Dominion and the Discipline of the Next Generation
How Jurisdiction Determines Moral Formation
Formation is never neutral because authority is never neutral. Scripture assigns responsibility for the shaping of children before it ever describes political systems or pedagogical theory.
Fathers are commanded to bring their children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. The Word is to be taught diligently in the home, spoken of when sitting, walking, lying down, and rising. The church is identified as the pillar and buttress of the truth. Along with the household and the magistrate, it bears a defined sphere of authority under God.
Jurisdiction means that God distributes authority across distinct spheres. The household bears real authority. The church bears real authority. The civil magistrate bears real authority. Each is accountable to God. Each is limited. None is commissioned to absorb the others.
Any discussion of education must begin here.
The Older Pattern of Formation
Early American education was largely home-directed, church-anchored, and local. Parents bore primary responsibility. Churches reinforced doctrine and moral order. Communities established schools that reflected inherited convictions about truth, virtue, and Scripture.
This arrangement was not perfect, and it was not uniform. Yet structurally, formation was personal and relational. Education functioned as an extension of household and congregation. The school functioned as a channel for an already received moral order.
The key point is structural. Authority for formation was dispersed and covenantal.
A Philosophical Reframing
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, educational philosophy shifted. John Dewey advanced more than methodological refinements. He articulated a different understanding of what schooling is for, reshaping its purpose at the level of first principles.
Education was no longer understood primarily as the transmission of inherited truth. It became a laboratory for social development. Truth was described as emerging from experience and communal interaction. Schools were envisioned as engines shaping the future society rather than custodians preserving received order.
The reorientation of education’s purpose was advanced plainly in public lectures, academic writing, and professional institutions as a conscious and argued shift in educational philosophy. If schools inevitably shape social order, then they should consciously direct that shaping.
That is a jurisdictional escalation.
The school moves from assisting families to guiding society. Teachers move from instructing children in inherited norms to participating in the reconstruction of those norms.
Depression-Era Consolidation
The economic crisis of the 1930s intensified the desire for coordinated direction. George S. Counts asked whether schools would dare to build a new social order. He argued that educators already influence society and should embrace that responsibility deliberately.
The reasoning followed a clear sequence: education forms citizens, citizens determine the character of society, and therefore schools become decisive instruments in shaping the nation’s future.
Compulsory schooling, state-level curriculum standards, teacher certification systems, and the professionalization of teaching practice followed.
Attendance became a legal requirement. Curriculum became standardized. Worldview formation became mediated through bureaucratic structures.
Even if individual teachers sought neutrality, the structure itself had changed.
The Structural Transfer
The most consequential shift occurred in who held primary authority over formation.
When attendance is mandated by law, curriculum defined at the state level, and certification governed by centralized boards, the authority to shape moral imagination moves.
Parents move from primary authority to collaborative participants in formation.
Church instruction functions alongside the system rather than directing it.
Professional consensus shapes the intellectual and moral framework children receive.
The underlying issue concerns jurisdiction and dominion: which sphere holds the governing authority to form the next generation.
Who bears the primary right and duty to shape a child’s moral and intellectual life?
Scripture assigns that responsibility to parents within covenant life. The civil magistrate is described as bearing the sword to restrain evil and commend good. He is not commissioned to define ultimate truth or determine the theological and moral architecture of children’s souls.
When the state becomes the primary catechist, it will form citizens according to its prevailing philosophy. That philosophy will shift as culture shifts. Centralized structures move together.
Structure Precedes Controversy
Modern debates about gender, sexuality, civic identity, and moral instruction are often treated as sudden ruptures. They are better understood as developments within an existing framework.
Once jurisdiction for formation is centralized, the system reflects the dominant worldview of those who govern it. The controversy arises when that worldview diverges sharply from inherited moral order.
The structure preceded these debates and provided the framework through which they could spread broadly.
This does not require assuming malicious intent. Many teachers labor faithfully. Many administrators act sincerely. Many families remain deeply involved in their children’s education.
Centralized jurisdiction makes ideological direction possible at scale. When cultural consensus shifts, centralized systems carry that shift broadly and quickly.
A Question of Spheres
This is a doctrine of spheres question.
When one sphere absorbs the formative role of another, distortion follows. The household weakens. The church retreats to peripheral influence. The state expands into moral instruction by default.
The issue concerns whether the church still recognizes who bears primary responsibility for formation.
Parents bear primary responsibility for the discipline and instruction of their children. Churches must disciple with seriousness, not as an accessory to schooling but as a covenantal mandate. The civil magistrate must remain within his God-ordained limits, promoting justice and public order without assuming dominion over conscience and ultimate allegiance.
When jurisdiction is violated, the shaping of the next generation no longer proceeds from the responsibilities God assigned within covenant. It gravitates toward the institutions that possess reach, structure, and enforcement. Formation then reflects the priorities of those who hold authority at scale rather than the duties entrusted to parents and the church.
The transfer of authority we barely noticed now shapes the debates we cannot ignore. The path forward requires the recovery of ordered authority according to God’s design.
God has spoken about who bears responsibility for the next generation. The church must recover the courage to believe and obey Him.