Keeping Music Education Christian

Keeping Music Education Christian

Christian educational institutions have an obligation to keep music education Christian education.  If they do not, they cannot fulfill their mission.  If Christian elementary, secondary, and post-secondary educational institutions are only different from secular institutions in that they sing and play religious music, or because they  use God or Christian in their name, they are not essentially  different from secular schools, colleges and universities. 

          A congruent understanding of the nature and value of music education at its deepest levels can do more than anything else to keep CME (Christian music education) essentially Christian.  As was said before, a series of systematic written beliefs concerning the nature and value of music that is truly Christian and is carefully applied to an educational institution’s music praxis is necessary if music education is to become and remain Christian.

          All one has to do is to search for Christian Music Education Philosophy on the World Wide Web to understand that many Christian educational institutions do not publicize their CMEP (Christian music education philosophy) up front on their websites.  It is possible that many of them do have written statements of music philosophy.  However, for some reason they do not consider it important to make these statements easily available.  If a Christian institution is going to be intellectually honest it should make it completely clear to prospective music students that the quality of music education is different than the main stream of public higher education.  For more on this topic see my new book Music Philosophy in Christian Perspective, by Garen Wolf.   Schmul publishing Co, Nicholasville, Ky. 2018.