Over the last two millennia (including today), Christians have been engaged in providing education. These are four main varieties that I know about:

1. Education designed to teach the principles of Christianity to those who want (or whose parents want them) to learn them. Think “catechism” or “religion eduction” classes.
2. Education in basic literacy and knowledge at an elementary level, and education in classical disciplines of arts and sciences (including but not in an way limited to theology) subsequently made available to college or university enrollees seeking to increase their learning and base of knowledge.
3. Similar education made available only to those who agree to become the type of Christian that the providing religious body believes that they should become. For example, I have seen this first-hand in rural Liberia, where children would be provided basic education only if they converted to Christianity rather than either continue their own family’s ancient religious practices or convert to Islam. (Similarly, I visited villages where health care was offered to people only if they converted to Islam, rather than stick with their traditional belief systems or become Christians! One family I spoke with told me that they are “school Christians,” “hospital Muslims,” and do what they’ve always done in the privacy of their own homes.)
4. Indoctrination in religious beliefs and anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-cultural beliefs (creationism, abstinence-only sex education, biblical literalism, plus a panoply of bigotries wrapped in smug self-righteousness and passed off as the “Word of God”).

So when speaking of “religious education” or “Christian education” or “religious/Christian schools,” it is crucial to be clear as to which of these four categories one is referring. While there is frequently overlap and line-blurring whenever Christian groups provide education, these all come from distinctly different starting points, respectively:

1. The first of these is really an “in-house” concern–Christians teaching persons who voluntarily want to learn about the brand of Christianity being taught by these Christians.
2. The second is legitimate education–teaching literacy, philosophy, chemistry, ethics, computer science, and more, offered to those who voluntarily seek out the particular Christian institution for that education.
3. The third represents a monopoly on education, and using it to extort conversions to the faith. Education is the carrot and its denial the stick.
4. The fourth is contemptible. It involves warping the minds of children while endangering our society–all under the banner of a religion that despises the very earth that we live in and the great gifts of intellect and integrity with which humans have been endowed.

Today’s saint, Theonas, was a powerful and influential third-century archbishop. He served for 19 years in one of the intellectual centers of the world–Alexandria, Egypt–where he used his position to further education for the citizenry. The second of the four varieties. Ave, Theonas!