SCL, Hospitality & Schools that Restore

The Society for Classical Learning 2024 National Conference, which ended last evening, called everyone to hospitality. And it did so in light of the societal crisis we all face today. Society has largely lost confidence in our cultural heritage. In that light, to be a classical school, as the SCL schools are, is to recollect what many or most have forgotten. That makes the work of teaching difficult. It also makes teaching life giving.

When we think rightly about hospitality in our schools, we recall what our forebears did to bring life to a world in crisis. The recollection is a necessary exercise in knowing what is true. It is also a source of practical wisdom as we tend to the crisis around us.

As Baroness Philippa Stroud recalled in her plenary speech, there are two major kinds of Christian hospitality: The one we shower on those close to us, namely family and friends. Exemplars for that form of hospitality are Martha and Mary. The other kind of hospitality is what the Good Samaritan showered on the half-dead man on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho—hospitality to a stranger. If we think about it, everyone in society pretty much falls under either category: someone familiar to us, or a stranger. To practice hospitality in our schools is to give life to each and every person, a profound work born from the Gospel.

In another plenary talk, David Stroud, husband to the Baroness, recalled the story of Thomas Arnold's and others' exemplary work renewing education in Britain, first within the familiar environs of the Rugby School, then radiating out to impact other schools, Sunday schools, and all kinds of educational missions to both restore broken schools among the familiar and to extend schooling to the stranger, the poor, the neglected. In Thomas Arnold's wake, more than two dozen of his teachers became headmasters, and his son, Matthew, became England's leading voice for building culture, as we find in his work, Culture and Anarchy.

The Arnolds and their allies were devoted Christians. They did not concede the cultural ground to the anarchy that reigned in British schools. Nor did they leave the stranger to neglect, which was another form of anarchy. Operating from a dogged apostolic attitude, they worked in the tradition of Martha and Mary and the Good Samaritan. They also carried the torch of Christians who advanced the Lord's purposes in great times of societal disorder.

One recalls how the early Christians, at a time when they had no power and little wealth, organized themselves to care for the poor in pagan Rome. The poor included fellow Christians but also their Jewish neighbors and, perhaps most tellingly, their pagan neighbors. Their organization was unprecedented in history and was a catalyst for the conversion of Rome.

Christians cultivated hospitals in the middle ages. In the drawing above, we find that the sick were situated among the Church's altars, a sign of how they were cherished as the presence of the suffering Lord.

Note in the lower left hand corner of the sketch how two sisters are sewing a body bag, evidence of how they and the others practiced what we now call hospice. In other words, they tended to the sick, bringing them to health where possible and caring for those whose end came not unattended but touched by the Christians who served them, embraced in Christian hospitality.

Such works of hospitality in Rome and medieval Europe were transformative. Among other things, Western order is permanently marked by a commitment to the poor and to the sick.

Could the growing movement of classical Christian schools be such a leaven? Could it break the anarchy of schools in America, Canada, England, Australia and elsewhere? Might the movement effect a restoration of our cultural patrimony and lift students to the dignity that our common heritage reveals?

I think the answer is yes. I believe the hope is real. Several hundred Christians—mostly Protestants but Orthodox and Catholic as well—gathered in the Lord's name these past few days and dedicated themselves to his purposes: to work in his name and, by their schools, to reach the familiar, as did Martha and Mary, and the stranger, as did the Good Samaritan—and, we can add, as did the early Christians who organized themselves to serve the poor and as did the medieval Christians who organized themselves to care for the sick and dying.

Finally, the SCL conference participants resolved themselves to build authentic school culture, as did the Arnolds and their allies who led an educational renewal in Britain. How might we respond to their resolve? Support them. Encourage them. Lead others to their schools. And pray. "Come, Holy Spirit" is, I suggest, a simple but apt prayer for the moment.

Andrew J. Zwerneman is co-founder and president of Cana Academy. He blogs weekly at www.canaacademy.org and is the author of History Forgotten and Remembered (2020) and The Life We Have Together: A Case for Humane Studies, A Vision for Renewal (2022). Andrew hosts Cana Academy’s The Best Books and is the narrator for the forthcoming series of films, HISTORY250?.