Would Mary send Jesus to Xavier?

“If Christian schools were really Christian”, wrote Sydney Anglican, Michael Jensen, “would anyone send their kids there?” Jensen continued, “are our values really Christian or are they blatantly middle class? Are we just perpetuating the idea that Christian discipleship, equals, a fairly acquisitive politically quiet, and socially invisible suburban lifestyle?”

Two decades ago, the Geelong College Principal, warned that government funding of church schools, was “not really for schooling, but rather, even if covertly, for religious purposes, social mobility and advancement, institutional adherence and dependence, displaced social dissatisfaction and resentment, and absolution of neglect” (The Sun, May 31, 1985). Such schools he concluded had little to do with the needy.

A Methodist Ladies College (MLC) chaplain, asserted that, “prestigious private schools risked losing the soul of its heritage, by valuing money over the welfare of some of its disadvantaged students” (The Age, April 1, 2001).

Later, a Uniting Church of Australia (UCA) correspondent, added, “we are duplicitous when we purport to be at the forefront of social justice ... yet simultaneously justifying the safeguarding of increased government funding to some of the richest schools in the country” (Crosslight, July 2007). A UCA minister, more recently commented, that, his “understanding of the Scriptures is that God has a special concern for the poor” (Crosslight, December 2009). While still another letter writer believes, that,” some Uniting Church schools have become part of a system which is inequitable and discriminatory and it is time we confronted the issue” (Crosslight, October 2009).

Are church schools, “really Christian”, or are they part of an inequitable system that continues to deny the poor, the disabled, and the marginalised, their right to a meaningful education?

The issue for the church is not a debate about public/state v private exclusive church schools, but simply, “What Would Jesus Do?” In short, would Mary and Joseph be sending Jesus, his brothers and sisters, off to Bethlehem Trinity, Nazareth King’s College, Jerusalem’s Carey College, or Shore on Jordan?

If the ministry of Christ is any guide, it’s not going to be any of these. In fact, the message of the Gospel stands in stark contrast to the multimillion dollar church school. The radical message of the Bible has to do, not with the wealthy, but with the poor and marginalised.

Jim Wallis, Christian activist, adviser to Barak Obama, and frequent visitor to Australia, tells of the seminary student who cut out of an old Bible, every reference to the poor and those who suffer injustice. From Amos, out came God’s anger, “toward you that trample on the needy and bring ruin to the poor” (Amos 8:4). Cut, was the scathing attack of God on those whose, “houses are full of what you took from the poor, who crushed and ground the faces of the poor into the dirt” (Isaiah 3:13-15). And says, Wallis, you can imagine what happened to the teaching of Jesus about caring for, “the least of these” (Matthew 25).

In fact, out went the more than 2,000 verses referring to the poor. In short, he writes, “we have responded to all the Scriptures say about the poor, by pretending it just isn’t there. We have cut the poor out of the Bible” (The Soul of Politics, Jim Wallis, P.163).

And for the mega church school, with its “heated indoor pools” and “seamless resource centres”, the poor are deliberately cut out and systematically ignored. Verse after verse, chapter after chapter, book after book, the Bible is the story of radical and revolutionary commitment to the poor and the marginalised.

Just published, is the Bible Society’s, Poverty and Justice Bible, highlighting more than “2,000 verses that speak of attitudes to poverty and injustice”, with the warning, that “now there is no excuse for missing them”. Catholic Social Teaching expresses this very explicit message as, “the preferential option for the poor”. But such teaching stands in embarrassing contrast to the mega-rich church school relentlessly pursuing ”a preferential option for the wealthy”.

By far the most common response to the poor by these schools is to either, avoid even mentioning the word, or, if they meet the children, “in the slums on the outskirts of Nairobi”, patronise them.

Anglican’s Brighton Grammar School in the midst of a $3 million world class soccer ground development, (“FIFA 2-star rated synthetic surface”), reported that students visiting a poor school in PNG, built “15 metres of modular shelving”, and were proud, “to be able to help some of their less fiscally wealthy peers”.

Another technique, particularly in marketing material, is not to be too specific about this God business. Some schools avoid any mention as did the UCA’s Haileybury, in a marketing exercise, which devoted a page to persuading parents why they should choose it over its competitors, but not a word about God. Many use terms like, “the school is based on traditional Anglican values”, or it’s, “committed to Christian values”, or it encourages students to live, “by a set of values consistent with the Christian faith”.

A survey of one denomination’s top end schools, found that none of the schools, “spoke of their relation to the Christian faith as trust in God through Christ. The relation to faith was most often described in derivative terms, such as through Christian heritage, values and principles. Two schools made no mention of faith” (Towards a Charter, Report No.1 UCA 2008).

As with most things, however, it’s the way these schools spend their money which shows where they stand in relation to the poor and the Gospel.

Knox Grammar currently oversees “a multimillion dollar construction program ... three Olympic-size indoor basket ball courts, a performance centre and an indoor 50-metre swimming pool”, meanwhile its students were off to Milne Bay (PNG) “where poverty ... leads to hardship ... to dig two toilets and construct a village tap”.

Carey Baptist Grammar School, with its “14-hectare sports complex”, and with yet another multimillion dollar building expansion completed, was sending students “to the poorest regions of Borneo, to work in third world conditions to help with schools, water and hygiene problems”. Carey funded this with a giant wheelbarrow race.

As some of Melbourne Girls Grammar students were wandering through their Science Futures and Creative Arts Centres, others were, “baking muffins for the homeless”.

Meanwhile, MLC students enjoying “world class facilities”, “a high tech media centre”, “suites of purpose built music rooms”, “Olympic standard gymnastic facilities”, all “set amongst beautiful gardens”, are able to raise “more than $100,000 each year for local, national and international charities”.

And the poor, well they weren’t a part of Trinity’s planned $5 million library, or Camberwell Grammar’s “ambitious” 10-year multimillion dollar development, including a huge underground carpark; they wouldn’t be going in and out of Geelong Grammar’s $16 million Wellbeing Centre, nor would they be seeing anything of Presbyterian Ladies College’s $2.3 million “profit”.

But the poor, disabled and ignored, know that at least 2,500 special needs kids are not getting any kind of support (New South Wales Public Schools Principals 2009 Report). They didn’t need the Victorian Auditor-General to remind them that there was a $200 million short fall in school maintenance funds, or that, “there are very large achievement gaps between students from rich and poor” families.

Nor did they need a reporter to tell them of yet another research report which showed that, “children from poor families have fallen so far behind ... they are in danger of never catching up” (The Age, December 3, 2009). They also know that thousands of them are, “being taught in old and shabby portable classrooms including, some believed to contain dangerous asbestos” (Herald Sun, October 24, 2009). But they were comforted by the “breakfast clubs” provided by 33 Victorian schools (The Age, October 12, 2008).

Let another Anglican, Kenneth Leech, have the last word. Reflecting on the church’s “option for the wealthy” he concludes, “What matters most to the churches as institutions is adaptation to, and acceptance by, the power structures. They take seriously the words of Jesus, ‘You cannot serve God and Mammon’, and they have opted for Mammon.”