When the State Presumes to Educate

A hundred years ago, the great New Testament scholar J. Gresham Machen sounded the alarm about educational freedom in America. He believed that the state had begun to encroach in a most grievous way upon the sphere of the family, assuming duties it had no warrant to perform. 

Machen's words of caution are most timely for us. We live in an epoch in which, informed by UN policy goals, western governments are showing fresh determination to become arbiters and guarantors of the education of each and every child. This week we look in detail at what is happening in the UK, and consider what a faithful Christian response to these pressures might look like. 

 

Featured resources: 

– Excerpt from J. Gresham Machen, 'Shall We Have a Federal Department of Education?'

– Excerpt from Ned B. Stonehouse, J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir (1954, repr. Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987, 2020), p. 468. 

– Joshua Kellard, 'When the State Presumes to Educate', Banner of Truth Magazine, Issues 743–4 (August–September 2025). 

 

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