The Christian Worldview and the Formation of Theo-Political Citizens

Abstract

This dissertation presents an ethno-case study explaining how students at a conservative Christian high school were socialized into ideas about civic and public life in a pluralistic society. Drawing on democratic educational theory and institutional theory to analyze ethnographic data gathered during a full school year of observations, interviews, and document collection, this dissertation addresses the following questions: (1) What are the logics, practices, and symbolic representations concerning civic identity and participation in democratic society conveyed explicitly and implicitly at a conservative Christian high school? (2) How do students understand and engage with ideas about civic identity and participation conveyed at that school? (3) How do families understand and engage with these ideas about civic identity and participation? This dissertation argues that the school was organized around a theo-political institutional logic committed to the absolute truth of Christianity. This logic was symbolically represented in the language and concepts of the “Christian worldview” and reinforced through consistent and recurrent school practices that shaped students’ behavior and their ways of interpreting the world. This theo-political logic, which was pervasive throughout formal and informal curriculum and instruction at the school, presented an all-encompassing vision of Christianity as “the truth” and offered a coherent connection between doctrinal beliefs and actual behavior. This logic was also notable for what it omitted and lacked, particularly acknowledgment of the racialized nature of schooling and society, attention to the pluralism of worldviews in a diverse democratic nation, and recognition of the systemic and structural causes of injustice in society. The emphases as well as the omissions of the theo-political logic at the school shaped students’ civic identity as first and foremost a religious identity, which meant engaging with society to promote conservative social policies, candidates, and political perspectives. The dissertation shows that students largely embraced the theo-political logic that animated the school, and their parents chose the school because of the presence of this logic.