Education & the REFORMATION

Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it. Proverbs 22:6 NIV

"In 1528 Melanchthon drew up the 'Saxony School Plan,' which served as the basis of organization for many schools throughout Germany.

This plan dealt with the question of a "multiplicity of studies that were not only unfruitful but even hurtful... The teacher should not burden the children with too many books." (Painter, p. 152). 

These reformers realized that the strength of the Papal church lay in its educational system, and they struck a crushing blow at this system and, wounding it, brought the Papal church to her knees. 

The reformers established a system of Christian schools that made Protestants of the children. This wonderful revolution in education and religion was accomplished in one generation, in the brief space of one man's life. To give an idea of the power in that great Christian educational movement, the historian, speaking of several European countries, says: "The nobility of that country studied in Wittenberg--all the colleges of the land were filled with Protestants... Not more than the thirtieth part of the population remained Catholic... They withheld their children, too, from the Catholic schools. The inhabitants of Maniz did not hesitate to send their children to Protestant schools. The Protestant notions extended their vivifying energies to the most remote and most forgotten corners of Europe. What an immense domain had they conquered within the space of forty years..."

After the death of Luther and Melanchthon, the theologians, into

whose hands the work of the Reformation fell, instead of multiplying Christian schools, became absorbed in the mere technicalities of theology, and passed by the greatest work of the age. They sold their birthright for a mess of pottage. 

When the successors of Luther and Melanchthon failed to continue that constructive work, which centered largely in the education of the youth, who were to be the future missionaries and pillars of the church, internal dissension arose. Their time was spent very largely in criticizing the views of some of their colaborers who differed with them on some unimportant points of theology.

Protestantism degenerated into dead orthodoxy, and they broke up into opposing factions. The Protestant church, thus weakened, could not resist the great power of rejuvenated Papal education."
E. A. Sutherland