As we think about our daily call to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, we need to remind ourselves once more that the goal of the Christian life is not merely subscribing to a certain set of beliefs. Though it’s true that what we think is vital for the Christian life, the goal of the Christian life is that we are increasingly conformed to the likeness of Jesus. 

A few weeks ago my four-year-old daughter was obsessed with learning to ride a bike without training wheels. I was tired so I suggested a less demanding activity, ideally one that didn’t need me to bend at an awkward angle for long periods of time. But my daughter was persistent that now was the right time for her to learn. My own lethargy wasn’t a good enough reason to hold my daughter back. So on a sunny spring afternoon she put on her pink helmet and hopped on her hand-me-down Minnie Mouse bike.
She was so excited to ride a big girl bike. I awkwardly arched my back and started running behind her with my hand on the seat. I gave a few simple tips: Keep pedaling, sweetie! Look straight ahead!
We got to the end of the road. We did this a few times. I held on, and I repeated my expert advice over and over.
As my daughter became more comfortable, she began to get distracted with where she was looking. She started looking to the sides, gazing behind her to see if Mom was still watching, or looking at her feet pushing the pedals. Whenever she got distracted and looked in a different direction, she began to wobble. Eventually, the only advice I found myself repeating was: Look straight ahead, sweetie!
Before each attempt I would ask her two questions, the first one: Will you look to the side, or at your hands, or at your feet? She would respond with a smile: No. Then I would ask: Will you look straight ahead? She would respond again with a smile: Yes.
Looking to Jesus
She eventually got the hang of it. She knew she had to keep pedaling to stay moving, and she knew she had to look straight ahead to stay balanced. Where she fixed her eyes made all the difference.
This sunny spring afternoon provided a helpful image for the daily life of a disciple of Jesus. Christianity is not merely about mentally affirming certain ideas and events.
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The Irish also had a hand in the recovery of education on the European continent in the late 8th and early 9th centuries. Having built an empire, Charlemagne realized that he desperately needed educated officials to govern it. So, he searched for the best scholar in all of Europe to head his educational reform program and found the Irish-trained Alcuin of York. Alcuin reintroduced liberal arts as the foundation for education in Europe. He started schools in monasteries, cathedrals, and even the palace itself. Alcuin also oversaw the systematic copying and preservation of any and all ancient texts that he could find. In fact, many of the oldest copies of classical works still in existence today date from copies produced under his direction.

The Christian commitment to advancing education is part of the historical record. While not wholly consistent in every time and place, the Christian view of life and the world (especially its view of a created, ordered reality and the divine imprint on every human person) has been history’s most fertile ground for advancing learning and knowledge.
In a Christian worldview, the value of education isn’t merely utilitarian. Instead, it grows from the rich soil of Christian beliefs: in a God who wants to be known, Who created an ordered and knowable universe to be stewarded by humans, to whom He gave the ability to learn and the capacity to use knowledge in His service.
That worldview framework has been uniquely fruitful for advancing education, even (and perhaps especially) at times of civilizational crisis. For example, during the decline of the Roman Empire’s authority in Western Europe, education went into sharp decline. Centuries worth of accumulated knowledge and learning were at risk of being lost forever, except In Ireland, where monks preserved learning that they’d later reintroduce to Europe.
Irish monks viewed the preservation of literature and knowledge as part of their task as Christian scholars and clergy. More than merely preserving learning, they innovated in the methodology of education. Up to this point, the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew languages were written in an unbroken stream of letters with no capitalization, punctuation, or word spacing. The Irish changed that and, in doing so, made writing a primary method of learning.
The Irish also had a hand in the recovery of education on the European continent in the late 8th and early 9th centuries. Having built an empire, Charlemagne realized that he desperately needed educated officials to govern it. So, he searched for the best scholar in all of Europe to head his educational reform program and found the Irish-trained Alcuin of York.
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Populist Christianity associates piety with hearth and home, nation and place. The lead singer of the Pilgrim Jubilees, a gospel quartet, told an interviewer: “My brothers and I grew up in a little three-room shack in Houston, Mississippi. We didn’t have much back then, church, but we had a family altar.” This pride in a single place, however humble, and in a pious home, however plain, is typical of populist Christianity. 

No prejudice so perfectly unites the American overclass as contempt for morally conservative, religiously revivalist, and politically populist protestants. Every day, it seems, a prestige publication prints a new article describing them as sexist, racist, white-nationalist threats to democracy. Far more than the socialists who see themselves as radicals, backwoods Baptists and TV preachers, holy-rolling faith healers and strip-mall seminarians are hated and feared by our ruling class. No other group of comparable size consistently opposes those who run our society. That is why they are denounced so unsparingly, and why they deserve greater praise.
Populist Christianity took form in the early 19th century during the Second Great Awakening. Methodist circuit riders, Baptist preachers, and Mormon seers remade America’s religious landscape, proclaiming a populist creed that was no less revolutionary than the political transformation that had swept through the country in the decades before. As Nathan Hatch notes in his great book, The Democratization of American Christianity, its leaders were “short on social graces, family connections, and literary education.” They often seemed “untutored” and “irregular,” but this only proved their bona fides. Because they preached a creed that “associated virtue with ordinary people,” their lack of refinement vouchsafed their reliability.

The movements that sprang from the Second Great Awakening did not oppose all forms of authority. They instead tended to the elevation of a single leader, who was seen as vindicating the interests of the common man against an unaccountable elite. These men were entrepreneurial figures, adept in the latest methods of mass communication. They understood and frequently shared popular tastes. Unbound by old institutions, they built new ones in which they exercised unquestioned authority. Hatch describes the pattern: “The Methodists under Francis Asbury…used authoritarian means to build a church that would not be a respecter of persons.” Likewise, Mormons “used a virtual religious dictatorship…to return power to illiterate men.” Despite their tight control of their organizations, these men were seen as heralds of freedom, for they gave their followers the “right to think and act for themselves rather than depending upon the mediations of an educated elite.”

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