Render unto Caesar?

"Vercingetorix Throws Down His Arms at the Feet of Julius Caesar”

-Lionel Royer - 1899

Something is wrong in America: only 30% of adults gather on the Lord’s Day to worship at church each week, a number that has steadily declined over the past 70 years. Furthermore, even among children raised in Christian homes, nearly two-thirds abandon their faith during early adulthood. These trends are clearly correlated, as the beliefs formed in childhood and reinforced in young adulthood tend to persist throughout life. The bottom line? How and what your child is taught about man’s relationship with God is one of the strongest predictors of their lifelong convictions.

In the United States today, approximately 90% of K-12 students attend government schools, leaving just 10% in some form of private education (including homeschooling). Of those privately educated, 75% attend a Christian school, meaning only 7.5% of all schoolchildren receive an explicitly Christian K-12 education. Given that just 30% of Americans attend church weekly (a group we can safely categorize as practicing Christians), this means only 1 in 4 Christian children are given a comprehensive Christian education. With so many Christian students attending secular schools, is it any wonder such a large majority abandon their faith?

Pastor Voddie Baucham famously warned, “We cannot continue to send our children to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans.” A 2020 research study concluded that “increasingly secularized government control of education … can account for virtually the entire increase in secularization around the developed world.” Simply put: education matters. There is no such thing as neutral education. Someone’s worldview is being imprinted on your child. Will it be Christ and Him crucified, or some other creed?

“Don’t bind my conscience,” some Christian parents may retort. “I have Christian liberty, who are you to judge?” others will respond. These are predictable reactions. Yet Holy Scripture is unequivocal: Christian parents are commanded to “bring [children] up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). Will 2 hours of church on Sunday suffice to overcome 40 hours of weekly secular indoctrination in government schools, where teachers are legally barred from presenting the Bible as the inherent Word of God? What if those teachers and school leaders are openly antagonistic toward biblical Christianity, as seen with the McLean Unit 5 School Board President?

Every Christian parent must reckon with these realities. Our educational decisions shouldn’t hinge on statistics alone, but on this foundational question: Will you render to God what is God’s, and to Caesar what is Caesar’s? Your children, image-bearers entrusted to you for a mere 18 years, belong to God, not the state. Will you surrender that sacred stewardship to pagan and secular strangers who work for the government? Or will you believe God’s faithful promise: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6)?

So render your children unto God. White Horse Academy exists to partner with parents in their God-given responsibility to raise their children to become faithful Christian cultural leaders. Schedule a school tour to discover how.