Religious Instruction

The first educational paradigm under consideration is the approach of “Religious Instruction”, simply described by the goal of assisting learners in encountering God’s self revelation and tradition[1]. This is usually achieved through a process of formal theological reflection, of teaching and learning, involving knowing, interpreting and incarnating the faith in order to live responsibly and faithfully in the world – a “practical theology”.

Evangelical educator Robert Pazmiño discusses this approach within an “educational trinity” of content, persons and context, centred on God. God-centred Christian education establishes as its starting point the authority of God as revealed in Jesus Christ and illumined by the Holy Spirit through Scripture. The guide for Christian faith and practice is thus the Bible, from which essential principles can be derived that directly influence any educational approach. One notable guiding principle is the affirmation that all truth is God’s truth, which implies a unity in truth and a correspondence between scriptural truth and reality[2].

This God-centredness is operationalised within a five-task model of Christian education – proclamation, community, service, advocacy and worship - all essential to the life and mission of the church. The five-task model can be compared to five approaches identified by Seymour and Miller[3]. The two principles guiding the practice of evangelical Christian education are conversion and connection. Conversion involves human reconciliation with God, others and the creation - personal and corporate transformation is needed. Connection links the content, person and context and addresses the fragmentation of life and the faith of the Christian community[4].


More systematically, Pazmiño offers a definition of Christian education, as the

deliberate, systematic and sustained divine and human effort to share or
appropriate the knowledge, values, attitudes, skills, sensitivities, and
behaviours that comprise or are consistent with the Christian faith. It fosters
the change, renewal and reformation of persons, groups and structures by the
power of the Holy Spirit to conform to the revealed will of God as expressed in
the Old and New Testaments and pre-eminently in the person of Jesus Christ, as
well as any outcomes of that effort.[5]

The evangelical perspective thus begins from the perspective of an orthodox Christian faith. The theological distinctives are Biblical authority, the necessity of conversion, the redemptive work of Jesus Christ and personal piety, as well as adherence to the Apostles Creed. In addition, Pazmiño operates out of a Reformed view of education in conversation with liberation theology[6]. How we educate reflects our understanding and application of these theological principles[7], as educational theory and practice are not first about us but about God. Christian education begins with God’s revelation, the content. In this sense, the ultimate teacher is God, and all of life makes up the curriculum. The teacher works as a partner with God, relying on the sufficiency of God’s grace to transform the learner. However, Christian education must avoid teaching Bible and theology as ends in themselves, reducing them to purely cognitive constructs. Students are to learn to think in biblical ways, using theology to guide categories of thinking”[8]

Evangelical Christian education evaluates educational methods and philosophies from within this theological framework. It embraces insights from the social sciences and secular philosophies inasmuch as they can be admitted by the primary lens of Scripture[9]. This “bipolar unity” between theology and other forms of inquiry gives priority to theological insights and seeks to transform knowledge from other sources other than God’s primary revelation in order to acquire wisdom[10]. Any education that claims to be Christian needs to show faithfulness in this area of primary importance. Unfortunately, sophisticated and tenuous exegetical treatments may be offered as ways of justifying the inclusion or otherwise of secular insights. A more intellectually defensible approach allows Scripture speak in its area of expertise, and the social sciences in theirs where Scripture is silent.

For evangelical Christian educators, the witnesses of the Scriptures are understood to have a normative function for teaching / learning. Thus, for example, Pazmiño can call extensively on a reading of Jesus as the embodiment of the Master Teacher, and exegete a number of principles and implications for practice for Christian educators to emulate. In this instance, Jesus’ teaching was authoritative (Mk 1:21-22) and he spoke the very words of God (Jn 14:23-24). Hence Christian teachers have derivative authority, as they are faithful to God’s special and general revelation. Jesus’ teaching was not authoritarian (Jn 6:60-69), and so Christian teachers need to provide freedom of inquiry[11]. The strength of this approach is that the content and the method of teaching are tightly linked, however without appropriate humility this can lead to an arrogant stance that is final and beyond question.
The practical theology of the evangelical approach to Christian education directly appropriates the scope of the Great Commission (Mt 28:18-20) as an assurance of the presence of the risen Christ. This transformative presence is made available to all Christians who desire to model themselves on the life of Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and empowering the educational effort.

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[1] Jack L. Seymour and Donald E. Miller, “Openings to God: Education and Theology in Dialogue” in Jack L. Seymour and Donald E. Miller, eds., Theological Approaches to Christian Education, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), 20.
[2] Pazmiño, Foundational Issues in Christian Education, 120.
[3] Pazmiño, Principles and Practices of Christian Education, 56.
[4] Pazmiño, Principles and Practices of Christian Education, 10-11.
[5] Pazmiño, Foundational Issues in Christian Education, 87.
[6] Pazmiño, Foundational Issues in Christian Education, 55-70.
[7] Charles Dunahoo, “September-October 03 Book Review”. Retrieved on April 29th 2006 from http://www.pcacep.org/publications/EquipArchives/2003/Sept/TeachingCross.htm.
[8] Perry G. Downs, Teaching for Spiritual Growth (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 64-65.
[9] Warren S. Benson, “Philosophical Foundations of Christian Education” in Michael J. Anthony (ed.) Introducing Christian Education (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 27.
[10] Richard R. Osmer, “A New Clue for Religious Education?” in James M. Lee (ed.) Forging a Better Religious Education in the Third Millennium (Birmingham, Alabama: Religious Education Press, 2000), 188.
[11] Pazmiño, Principles and Practices of Christian Education, 125-132