Can Girls Get A Christian Classical Education

Among the ideas that percolate among some of the members of the conservative christianist world are the many concerns about the proper role of the womenfolk. 

It has bubbled up lately in the "trending" topic of tradwives, a sort of online white christianist conservative cosplay of an imaginery version of 1950's submissive stay-at-home child-rearing apron-wearing husband-serving woman (who, it seems, does have a lot of time for running her social media account). 

But tradwives are just a new iteration of a recycled idea, and I don't want to try to plumb the depths in a blog post--just look at one particular implication.

That little corner of the world has a lot of ideas about what women shouldn't be able to do, like, for instance. not get divorced. Or vote. 

You know women, with their big fat emotions and their tiny weak thinky parts. Joel Webbon of Right Response Ministries tweets that "women are more easily deceived than men" and that "the 19th Amendment was a bad idea." Bnonn Tennant, author of It's Good To Be A Man: A Handbook for Godly Masculinity, observed on Facebook that "Voting is an act of rulership" and "Since rulership is not given to women, women should not vote." Jesse Sumptor, another leader in that world, tweeted "Brothers, a friendly reminder for election s: make sure your wife votes exactly as you do." And Stephen Wolfe, author of The Case for Christian Nationalism, when asked if he would "affirm franchise for all adult men and women" replied "no." 

Steve Rabeyu, writing for the Roys Report ("Reporting the Truth, Restoring the Church"), pointed out that all of these men have ties to controversial conservative pastor Doug Wilson, and I really, really don't have time to get into the many many forms of controversy that the Idaho preacher has stirred up over the years, from asserting that American slavery fostered "genuine affection between the races" to his many, many, many explanations of the various ways that women are required to submit to their husbands. Or that time he referred to women who disagreed with him using the C word. As Elizabeth Preza wrote about Wilson:

His most famous aphorism is that God designed the male as the one who "penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.” He counsels married couples that sex is "not an egalitarian pleasuring party" so women shouldn't expect to enjoy it as much as men.

Wilson's wife Nancy observed, on the subject of a woman saying "no" that “A husband is never trespassing in his own garden.”

There was a fair amount of stir on the topic of women voting late in 2022 because they just had done so, and in ways that MAGA and Christian Nationalists did not care for. And we could talk about that, too.

But for our purposes right now, I want to point out one particular role that Doug Wilson has.

In 1981, Wilson helped launch the Logos School as founding board member and teacher, a school (later group of schools) "governed primarily by the word of God, as understood and applied by the schools Board of Directors and administration." He also founded a publishing house (Canon Press) which produced much of the homegrown materials that the school needed. A decade later, he wrote a book about Recovering The Lost Tools of Learning, and that in turn led to the formation of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, of which the Logos School is considered a leading example. Wilson was part of the leadership of The ACCS for many years, though he is not listed there now.

Classical Christian Education is a lot like regular classical education, but with more Jesus. Study the old white guy canon, focus on universal truths, emphasis on grammar, logic and rhetoric (the trivium), great books, and an emphasis on what's time tested. Plus a Biblical worldview. I didn't find a lot of explicit discussion about teaching women to know their proper childbearing and submissive place, but how could that not be part of the program? 

Wilson is a controversial figure, even within Christian circles, and the ACCS has at times taken pains to assert that Wilson is not a dominating voice in their association or movement. I have no desire to chase down the Doug Wilson rabbit hole, but the attitudes he espouses about women are clearly not hard to locate in the conservative christianist world.

In fact, this divide is likely to become more discussed if the latest research is accurate in telling us that women and men are diverging ideologically more than ever (and worldwide). 

All of which leads to the question that I do want to focus on-- what sort of Christian Classical Education can young women expect to get from institutions led by people who believe that women should not vote, should stay home and make babies, should live their lives in submission to men? The websites avoid the issue, even show pictures of happy girls learning, but how can the teaching not be influenced by a view that says girls may participate in education, but women should hush and know their place? 

We know the answer (not a great one), but it leads to another question-- should the United States taxpayers foot the bill for schools that teach young women that they are second class citizens, less-than humans who don't need all that fancy learnin' stuff cluttering up their brains and distracting them unnecessarily because, hey, if it's important, their man will tell them what to think and do, anyway. There's plenty of discussion, rightly, about racism and LGBTQ discrimination in the conservative schools movement, but we should also keep an eye on the misogynist elements as well.