Christian Ethics and Abolitionist Education

The current political moment, with its renewed debates about school choice, vouchers, and the possibility of dismantling the Department of Education, offers an opportunity for scholars of Christian ethics to contribute to discussions about the purpose and value of public education in more robust ways than they have in recent decades. Traditionally, discourse about religion and schools revolves around a relatively narrow set of topics, like school prayer or state funding for religious schools. However, religion plays a much broader role in education, from the moral values expressed implicitly or explicitly in curricula and disciplinary codes to issues of justice raised by the unequal distribution of educational resources. Black churches and clergy were a driving force behind school desegregation efforts in the 1950s and 60s, and white Protestant churches were deeply involved in the creation of “segregation academies” during the movement’s backlash, with the stated goal of providing a Christian education that children would not receive in newly desegregated public schools. Today, abolitionist educators use theologically inflected language to name the harms inflicted by anti-Black school practices and imagine alternatives to neoliberal reform, while the contemporary school choice movement is supported by Christians who frame their goals in explicitly religious terms. These groups all invoke “freedom” in defense of their visions but interpret its meaning in the context of education in widely differing ways. For the school choice movement, “freedom” in education refers to market-based, individual freedom of choice; for civil rights advocates, it means the end of oppressive educational policies that deny freedom to marginalized groups. 

Despite the formative role that religious traditions have played—and continue to play—in shaping public education, relatively few Christian theologians and ethicists have seriously engaged this area in their work. As Katie Day writes, “Public theologians have largely ceded responsibility for education policy to the ‘experts,’” (“Public Theology and Education in the City,” in Public Theology Perspectives on Religion and Education, 79), tacitly supporting the dominant neoliberal paradigm. The resurgence of conservative Christian influence on education policy highlights the insufficiency of this approach, providing an opportunity for scholars of Christian ethics to intervene. In this paper, I argue that Christian ethicists can respond to today’s push to divest from public education by offering a moral alternative that is distinct from the neoliberal model that has dominated educational reform efforts. 

As an example of what such scholarship could look like, I briefly make a case for an abolitionist vision of public education grounded in the concept of imago dei and an understanding of collective liberation with deep roots in Christian ethical traditions. I draw on the historical insights of Leslie Beth Ribovich (Without a Prayer: Religion and Race in New York City Public Schools) and Benjamin Justice and Colin Macleod (Have a Little Faith: Religion, Democracy, and the American Public School). I also lift up the theological dimensions of the work of abolitionist education scholars Bettina Love (“How Schools are ‘Spirit Murdering’ Black and Brown Students”) and Amber M. Neal-Stanley (“’God Meant I Should Be Free’: Historical Black Women Teachers and the Womanist Theo-Ethical Imperative of Abolition”). In their vision of education, the dismantling of oppressive policies—like police in schools, high-stakes testing, vast disparities in funding and a tiered school system—makes room for creative, life-giving pedagogies. I argue that this vision is aligned—both genealogically and conceptually—with a recognition of the imago dei in every student and a horizon of collective liberation.