Through this Christmas season and into the coming New Year, classical Christian educators are fielding a lot of questions and heightened feelings from students and parents about our nation’s political climate and culture. As we see in “Census at Bethlehem” painted by Pieter Brueghel the Younger (as seen above), Christmas provides us with a wealth of excellent ways in which to frame our conversations, reflections, and leadership through both the blessings and the challenges of political life and engagement. From the start of his lifetime in human history, Jesus Christ and his parents navigated a world of political turmoil that we are blessed in American history to have very rarely seen or experienced. A tax-assessment census frames our Christmas story determining where the coming Messiah is to be born, so that it would take place, in God’s timing, within the hometown of his earthly ancestors from the Davidic royal line. As God’s higher drama unfolds with Christ’s birth, this arrival of a new king in the downtrodden birthplace of an ancient kingly line did not go unnoticed for long. In a terrible foreshadowing of our desperate need for Christ’s own death on a Roman cross, the innocent children of Bethlehem face a terrible death at the hands of Herod the Great.

As teachers and school leaders shepherding our own children through these times of our own, we can point to the servant king, Jesus Christ, as the highest exemplar and the one who demonstrates the power of God over the sin and death that characterize our lives in each generation to some degree. Although Jesus did not come to establish an earthly kingdom, his place in history is nonetheless substantial and ongoing. As Jaroslav Pelikan summarizes it in Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (Yale, 1985):

Regardless of what anyone may personally think or believe about him, Jesus of Nazareth has been the dominant figure in the history of Western culture for almost twenty centuries. If it were possible, with some sort of supermagnet, to pull up out of that history every scrap of metal bearing at least a trace of his name, how much would be left? It is from his birth that most of the human race dates its calendars, it is by his name that millions curse and in his name that millions pray.

While shepherding our children in our schools and homes, it is vital for us to equip ourselves with the best resources on topics such as political culture and philosophy from rich Christian perspectives. As the director of ClassicalU, I would especially commend these six courses to you:

1. “Teaching Modern Political Philosophy” with Joshua Gibbs
2. “Wendell Berry’s Virtues of Renewal: Teaching the Forms that Sustain Life and Community” with Dr. Jeffrey Bilbro
3. “Women in the Liberal Arts Tradition” with Joelle Hodge, Dr. Brian Williams, and other presenters
4. “The Black Intellectual Tradition and the Great Conversation” with Dr. Anika T. Prather and Dr. Angel Parham
5. “Leadership and the Liberal Arts” with Dr. Christopher Perrin
6. “The Monastic Tradition” of Education with Dr. Christopher Perrin

As Christopher Perrin recently shared with the team here at Classical Academic Press:

A good classical education creates the liberty among humans to not only grow wise from a study of the past but to imagine new ways of doing the same old good things that have proven themselves--finding in the classical tradition treasure both old and new (Matthew 13). This truth does not give us specific answers  for all of the various practical political problems and questions before us (and they must be addressed)--but it reminds us that Christ is greater than any politician, party, platform or planet. Let us pray for the peace of the city, and love our neighbor.

In support of parents, teachers and school leaders through this season, ClassicalU is offering new monthly subscribers two months of 50% off for all individuals using the code ClassicalChristmas2024 from our subscription page through December 31. This Christmas, immerse yourself in themes of justice, personhood, and leadership to enrich your understanding of the season’s significance for us and our students.

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