start being careful that we're not actually giving our girls the measures for success that are befitting of boys and not giving our boys measures of success that are really befitting of girls .

But there's kind of a presupposition in all of it that if you just had the right education it would bring everybody out of white trash Appalachia , for example . Right , the education itself is going to be the savior and the idea is that anybody could go from a JD Vance in Appalachia to the White House .

And I think the reality that you're getting at is a that . That's just not true . That's not normative Um and so to set a system up where you're aiming at that for everyone , you're failing to recognize reality , which is that a lot of our sons are going to become welders and plumbers and they're going to do a whole host of different things .

There will be a group of them that go on to be politicians and leaders . But when you think even about the world to your point , in the cold open , 98% of people are not meant to be leaders .

First of all , we need to recognize that universal education is here to stay and it's actually overall , I think , a positive good in its basic conception that we should be aiming for , for literacy and some some basic body of knowledge that all of our boys , all of our girls , all of our men , all of our women have a hundred percent agree with . That .

Someone's going to hear this and say the Ogden guys think girls shouldn't learn how to read , and those people are retarded because that's not what we're saying . And here let me just make it plain that's not what I'm saying .

But when we're thinking about shaping our institutions , we need to make sure that we're not shaping our institutions to cater to the whole , as if that whole is made up of the top or of a particular two to 10% of the population . That's actually a bad idea . You'll end up failing the average person if you shape it in that way .

Instead , we need to take a principle that I think is a very good principle from another educational theorist , Charlotte Mason . She talked about how children are persons and there's a real egalitarian , individualistic , everybody's a snowflake way of understanding this . That , I don't think is what she meant . Everybody's a special snowflake and they're all equally great .

That's not true . But people are different . So we need to make sure that in our educational paradigms we're budgeting for , we're factoring in the average differentiation and we have pathways . Basically to say , guy , who's really not been fitted by God to be a leader of men , here is the thing you need to be focused on learning .

You need to become the most godly , productive version of you , that you actually are , the guy who is gifted in terms of rhetoric and leadership and state . Here's what you . Maybe you might be called to statesmanship or to study of law or a whole lot of other .

Maybe you're going to start businesses that are going to employ a lot of people , but what we need to say is that God smiles over all those vocations . God doesn't look at the plumber doing his plumbing and think , yeah , but if only he had more liberal arts education , he'd be better .

No , God smiles at the plumber doing his duty that he set before him with the gifts God gave him , Right . God smiles over the lawyer . God smiles at the plumber doing his duty that he set before him with the gifts God gave him , Right . God smiles over the lawyer . God smiles over the King .

God smiles over the commoner and and what we tend to do in our egalitarian age is to think like it's such a perfect example , Everybody's a JD Vance . Jd Vance is brilliantly intelligent .

It's not that just given the right opportunities , god literally didn't fit them for that .

So then asking a question like is that actually good that we're taking our young women and we're saying you need to extend higher education until you're , let's say , 24 , somewhere in that range . That doesn't include postgraduate and all that other stuff .

But then , as we'll get into Dan mentioned , you start looking at what 70 , 80 percent of those women are going to vote for leftist causes and you know really atrocious things like abortion . Is it actually a good thing that that's happening ?

But then we have to say , in the Christian world , do we create colleges and we call them Christian and then we just do the same thing and we flood them with women Right , particularly when we're looking at something like Titus 2 and what Paul says in 1 Timothy , and you're looking at the standard vocation , the normative vocation for a godly woman is household and

mother . You know that's what she's made to be . And then you're saying , okay , we're going to put her in an environment where she's going to get debt , where she's going to go to college . Then she's going to feel like she has to work after she gets out . Is that the ideal ? I think the problem today .

If you have that again , if you have that fundamental presupposition that education is the savior of mankind , then you're just going to say , well , more of it would surely be better , right , which may not be the case . I want to ask Brian about here with St Brennan's . First of all , just the general . Why did we start the school ? This may shock some people .

There are girls enrolled in the school .

So , rather than leaving it to our government or leaving it to the pagans , christians , therefore , should be ones who are stepping in and saying actually we understand what a person is and what people are for , and when we're talking about education , we're talking about discharging or creating people to be and do what they're for , right .

So Christians should be creating educational institutions . I absolutely believe that we should be known for that . So we started a Christian school , also to address some of the , I think , particular strengths of a school model .

We wanted those to exist in our community camaraderie , specialization , and we've addressed some of this before we started St Brennan's Classical Christian Academy .

In the after hours for patrons of the show , I think we're going to talk more about some particulars , like how we set it up so that it doesn't our members it's only open to members of our church and we don't charge tuition , basically , if you're a member of our church and you tithe , then the school is attached to our church . We'll talk more about some .

A lot of people asked on Twitter , as I opened it up for questions before this episode , about those particulars . We'll talk about that in the after hours . But on a basic level , what we're trying to do is , especially as we grow and learn , going forward , we're trying to address both of those needs .

Well , the need of yes , we want that heavenly priesthood of all believers , men and women , both having a certain inheritance of learning and shaping the ability for all of our men and our women to think well , to read well , to have the tools of learning , to inherit this great body of knowledge that is an inheritance of the West .

We want them to have all of those things , everybody of the West . We want them to have all of those things , everybody .

But then also and this is something that we've been learning and growing in and having lots of conversations about also addressing that issue of and yet how do we make that school so it's not just catered to feminine strengths like sitting still and being polite and learning a lot , you know , and not moving Like the boys aren't as good at that as well as the

particular skills of a certain subset , who are really wired for some of those cultural elite roles like states , pastors , statesmen . How do we address both of those so that we're actually forming men and women who are able to do the duties God actually has called them to while receiving that glorious inheritance in the right way ?

And those are not their intention to some degree , but there is a way to do it . It's never going to be perfect . You're never going to hit perfectly with every single student , but I think there's a way to do it . And I think we're a little bit further off in the background average of classical Christian education in particular .

I think we're a little bit further off in the background average of classical Christian education in particular . I think we're a little too egalitarian and a little might be an understatement , and I think that we have inadequately considered the ancient landmark that we moved in the 17th century and beyond , when education began to expand in the way that it did .

I think some of this is just natural . We've had these big societal shifts span in the way that it did . I think some of this is just natural . We've had these big societal shifts .

It takes a while for things to see the ends of things and then go back and say let's tinker with our founding presuppositions and move forward and see if we can make the fruit even better . So those are some of the concerns we're thinking . Let's build educational institutions Amen .

I think lots of Christians should be thinking about this right now and lots of good men and women are thinking about this in lots of communities around the nation and the world . Amen , I want to say , keep going . I want to encourage those people .

This shouldn't be a wet blanket on them at all , but I want them to think like we are and maybe we can all be thinking about this as we grow and say , yeah , let's figure out the let's , let's be critical of our own presuppositions and try to address where maybe we've been steering off in an egalitarian direction .

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radical in our society . But when you're in that like 13 , 14 , 15 range and you start identifying giftings in a young man , for example , we say , well , maybe we supplement with some apprenticeship , vocational training , they're really going to go this direction .

And then even for the young ladies saying they're really going to go this direction , and then even for the young ladies saying , is it important that we have a young lady in the school every day of the week till she's 18 ?

Or are we going to supplement some of those things with , say , more time in her mom's presence , learning homemaking skills , that sort of thing ?

In our mind we had a hierarchy of ideals and the classical Christian school seemed to fit that ideal and so we opened it up from first grade to 12th grade and we're like , okay , we got a school . Now , this is great .

And then along the way we've come to different not different convictions , but also just reality , to where you just start , where you are with what you have , which is usually not a lot of money or a lot of resources , as far as like people go and teachers and things like that .

Praise God , Our teachers have been great like since the very beginning , and part of that is , you know , without derailing too much , as as we look at the teachers as really like guides to the , to original sources and to the great teachers and the great tradition you know Western tradition , so that's really what , what they're doing and they're doing an excellent

job of it . But then there were certain things along the way where we're like we have we had a , um , a male teacher in the older grades . Uh , and we realized that's , that's great , Like , yes , on purpose , we did that and realized how important it was to have that masculine influence in the school .

You know , as far as a model for for boys to look to and for girls to look to for a future husband is like this is what a godly man looks like , you know , and and so we actually , like our male teachers are really important for the older grades , for a model and and and .

Now what we're really thinking through , like like you mentioned , was , we see , just simply because we had to start somewhere and we started with everybody's together , we don't have a lot of resources . You know boys and girls are learning together and we've had a couple of issues you know pop up , as will happen with teenagers and boys and girls being together .

Nothing major , but it's just like distractions in the class and just by the nature of having women in male spaces or men in women's spaces , there's naturally going to be some sort of change of the environment .

When you do that , Like if you're in a guy's locker room and a lady comes in , like a lady reporter so often happens in sports it changes the dynamic of the locker room .

It's just not the same place , and so we kind of see that in the school , and so that's part of our exploratory desire to actually have a boys and girls school to really help emphasize what you also mentioned was the tracts that we've been thinking through , Because I think one of the mistakes that we have it's both in universal education .

Really , you're creating like cubicle workers in university .

You know , universal education , the public school system , in the public school system , In Christian classical schools , I think you're creating intellectuals but delaying the potential of each student as to what they can do , Because I think that the presupposition is that education will just fix everything , like your JD Vance sort of idea , While simultaneously those same

people will say things like oh , masculinity is caught but not taught . Right , you can read all of the books on masculinity you want . That doesn't mean you're going to be like a masculine man .

You actually need a model in order to follow , and so that's kind of the motivation , part of the motivation behind tracks , as you see , certain students that they've just got like the salesman , riz and the entrepreneurial spirit , and so identifying different men in the church that also share that sort of gifting and encouraging more of an apprenticeship model and there

are other guys who are good at farming and just love the idea of farming . And same thing like identifying men that are really gifted at that and having them catch that sort of farmer or entrepreneurial or whatever . The gifting is really from different models . And the same thing with ladies having girls with different giftings and affinities in the home .

This is already happening with , like , I really like sewing and I really like stitching and there are ladies that do that and there are clubs already that exist and there's cooking and all of these things .

As far as the feminine realm to where we can actually have a model that is , first , it's education of all the things that Brian talked about , and second , like an entrepreneurial discipleship into the realm that they really will thrive in , and so it creates a lot more customization .

But it's important because you have to know the people you have and also what they're really good at and then making them , putting right models of actual people that they can follow and become like and imitate . And it's also important that it's not just merely the mother and father , because the mother and father are .

I mean , you can't like overstate the importance of a mother and father , but having that another like for your son . Your your eldest son , Eric . You know the importance of having other men come into his life and show him and challenge him .

You know in different areas that he might not see or might not listen as readily to his own father as he would to other men that he respects and speak to him differently and treat him differently . I'm sure you've seen that as well .

Maybe a potential pitfall with this higher education for everybody , even if it's Christian that I've seen is , you know , in one way , we want to say , well , higher education isn't about getting a job , but come on , I mean it really is , though for most Americans .

You know , the reason I got a journalism degree in college wasn't so that I could just bask in the ethereal glory of journalism as a you know a concept , a plutonic ideal , yeah .

So when you think about that , for girls , though , one of the problems , just at a very practical level , you're in a household , you're under mom and dad , you're generally going away , you are taking on kind of the single lady life , and then if you , let's say a young man , says , you know , I want to get married , I want to start a family , one of the

things that I've seen is a lot of these young ladies actually have a hard time going back into the home because life was easy you got coffee at 10 am , you worked a couple hours , you hung out with your girlfriends , you went and did fun things like see movies .

That's actually not preparing you for your vocation , whereas on the flip side , I've seen a lot of young ladies who spend most of their time with their family , mom and dad . They're getting an education , but they're also working in a productive home . There's never a period in that young lady's life where she's not around the household duties . Yeah , that's right .

So I guess , just talk to that . Do you see that ? And maybe why would we be thinking through that educationally ?

We're made to become what we behold Second Corinthians , 3.18 , that we all , with unveiled faces beholding the glory of the Lord , are being transformed from one degree of glory to another into the same image . We're becoming what we're looking like .

Hugh of St Victor , who is a big name in the world of classical Christian education in the Middle Ages , he said that he compared a student to the soft wax put on an envelope and the teacher to the signet ring , the seal stamped into that wax .

The teacher actually is not just putting the information he's teaching the curricula , but he's putting the mark of himself on the student . And there were even debates and movements within the history of classical education that moved more one way or the other , more towards . We need a dynamic teacher whose stamp we're going to be putting on a student through .

We need the right information and it's all about the books we're going to be putting on a student through . We need the right information and it's all about the books . It really is both , because the books are just people , their ideas , writ law , put on paper .

Leon Podols adds a layer to it that brings in the sextpiety , because that's all true , I think foundationally important to understand . Leon Podols wrote the Church Impotent , and he talked about this liminality when it comes to becoming a man . Liminal is from the Latin word for threshold , so a liminal place is a threshold place .

It's where you're between two states . When you are a boy you're in one state . When you're a man you're in another state . But there's this threshold between it that's really important where things can go wrong . But there's this threshold between it that's really important where things can go wrong .

And then he connected some things on this thought that I'd never considered before , that for a young lady you know picture she's in the home and dad is working . Even in older pre-industrial times dad was often out in the blacksmith shop , out in the fields , he was out somewhere .

And the woman was more in the home and the business too , in pre-industrial world a lot , but it was very much homeward oriented . She was there a lot more , nurturing , raising . So the young girls are constantly surrounded by the image that they ought to become , which is a woman . But the sons , they actually have to exercise a departure from that .

They have to self-consciously almost depart , reject the woman as the model for what they need to become and then go out and find the world of men and find the image that they are to become , become a man and then be properly reunited with the feminine in marriage , with the feminine in marriage .

So there's this liminal stage where they're still in the world of women , more in youth , but they're departing to become truly a man . The women have a different process and right now our educational process doesn't tend to reflect this .

So what we often do one of the problems of sending our ladies out into this world even in classical Christian colleges , the vast majority of teachers are men .

So we're sending our women out into what is functionally I don't care what they say it's the world of men , where they're learning the vocations of statesmen and of pastors and of leaders , and they're falling into the very ditch Milton warned about in that 1644 tractate on education , into the very ditch Milton warned about in that 1644 tractate on education .

They are becoming detached from the world of women . They're doing what the men need to do . They're departing the model of the woman to go , become more like the man , and now they have to return and reunite to the feminine in a way that's dysfunctional . There's a break . Why are we doing that ? We're not actually preparing them for their vocation properly .

We're telling them mixed things about what their vocation actually is . The men , on the other hand , they need to depart . This is why , even from the very beginning , with limited resources , we said starting at about puberty , so about secondary school , junior high , we're going to have a male teacher At the very beginning .

I remember conversations where we were like it would be ideal to have a boy's school split , especially at junior high , but we can't yet achieve that . We don't even have enough people , maybe like one student in each of the schools . So let's wait on that . One teacher per student is not quite financially . Great .

I mean it works , great ratio , but it doesn't work financially as well . So we're in the real world and now , as our school grows and enrollment , you know , goes up by sometimes 20 , 30% each year , with the lot of young kids coming in , people moving , that sort of thing .

So we're now looking and saying , let's , let's start planning ahead and saying how can we accomplish what we set out to do , which is to make sure that in that liminal stage , the young women are still becoming like a woman and the young men are now becoming like a man , like men , with a boys and girls school ? Let's also consider things like some of these .

Again , they're aspirational , we're still talking about them on our school board , but thinking about the school week and saying we don't actually necessarily have to have a five day school week . That's exactly the same hours as public school . Maybe we have a four day school week and that gives another day in the home .

Or when you start to get into that boy's school and girl's school more time . That where the education begins more and more to overlap directly with the future vocation , whether it's trades , business , states , you know whatever it is or homemaking , child rearing , the , the becoming a godly woman , those kinds of vocations as well .

Um , we're trying to account for those things .

So you see , kind of where you're always um , having to figure out how to chart a course through the average while still calling those two to five percent of young , you know , men who are like come on , man , you're called to be a Lord of men , right , like you're a business leader , you're a church , you're a church leader , you're a .

You're a thinker , talker , reader , writer , that's what you are . Come on , like , you're not fooling anybody , that's what you are . And then other guys were like praise God , you're actually not . That , you're probably . You're probably . What are you passionate about ? What are you gifted ? Where did the Lord give you great talents ?

And people think , like you can't figure this out until a kid's 20 . Dude , I'm seeing this in my six-year-olds , like five-year-olds , 10-year-olds , I could talk about all my kids , with the exception probably of Alfred , because he's just under two and he just eats and chuckles a lot . But like I could .

I could tell you , I could guess the general direction each of my children will go and I think with a high degree of accuracy .

I was like no , I'm going to get an engineering degree , I'm going to be a fighter pilot . They degree , I'm going to be a fighter pilot . They sat me down at pre-engineering school in high school and they said , not my brother in Christ , but it was the same idea . You are not good at math , you are good at talkie talkie .

Do not try this , what you're saying , get out . So I left . I had to leave the like high school . They have these emphases like you could be in pre-engineering , like education track , like all these different ones . They're like you need to go something whatever . It is not this .

One of the things that she brings up what happened with the pastorate in the 1800s in America was that the primary person who got called into ministry were boys who stayed home with mom . They were usually sickly .

And so you want to be able to think through those things , dan , on the kind of like future trajectories , not only for our school , but thinking through these issues . It is a contentious thing , maybe even the Stephen Wolfe , jeremy Wayne Tate . You can see that this isn't really something that a lot of people have .

They've accepted the way that things are , so it's a little bit , I guess , controversial . Or it can be contentious to go back and say why was the ancient landmark there ? Or it can be contentious to go back and say why was the ancient landmark there ? I guess , what encouragement , especially pastorally .

You've had to think through a lot of issues in your life and change positions . What kind of advice would you give people when you're going to examine an issue like this ? You know , maybe , maybe , for example , the knee jerk for people is like , oh , you're a misogynist . You know , of course , women knee jerk for people is like , oh , you're a misogynist .

Of course , women can do everything , men can do .

Second is something that pastors say we say all the time is to have no problem passages . So when you're reading the scriptures and you look at the household code , you're talking specifically about sex , piety and how it relates to education and the future of your children .

Because even still , it's snuck into the through the walls of the church , because the walls of the church are permeable .

Is this idea like , yeah , my girls , you know they could just settle to be a mom and a wife and a homemaker , but you know she could also be like a wife and a homemaker , but you know she could also be like a dragon slayer , though on the side Right , you know , sort of thing .

And then you examine the scriptures and you're like , yeah , I mean there was like yeah , l , you know some dude , cicero came into her tent .

So I would just , first and foremost , look at the scriptures and just examine what it has to say , and when you start running into these presuppositions that are like this is actually in conflict with what the scriptures are saying about what I understand about the world and what I think the aims of my children are and what men and women are actually supposed ,

what they were made for , you actually have to be willing to bend your will towards the scriptures and just say God ordered the world this way . And there's obviously nuance within that , because one of the common objections , brian , is the Proverbs 31 woman is like oh yeah , you just want women to stay at home and to just like what ?

Just make babies be barefoot pregnant in the kitchen . And part of that is like well , my wife does that . She was probably doing that right now , by the way but but then they're like well , the Proverbs 31 woman was like a business mogul , real estate mogul . You know , she had a winery . She would buy , sell and trade .

She was in the import export business , you know really stretching the pretty much Donald Trump . Donald Trump , she's the best .

But the Soviet Union , what it tried to do , is it tried on Marxism and then Marxism-Leninism , basically theorized that all of the problems were related to class and class distinction . And we have the bourgeois and we have basically the capitalist class that's oppressing and extracting resources sinfully and wickedly from this oppressed class .

We need the people to rise up , and that will be the communist revolution . This oppressed class . We need the people to rise up , and that will be the communist revolution . They will seize the means of production , eliminate structural inequity and inequality , and then there will be utopia .

Do you know what happened when the Soviet Union actually attempted all of that ? Is that all they did ? Is they rebranded everything ?

So instead of Tsar Nicholas II and you have the Tsars in Russia , who were many of them comically incompetent no question , many monarchs have been incompetent in history All they did was they elected through the party apparatus , regional , some over tens , some over fifties , some over hundreds , some over thousands .

At the top was the Politburo of a dozen men or a handful of men . They were the voting members . And then they had a second ring within the Politburo that were the non-voting Politburo members who were coming up and learning from the voting Politburo members . And oh , you know what we need ?

We're gonna need , because the Politburo members they have such important work and they're all really high capacity men let's clear the center lanes of all the roads and no one's allowed to use them except the Politburo , because they need to be able to get back and forth really quickly . And then you know what ? They have a lot of stress .

We're going to give them special privileges , like houses out in the countryside , dachas out in the hills . They can go and recuperate there and have important meetings there . And you know what they did ? They invented monarchy . They just invent because hierarchy is inescapable .

What you will find is that and this offends our sensibilities because we're so egalitarian if they are ruled over by employed by whatever you want to call it in its economic function , by somebody else who is gifted with a leadership and ruling capacity , and then this principle will go all the way up until you have a few people leading a great number of people .

Jesus led the three within the 12 . Then there was the 72 and the 144 . And you can go out . The second you get into bureaucratic egalitarianism .

What you know is that you don't like the world God actually made and you want to impose your own , and the only thing you'll end up doing is either incompetence or you will reinvent hierarchy and you'll just call it something else . It's the polyp bureau , not the monarchy . So we do this constantly in history .

We rearrange a few basic principles and we're like aha , we fit , we found all the problems and it was in this hierarchy stuff God's like . Am I a joke to you ? I did , that was me .

So one one of it kind of goes like this right , you're like , see , we educate them to a really high standard .

See , we treat them functionally , we treat them like the men we put them through these extensive educational rigor , all those things , instead of , I think , dan to your point and Zacharias over here to my left in honor of their fathers , instead of saying let's just start with the scripture and then let's also look at the history of Christendom and say what did

people think about this sort of thing ? And the answer that you get will not be hey , every girl needs to go to higher education be a slay queen .

I think there's an emerging interest in different eras of Christian history , of church history , that there have been societal blessings and a lot of success and then , looking back at , well , what did they do during that time ? And so much of it is such a jarring difference from what we're doing now .

But I think that's really where things start to fall apart is when you just take , like , well , the public school model and we'll just sprinkle Jesus on it and we'll get a different outcome .

How did they apply the scriptures , how did they understand sex piety , how did they understand the role of men in society and of rulers and of government and of the church and things like that , and you can see the mistakes and missteps and how it ended . You know that's another part of the story .

You can see how it began , you can see how it ended and then figure out how not to do those things . You know that caused it to fall apart .

And so that's part of our interest in in really the history of the church and in its entirety , not just in this , you know , snapshot period in the reformation , which we have interest in , but the entirety of church history .

You can read Alan Carlson and there's lots of people right CR Wiley's talked about this , rory Groves but recovering the productive household becomes important because then you think , okay , I think this is the biblical model and then what we're actually trying to do is prepare men and women to be a part of that entity , as opposed to the raw , you know individualism

of america that we have today , where it's like , no , you know , having , you know , so many single women is a really good thing . That's what most people think today , whereas you say like no , actually there's a reason that they're one of the most powerful voting blocks for the left . We actually don't want to .

It's not primarily to get a woman a career , it's not primarily to get her through an advanced degree , but , and for men to say , like the thing that , even vocationally , what you're training for is to lead a productive household , well , that's a different telos , that's a different aim than simply , you know , go crush it , make a ton of money , spend it on

yourself and then go on social security later in life , if that's even there by the time we get there . Probably not , probably , won't even be there .

Don't think those dangerous thoughts . Don't notice , don't speak out . If you do , we're coming for you . Who's coming for you ? It almost doesn't even matter Whether it's the HR lady at your company of either sex weaponized church courts , the social media censors or even those you once considered allies . Watch out , take care , play it safe .

But was it always this way ? Have we always lived under this kind of stifling , wet-blanketing panopticon ? Is this the spirit of our Christian forefathers , of the men who founded our nation in blood and in faith , willing to face down all the might of Britannia and her redcoats ?

There was a time when Americans didn't shrink from risk , when they would rather die than bend . Our Christian forefathers knew what it was to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard . They knew what it was to set sail for the unknown . They defied tyrants . They built , explored and dared great things .

Who settled this land , who built one of the greatest nations ever to be , who settled the West and covered the continent from sea to sea with the Christian people , who searched out glories , crisscrossed the plains with railroads and fought off usurpers and invaders on all sides . Risk wasn't a bug , it was a feature .

Without it , our fathers knew there was no greatness . And now we're supposed to trade boldness for bureaucracy ? We're supposed to tremble at the unknown instead of mastering it ? We're supposed to bow and scrape , not even before bullets , but before HR ? Ladies , we don't think so . It's time to remember who we are .

This year , join us here at New Christendom Press for our annual conference . Safety Third Recovering the American Will to Greatness . Four days to forge new friendships , build coalition and work to recover what was lost . It's time to reclaim the spirit that built this nation , to break free from fear to risk , to build , to lead .

It created the nuclear family instead of the extended family and tribe Right . So you know even the ways that we think about women working today , like we talk a lot about how women , shouldn't you know they need to be workers at home instead of like going and getting a career .

Even that language is so foreign to the way that , like women did work in history , they worked in the household .

Black is the head of this house and he's engaged in this business and she's helping a ton in that store and in that cause . It's their household blacksmith shop and she's helping a lot with managing client . Like there was lots of ways in which the man and the woman teamed up .

She was his helper , so it wasn't like there was vocation where they made money , and then there was this clean hermetic break and then she was over here with the household . The household and the economy were a unit . That's what people , that's what we mean by productive household . So we talk about in Brighthearth all the time .

It's like my wife is my helper in accomplishing my vocational things as well as a pastor and , as you know , a publishing company where , like all these different things that I do and she's deeply connected to them , but in ways that are distinctly feminine and free me to be undistractedly able to accomplish the mission .

Industry separated those things with mechanization and the rise of factories and even like these , you know , steel production technology played a part . A lot of different things played a part . Ultimately , globalist trade played a large part .

Now we have this kind of artificially like , we are able to sustain these very strange modes of being where you can like have this individual floating person who has like the economic productivity to some degree , but it's not pouring into or building anything bigger than itself . It doesn't know what it's for .

That's why a lot of rich single ladies are absolutely miserable . They're not doing what they were , what they were for , not . That's why a lot of rich single ladies are absolutely miserable . They're not doing what they were , what they were for , not building anything bigger than they're , not helping anything bigger .

They're not doing the things God made them to be and to do so when we get all the way out on the end of the branch of this educational question , like we have to adequately reckon for with all of that change if we're to figure out how to balance between the ideal of this morally virtue-imposing or virtue-imparting education and the real world we live in , where

it's like the wreckage of nuclear families and the jobs are what they are , and I think the chart back is to think about them holistically . Let's make men and women who make households .

That , insofar as it's possible in our day and age and it's very possible you have to get creative and work hard to build households that function more like households are supposed to function in their interconnected , intergenerational , communal aspect across lots of them , and then we will build economies over time and schools and institutions of education that more

perfectly fit with the telos of the man , the woman , the family , the community , the church , the business , the economy and all these things . We're not there yet . So right now we're going to be chart , we're going to be building in the wreckage in a lot of ways .

It is yes , you're both saying a true thing and each may be inadequately reckoning the importance of the other , but we're going to have to be building in wreckage something better than we're in the midst of .

So , and so we'll be talking about that . So stick around . If you're not yet , you can sign up for Patreon . Follow us . There's a lot of exclusive content , including the Davis vault , which is predominantly a show my son does . Yeah , we had a big hitter recently . We had Julius Caesar and that was a big big thing for people .

So a lot of people seem to like that .

One of the things to look forward to that we're actually helping produce um is a monday special show that they're going to be working on . It will be a little bit before the first one comes out , but what we're going to do is have a season of this show that's contra moondom , repealing the 20th century .

They're going to be going through , like exhaustively in classic isker and and cj angle style um , all of the problems of the 20th century .

A lot of what we're talking about today has roots in some of the things they're going to be talking about a really well-produced show , and it's going to be a subscriber exclusive show for a while and then , when they get into the second season of that show , which we're already talking about I won't tell you the topic , but it's going to be amazing Then we'll

start releasing those episodes publicly as well for everybody to check out . So so go check out what they're doing at contra Moondom and there and welcome them as an official now new Christendom partner , new Christendom press partner show .

And please , if you have a great podcast that you do yourself , don't send us an email about it because we probably don't have time . Just kidding .

You're not going to get it perfect , but don't let like the inability to build the platonic ideal of the thing that you think should exist , keep you from starting .

St Brennan's Classical Christian Academy we'll talk about it in the after hours has been a work of what can we do today to take one more step closer to glory and one step further away from the wreckage of the 20th century and all of the dysfunction that surrounds us ?

How can we take one more step closer to making the world our sons and daughters inherit better than the world that we stand in today ? That's the attitude we need to be thinking about as we build , not this perfectionist just waiting for the perfect moment and the perfect opportunity . Just get to work .

Get to work building , get to work pouring yourself out for your people , and may the Lord bless you in whatever you put your hand to .