Kim Davis’s sarcastic mockery of Deborah Benson’s book is asinine. I assume that she hasn’t actually read the book.I have read the book. And I can say that it has helped me to think about the proper place of Christian schools in a liberal society like the United States. By “liberal” I mean classical liberalism—the idea that government should be limited to protecting the equal liberty of individuals to live as they please so long as they do not harm others. Part of that protected liberty is the religious liberty of individuals to satisfy their religious longings for spiritual meaning as they choose without coercive interference. This includes the liberty of parents to provide for the religious instruction of their children in their homes, their churches, and their religious schools.Roger Williams and other Christian thinkers have promoted a Christian liberalism that interprets the New Testament as teaching that the Christian church is a voluntary association of believers who can properly expel members who oppose Biblically orthodox beliefs and practices, but the church cannot rightly coerce anyone to accept those beliefs and practices. In this way, as Williams noted, the New Testament departs from the Old Testament, because the people of Israel lived in a theocracy in which Israel’s religion was enforced coercively by law.Classical liberals like Adam Smith adopted this position in defending a free market of religion, which each religious sect teaching children in its own schools. In the United States, among the Christian schools, there is free competition for students and tuition, with different schools appealing to different consumers of Christian education. As Smith foresaw, this free market in religious instruction allows for the greatest satisfaction of the diverse religious longings of parents and children.Although it is not elaborated as an explicit theme of her book, Benson does implicitly show how a Christian liberalism can shape a Christian education in Christian schools.Benson is the Superintendent of Parkview Christian Academy in Yorkville, Illinois. When she arrived at Parkview in 2013, the school was on the brink of financial collapse because of administrative mismanagement and declining enrollment. Over the past three years, she has improved the financial management of the school, and enrollment has jumped from 208 in 2013 to 325 today. But she would say that this economic improvement has depended upon a spiritual improvement.Many Christian schools are facing serious challenges to their existence. Many have closed their doors. The leaders of such Christian schools facing such problems want to find practical solutions. But Benson's argument is that they cannot rightly decide what to do if they have not first decided who to be, because the practical management of a Christian school cannot succeed without first having a clear vision of its spiritual mission. The practical problems for Christian schools are only the symptoms of the deeper spiritual illness.In the first half of her book, Benson presents a "renewed way of being Christ-like" for Christian schools. In the second half, she shows how this renewed way of being is manifested in the practical policies of a Christian school.She presents her new way of being Christ-like as based on "a more Biblically consistent Christian school model," which is summarized as "teaching Christ in all content and process." The most obvious problem here is that the Bible (Old Testament and New Testament) says nothing specific about Christian schools, although it does say a lot about spiritual teaching coming through families, synagogues, and churches. Because of this absence of any clear Biblical teaching about Christian schools, Christians disagree about what might count as a "Biblically consistent Christian school model."In the United States, the great majority of students in Christian schools are in Catholic schools. Benson says nothing about these Catholic schools, but her silence might suggest to many readers that she believes that only Protestant schools can be truly Christian schools. If so, then many readers might want some argumentation for this conclusion.Benson might argue that the Lutheran and Calvinist Reformers were right in claiming that the Catholic traditions stray too far from the Bible to count as Biblical Christianity, and thus a Catholic school cannot satisfy a "Biblically consistent Christian school model." But what she says about the voluntariness of Christian education implies that Catholic schools should be tolerated as an expression of religious liberty, and thus she would disagree with those Reformers who advocated persecution of Catholics.Thus, Benson's position seems to assume a Biblical liberalism, in which the Bible is interpreted as Roger Williams interpreted it--as supporting equal liberty for all religious beliefs and practices that do not require religious coercion.She relies on many Biblical verses, but the most prominent is Acts 2:39. After the Day of Pentecost, Peter speaks to the Christians: "The promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call." Benson interprets this to mean that the Christian community includes not only the Christians and their children but also non-believers who might join their community.Although nothing is said in Acts about Christian schools, she reads this as implying that Christian schools should be open to enrolling students whose parents are not Christians. Most Christian schools see themselves as bringing together three Christian institutions--the Christian home, the Christian church, and the Christian school. Consistent with this model, the admission of students to a Christian school requires proof that the students belong to a family that is a member of a recognized Christian church. Benson argues that Acts 2:39 supports the conclusion that a Christian school should be open to those who are "afar off" or "sojourners," who are not Christians but are attracted to the Christian school.This is likely to be the most controversial part of Benson's argument for the members of the Christian school movement. As she indicates, many Christian parents are adamant that one of the main reasons for sending their children to a Christian school is to protect them from the "bad" kids from the "bad" families that are not Christian.To defend her Biblical model of the Christian school as including non-Christian "sojourners," Benson must show that such a school can teach Christ in content and process by enforcing five Biblical boundaries. The first is the exclusion of non-believers from any leadership in the Christian school. The teachers, the administrators, and other staff members must all be professing Christians. The second boundary is the exclusion of non-believers from the Sacraments--the Lord's Supper and Baptism. Except for these two points of exclusion, the non-believers in the school are treated the same as the believers.The third Biblical boundary is the prohibition against any open opposition to Biblical faith. Although the students and parents in the school do not have to openly profess the Christian faith, they must not openly oppose it in the school. Those who are openly oppositional will either choose to leave the school, or the students will be expelled from the school.The fourth Biblical boundary is that all the benefits of living in the Christian community of the school are to be shared with the non-believing members of the school. After all, that's why some non-believers have chosen to enroll their children in Christian schools--they want their children to enjoy the Christ-like loving care and instruction that only a Christian school can provide.The final Biblical boundary is that both believers and non-believers in the Christian school will bear both the protection and the consequence of Biblical law. That law enforced in school will protect everyone from the injustice that is prohibited by Biblical law. But that also means that those who violate that law will be punished. For example, Benson quotes from Leviticus 24:16, which teaches that "him that blasphemes the name of the Lord, he will be put to death for sure, and all the congregation will have to stone him. The same for the sojourner (ger) and him that is born in the land; when he blasphemes the name of the Lord, he will be put to death."And yet, while she does not explicitly say so, Benson surely would not endorse punishing blasphemers with death. Why not? Because New Testament Christian liberalism teaches us that the theocratic law of the Old Testament violates the religious liberty and toleration taught by the New Testament? That's the argument of Roger Williams and other proponents of Christian liberalism, which is implicit in Benson's conception of a Biblically based Christian School.The terms of that Christian liberalism are made clear in the second part of Deb's book, where she shows the practical procedures and norms that follow from her Biblical vision of the Christ-like way of being. The organizational practice of a Christian school enforcing its Biblical worldview depends on requiring all families to read and sign every year an Admissions Statement, which states some of the main precepts of a Biblical worldview that will be taught in the school. Parents must agree to have this taught to their children. They must also agree that if they openly oppose this teaching in school, they will be asked to leave, or their children will be expelled.This illustrates how Christian liberalism can enforce the orthodox beliefs and practices of New Testament Christianity without violating the religious liberty and toleration required for a free society. One must reject the theocracy taught by the Old Testament as superseded by the individual liberty of the New Testament, where the first Christians are shown as forming churches based on voluntary membership, which could properly expel those who refused to abide by the church's articles of faith, but there was no coercive violence in this. What Adam Smith proposed as a free marketplace of religious sects was the practice of the early Christians. It was not until Constantine established Christianity as the religion of Rome that Christians sought the coercive enforcement by law of Christian beliefs and practices. Liberal Christians have sought to return to that original New Testament understanding of the separation of church and state.Consider, for example, the clause of the Admission Policy Statement on "sexual purity." Human sexuality is understood as "limited to the intimate physical union between one woman and one man, bound in marriage by a vow," which prohibits "same-gender sexual unions."When Benson turns to a series of anecdotal case studies, her first is the story of a lesbian couple who applied at Parkview for the admission of their son, who had been conceived by artificial insemination. As part of the admission process, they were told that they and their son would be welcomed into the school with Christian love, but that the school would teach the students that their way of life is wrong, and that this would be expressed respectfully and not in a demeaning way, but it would be clearly taught without apology. They were also told that any attempt to challenge this teaching in the school would result in a severing of the relationship. They agreed to this. Their son enjoyed three years of successful schooling. They finally withdrew their child only for financial reasons.Here is a clear illustration of Christian liberalism. Christians can fervently affirm the beliefs and practices of Biblical Christianity, and they can organize their lives--in their homes, their churches, and their schools--to manifest this Christian way of being. But they can do this without demeaning the lives of those individuals who disagree, without violating religious liberty and toleration, and yet still firmly and clearly affirming their faith.Christian liberals can thus be graciously unapologetic.