God's School: Choice and Compromise in American Society

Publisher Description

"A major contribution to the growing literature on fundamentalism and American life." --Wade Clark Roof, University of California, Santa Barbara Many of us assume that Christian day schools foster a strict and conservative environment that is very different from the rest of the United States. Christian educators themselves foster this view when they say that following biblical strictures requires that they not always conform to this world. Melinda Wagner goes beyond this stereotype to portray the way these schools foster American popular culture and "professional education culture" as well as "Christian culture." In her participant observation study of a variety of Christian schools (sponsored by fundamentalist, evangelical, new charismatic, Holiness, and pentacostal Christians), Wagner describes and interprets how such compromises are made. In American culture, children are taught to meet challenges, to compete, and are rewarded for individual achievement. Conservative Christians lab