The North American Anglican Journal | Volume 1 Issue 2 | Fall 2024 FALL 2024: Back to School: The Pedagogy Issue
Publisher’s Letter...............................................3 Editor’s Letter.....................................................4 Introducing Classical Education: Orientation Address for Saint Paul’s Classical School Raymond Davison................................................6 An Excerpt from “Rugby School: Use of the Classics” Thomas Arnold ................................................. 10 ALL SAINTS’ DAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 Churchyards, Rise, Harvest Pilgrimages, Relics, & the American Church Brandon LeTourneau ���������������������������������������46 THE TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 SAINT MICHAEL AND ALL ANGELS. . . . . . 13 Bearing the Image, Reflecting the Son Andrew Brashier�����������������������������������������������54 A Vision for Christian Formation at St. Dunstan’s Academy Mark Perkins����������������������������������������������������� 14 THE TWENTY-FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Recapturing a Medieval Mind: The Missing Gap in Classical Christian Education Brian Foos and David Seel, Jr.������������������������� 19 THE TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Music to Order the Soul (Part I): The Offerings of J.S. Bach William Jenkins������������������������������������������������25 SAINT SIMON AND SAINT JUDE, APOSTLES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Charlotte Mason and National Tradition in Education Lue-Yee Tsang���������������������������������������������������� 31 A Classical Response to AI in Education Ryan Bianchet���������������������������������������������������38 POETS’ CORNER. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Editor-in-Chief: Jesse Nigro Publisher: CJay Engel Editors: James Clark The Ven. Isaac Rehberg The Ven. Andrew Brashier Lue-Yee Tsang The Rev. Jared Lovell Train up a Pastor in the Way He Should Go Matt Kennedy����������������������������������������������������59 THE TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Redeeming Monasticism for Modern Protestants Jared Lovell.........................................................64 THE SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE ADVENT. . 68 Apprenticeship to the Carpenter King Nathaniel Marshall............................................69 THANKSGIVING DAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Fare Forward: The Influence of Christian Humanism on the Classical Christian Education Movement Sarah Collister.................................................... 81 SAINT ANDREW THE APOSTLE. . . . . . . . . 107 Contributors: Raymond Davison Thomas Arnold Mark Perkins Brian Foos David Seel, Jr. William Jenkins Lue-Yee Tsang Ryan Bianchet Brandon LeTourneau Andrew Brashier Matt Kennedy Jared Lovell Nathaniel Marshall Sarah Collister Design and Layout by Daniel van Straaten www.danielvanstraaten.com
Much of my thought in recent months has centered on the importance of culture. In reading the following essays, it dawned on me how deeply connected culture ought to be with education. That this might strike the credentialed educator as foolish speaks to how poorly the present age understands both culture and education. Culture, far from being a mere buffet of mass consumption, is in fact the lifeblood of a given people. We might learn from Christopher Dawson who noted that “a social culture is an organized way of life which is based on a common tradition and conditioned by a common environment. [A] common way of life involves a common view of life, common standards of behavior and common standards of value, and consequently a culture is a spiritual community which owes its unity to common beliefs and common ways of thought.” And if indeed this thing we call culture is the lifeblood of a people, then education ought to reinforce, promote, and facilitate the longevity of the culture. To be more specific, education ought to have the objective of training men to be catalysts of culture from one generation to the next. In our age, the two primary theories of education’s purpose are either that education exists to create advocates of the Regime’s ideology, or that education exists to create productive individuals who can contribute to the material well-being of nation (and the individual himself ). But who is willing to advocate for the culturally-oriented view of education? Namely, that the purpose of education is to be a catalyst, in the ever-fleeting present, that carries forth the cultural past in a way that honorably hands it off to the future. Education, under this arrangement, has as its beneficiary not the individual or the economy, but the spiritual community that transcends any given generation. Such a view of education’s place in the social order demands that we think so much differently not merely about education, but also about the meaning of society, the unity of a people, and the function too of religion in the provision of cultural transcendence. This is why a topic such as education fits so well in a magazine such as this one, centered around the religious ethos of Anglo-American culture. It is no coincidence that the great achievements in the liberal arts underwent tremendous development at the height of Christendom, and also that the collapse of liberal arts coincided with the Christendom’s subversion and disappearance. Religion and religious culture plays a unique and irreplaceable role within the formation of a true theory of education. And just as importantly, the holistic formation of young souls in the process of education should inspire and reinvigorate the religious consciousness of the culture. The articles that follow explore elements of these themes. Much could be said about education and its purpose, and we are happy to present here our third volume of essays and other reflections that touch on numerous aspects of these questions. May what follows be a blessing to every reader. CJay Engel TNAA Journal Publisher The North American Anglican | Volume 1 Issue 2 | Fall 20243
Pedagogy and Institutions: Training for Life in a Broken World In her now infamous claim that “it takes a village to raise a child,” Hillary Clinton sparked a defensive response in many conservatives who, rightly, had little faith in the kind of village Mrs. Clinton envisioned for their children. As Rod Dreher observed in The Benedict Option, many like him “took it as Mrs. Clinton’s nanny-state attempt to justify the government poking its nose into the business of the family.” However, Dreher writes about later revisiting the idea, acknowledging a deeper truth: it does, indeed, take a community to raise children well. Yet, this raises the question: what kind of community and, more importantly, what kinds of individuals and institutions are necessary for shaping virtuous children? The answer, I believe, lies in rediscovering, revitalizing (and rebuilding) the Christian institutions that were once the assumed backbone of American community life. It was Aristotle who wisely counseled that if we are to pursue “the good,” we need virtuous friends alongside us in that pursuit. But friendship, like education, cannot exist in a vacuum. It thrives in the context of healthy, functioning institutions—schools, churches, families— that cultivate the virtues necessary for life, not undermine them. In my own experience as a parent, educator, and lifelong learner, I have come to realize that individual effort, though commendable, falls woefully short without the support of larger, orthodox structures. As Christian 4 parents and educators living in an individualist and consumerist age, we are too often isolated in our attempts to raise the next generation of virtuous Christians. The nuclear family, while essential, is no longer embedded in the robust networks of community that our ancestors took for granted. Gone are the multi-generational households, the deeply rooted churches, and the educational institutions that used to form an integrated “village” in the truest sense of the word. When I first learned I was to become a father, I found myself searching—rather frantically, if I’m honest—for wisdom and guidance. This led me to classical Christian education, an option I hadn’t known existed until that moment. While my pastor’s children had been participating in Classical Conversations for years, this world of trivium, quadrivium, and the Great Books (not to mention the oft neglected mechanical arts) was entirely new to me. I had been primed for it, though, by entering into my own “classical conversations”—long nights spent on the front porch with friends—believers who shared my passion for Augustine, Aquinas, and C.S. Lewis (not to mention a good drink…and tobacco). These late-night conversations with friends whom I would eventually live with and work alongside for a time, opened my eyes to a richer intellectual tradition than I had encountered in my evangelical upbringing, and bolstered the faith of a young man who had recently returned to Christ after several years Volume 1 Issue 2 | Fall 2024 | The North American Anglican
wandering astray. My personal discovery of classical philosophy, paired with the deep wells of Christian thought, became the foundation of how I wanted to raise my own children. Yet, what struck me most, both then and now, is how education is not just about the transmission of knowledge or skills. It must be about forming souls, cultivating virtues that lead to a life of faith well lived. This brings me to one of the most important insights I’ve gleaned from reading one of Aristotle’s greatest modern champions, Alasdair MacIntyre. In After Virtue, MacIntyre defines virtue as “an acquired human quality the possession and the exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices.” Yet, this process, as he argues, cannot happen in isolation. Practices—like education—depend on a community of practitioners who share a common goal. The most determined and successful homeschooling family still requires resources and curricula, the products of a host of unseen contributors. Furthermore, these practices require institutions that provide the stability and structure necessary for virtues like justice, courage, and honesty to flourish. This was evident in my own early development as a Christian thinker taking place in the context of a “practice” (like studying theology and philosophy well above my learning) which was best situated within a supporting “institution” (a “neo-monastic” community in my case, formed by orthodox Evangelicals seeking a deeper discipline within to live out their convictions together). Without such institutions, we are left with mere individualism, where our best intentions as homeschooling or catechizing parents can fail if they receive no reinforcement from other institutions (households, churches, Christian community leaders) in the practice of raising Christians ready to thrive where God plants them. It is clear to me that the renewal of classical Christian education requires more than just committed families and teachers. It requires the building—or in some cases, the rebuilding—of institutions that can serve as the vessels of wisdom and virtue. MacIntyre rightly contrasts the internal goods of a practice, such as the joy of learning and the cultivation of virtue, with the external goods that institutions often pursue, such as reputation, wealth, or power. There has been some attention paid recently to these external goods, like beautiful buildings, good strategic positioning at cultural and town centers, and so on. These points can’t be ignored. Yet, it’s orthodox institutions themselves that are necessary for the flourishing (and continuation) of any practice, and when properly ordered, they are essential to forming people who will, in turn, shape society. The essays in this volume of The North American Anglican reflect on the deep relationship between education and virtue, between practices and institutions. As we seek to educate the next generation of children, catechumens, tradesmen, and ministers, it is imperative that we not only teach them knowledge but also form their souls through the cultivation of Christian virtues. This formation must happen within the context of a community—a “village,” if you will—that understands the importance of truly Christian education and is dedicated to upholding the institutions that make such an education possible. Let us, then, renew our commitment to these practices, ensuring that they take root in institutions that honor God and cultivate the kind of people who will stand as pillars of Christian society in the generations to come. Support such good Christian work in your own community if you can afford it, and pray about supporting the efforts of the various heroic works you read about in these pages. I hope that our readership at The North American Anglican can function in some small part as a sort of virtual village, bound together by our faith in Christ and the many formative traditions we celebrate and promote as Anglicans and orthodox Christians. If you’re blessed by what you’re reading, don’t be a stranger! Let us know how we’re doing, and what you hope to see next. Yours in Christ, Jesse Nigro Editor-in-Chief The North American Anglican | Volume 1 Issue 2 | Fall 20245
Orientation Address for Saint Paul’s Classical School Raymond Davison I n 1947, Dorothy Sayers, a scholar of medieval literature whose translations we use in this school, presented an essay later published under the title “The Lost Tools of Learning.” In that essay, included in your Orientation Packet, she describes the decline of education in her day, namely the decline in the ability to think through arguments as presented in newspapers, journals, and private conversation. She then goes on to describe from her own reading of medieval literature 6 and education a model for educational development: The Trivium, supplemented by the Quadrivium. In the early 1980s, this essay was discovered by American pastors and parents seeking a stronger education for their own sons and daughters, leading to the formation of now nearly five hundred schools across the country, three major associations, ten colleges, and five major publishing houses dedicated to this Restoration of Classical Education. Saint Paul’s Classical School, dreamt in 2019 and Volume 1 Issue 2 | Fall 2024 | The North American Anglican
founded in 2021, is just one of these points of contact with this broader educational movement back towards the tradition. Two of the words I just used may have been unfamiliar to you, “Trivium” and “Quadrivium,” both Latin words. The Trivium is “the three ways,” Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric. Grammar means asking what are the basic facts and entails the fundamentals of any realm of knowledge. For a Floridian example, what is an orange? How many parts does it have and what words do we use for those parts? Dialectic asks how one thing relates to other things as well as asking what are the principles by which it operates. For instance, How does a system of agriculture develop? What are the arguments for and against orange juice consumption? Rhetoric asks for beauty and eloquence. Sometimes this means writing a poem about oranges, sometimes it means writing a thesis about the need for changes within our system of fertilizing, cultivating, and bringing fruits to market. All of these questions are part of engaging the one question of an orange, but whatever one studies, one must know the Grammar first, which is why we call Kindergarten through Sixth Grade the Grammar School. The Primary school (Kindergarten through Second Grade) is in many ways pre-Grammar, but that’s beyond the scope of this talk. The Elementary School (Third through Sixth) is when we see the most opportunity for mastering the Grammar of things. In the Dialectic School (Seventh and Eighth Grade), we continue to ask Grammatical questions—these never stop being asked all through our education—but those grammar questions depend on prior knowledge put more and more to use in the Dialectic School. In the Rhetoric School (Ninth through Twelfth Grade), students are asked to reflect on the implications of their prior knowledge. These sorts of questions are not forbidden to younger students, but we recognize that they may not have enough grammatical knowledge acquired to answer those questions well. The Quadrivium, “the four ways,” if I can speak briefly, describes how we understand number: Number Itself (arithmetic), Number in Space (Geometry), Number in Time (Music), and finally Number in Time and Space (Astronomy and much of Natural Philosophy more broadly). All through our education, we want students to sit up and notice the world around them, from the garden observation begun in Kindergarten to the senior thesis project our students will inaugurate next academic year. A classical education is primarily oriented then to lifelong learning, to the cultivation of the soul. Job preparedness, achievement for the sake of achievement, is at best a side product and more often a distraction from education properly so called. As we said on our website and flyers in 2021, education begins in Wonder which leads to Wisdom which leads properly to Worship. This whole educational project is devoted ultimately to serving and loving our God, the Holy One, the Mighty One, the Immortal One, the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost. Having briefly sketched the project of Classical Education, I would now like to formally announce the mission statement of the school. This is not properly speaking new, but it is newly articulated as a standard by which the faculty, the staff, the parents, and the students can work well with each other: “Saint Paul’s Classical School serves families by guiding students to obtain Christian virtue and wisdom through love of God and neighbor by studying the Western Tradition.” As I did with the faculty earlier this week, I will divide the mission statement into four parts, according to the grammar of the mission statement. What I am giving you today is as brief as I can make it. Fuller meditation on the mission and classical education will be on the weekly email from Mrs. Haefele and myself. From the top, “Saint Paul’s Classical School serves families.” Even today, every student in the school was born before Saint Paul’s Classical School. These students were born into families, with fathers and mothers who desire good and excellent things for their children, who desire their children’s success. We exist as a school to serve families according to a particular vision of excellence, and those families which we are best able to serve are The North American Anglican | Volume 1 Issue 2 | Fall 20247
those families who recognize and desire the same kind of excellence. “Saint Paul’s Classical School serves families…” how? “By guiding students to obtain Christian virtue and wisdom.” Virtue must come first because otherwise we have graduated “clever devils,” men and women who are entertaining at bars and dinner parties but have no deep contribution to human society or Christ’s kingdom on earth. The chief Christian virtues are Faith, Hope, and Love. The cardinal virtues of pagan antiquity are Courage, Justice, Temperance, and Wisdom. These, God being gracious, are the qualities of an SPCS graduate. How do we guide students? “Through Love of God and neighbor.” Love is defined here as “willing the good of the other.” In order to love well, I have to know who and what my neighbor is, from the guy across the street to the animal in the forest, so that I can will and work to the good of that neighbor. What is the second method of our guiding? “By studying the Western Tradition.” First, the Western Tradition is fundamentally the Christian Scripture, the world in which it was written and the world over which it triumphed. The Christian faith is not divorced from the world, but found practiced in the lives of the saints—real people, not mere ideas. Second, the Western Tradition is good, from its philosophical investigations into virtue to the art and literature created within it. Third, the Western Tradition is ours. We exist within the story of Brevard County, in the State of Florida, a constituent state of the United States, which developed according to the English culture and philosophical project which interacts with the Reformation’s application of the so-called Renaissance in Western Europe, a reaction to certain medieval corruptions of the tradition received from Scripture and the philosophical groundwork of Greco-Roman civilization, itself arrayed against the decadent atrocities of Persia, Babylon, and Assyria. Fourth, in a global age, we recognize that there are other Traditions besides the one broadly called “Western.” We as a school recognize the good within other cultures and other traditions, but recognize that we are only capable of 8 teaching Kindergarten through Twelfth Grade according to one tradition as we learn to love our neighbors across the world. Fifth, we are aware of the ways in which the Tradition has been unsuccessful. We teach history and literature constantly asking, “Was this action good and why?” It would not be an education if we were to ignore error, nor would it be much other than self-abuse to be always harping on the errors of our own tradition. Again, this is not our last conversation about classical education or about our mission statement. Today’s address is an Orientation, in ten minutes to these two grand questions. Now to Fr. Oldfield on the Handbook. About Raymond Davison Fr. Raymond J. Davison is headmaster of Saint Paul’s Classical School and assistant priest at Saint Paul’s Anglican Church in Melbourne, FL. He is a graduate of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary and the King’s College, NYC. Volume 1 Issue 2 | Fall 2024 | The North American Anglican
never to allow yourself another new one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.” —C.S. Lewis, On the Reading of Old Books The North American Anglican | Volume 1 Issue 2 | Fall 20249
Fleepit Digital © 2021