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Christianity Today, February (Web-only), 2009 |

Do Christian Schools Make Students More Religious?

A new study says they might, but adds that parents and peers have more influence.

Tobin Grant | posted 2/11/2009 11:17AM

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Jeremy Uecker's article, "Alternative Schooling Strategies and the Religious Lives of American Adolescents," was published in the December 2008 issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

Tobin Grant is an associate professor of political science at Southern Illinois University — Carbondale. He is coauthor of Expression vs. Equality: The Politics of Campaign Finance Reform and dozens of academic articles on politics and religion.

Related Elsewhere:

An abstract of Uecker's article is available at the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion site.

Milton Gaither discussed Uecker's findings on his Homeschooling Research Notes blog.

Grant earlier discussed research on religiosity during a recession and the abstinence pledges.

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February (Web-only) 2009, Vol. 53

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andrew tucker jc

Posted: February 18, 2009 10:44 PM

Christian schools can be nice.Major problems are that aristocracy in the church.What programs has franklin jensen , rod parsley,joel osteen produced.A group of snobs using christianity to feel safe. Simple preach against snobism and help poverty stricken in church.Poverty stricken caused by satanist.If supernatural powers and no helpful fighters.Bible story was of moses in war.Book of job. And other stories of war.Also now usa government allowing huge antiabortionist christian before getting saved targeted over30 times by crazed criminals that he did not see go to jail.Some took hostages.Now USa gov officials allowing more abuse of that man.Group of teens being snobish at his church when he gave best on furthering info about the bible.Very little christian business in the usa. no meinke or chick a fil in my town.Also ignorant christian heavy metal record companies constantly producing blood and skulls on their t-shirts, and cd covers.What has God done.Jerk God.and the SICKO usa.warning

Jonathan

Posted: February 15, 2009 2:07 AM

Working at a church that has home school, private, and public school students in nearly the same ratio, (30%, 30%, 40%, respectively) I have found some very interesting things. One, there are many students at private Christian schools that are not saved. They drink, party, and live in sin like the stereotypical public school kids. What makes this worse, however, is that they become hypocrites. This temptation to compromise can be even worse than seeing the blatant sin of a public school. Two, my public school kids seem to read their bibles more on their own, and pray more, because they see the darkness in their schools that much clearer. Putting students in private school does remove them from the world system, but does it prepare them for the world after high school? What happened to Jesus' words from John 17:15-16 - "I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of this world."

Lee	Posted: February 13, 2009 4:37 PM

We chose Christian school (K-8) for our children not only because of the integration of Christian beliefs with subject matter, but also, and for us, equally important, because we knew the power of peer influence. We wanted those formative years to be ones during which they were given every opportunity to build a solid, tight foundation without the many distractions of public school. It has been a worthwhile expenditure, and our children have gone on to public high school solid in their faith and wise in their choices. If peers have such a strong influence on our children, then to me it's a no-brainer to put them in a situation where their peers will be exerting positive (generally, anyway...) influence.

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