Spring Hill Christian Academy
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Accreditation & Certification

The question of “accreditation” comes up frequently for Christian Schools across the nation. Most often it is phrased in terms of asking if a Christian School is “state accredited” which is to ask, does the Christian School have the same philosophy, standards, curriculum, goals, methods, etc., of the state accredited schools?

A minority of Christian schools do pursue and acquire state approval by way of accreditation. In doing so they lose their Christian distinctiveness. State accreditation requires the embracing of an educational creed (i.e., statement of faith) built upon a worldview and presuppositions that do not align with our view of education.

The word accreditation comes from the Latin word credo. It is the word from which we derive our English word creed. A creed, like the well-known “Apostle’s Creed,” is a profession of faith and history, grounded upon a particular worldview, the worldview of the Christian Gospel.

All education, including public education, is inescapably grounded upon and driven by certain assumptions (faith presuppositions), and therefore all are inescapably religious. The question concerning education is never, “Is the education religious or not religious?” The question is this: “Which religion is the education built upon?” These (faith) presuppositions form the foundation upon which the “house” of the school is built.

Accreditation is the formal statement of faith that describes the “creed” by which the task of education is done. Christian schools, to be consistently Christian, must embrace the religion of the Bible as the only creed for doing education.

Christians, therefore, ought never accept accreditation from any organization or entity that does not hold to an unswerving commitment to the authority of the Bible as the only foundation for True education and to the confession that Jesus is Lord over all, including Sunday school and Monday through Friday school.

Pastor Douglas Wilson of Christ’s Church in Moscow, Idaho, writes that the only consistent option for Christian schools is a commitment to “…that of a genuine biblical worldview….” It “…is to establish Scripture at every point as the foundation on which to build all knowledge. Moreover, Scripture is now to be the final arbiter of whether such knowledge was built in line with the foundation. If Jesus Christ is not the Lord of all, then two added to two does not equal four. If He did not die for the sins of His people, then A and non-A cannot be distinguished. If the triune God of Scripture did not speak the universe into existence, then there is no universe to understand. The protest will come – ‘But you are presupposing the truth of Christianity.’ And the answer which must follow is, ‘Most certainly. This is a Christian school.’" [1]

Therefore at SHC, while we are not state accredited, we are certified by both Tennessee Association of Christian Schools (TACS) and American Association of Christian Schools (AACS) as these institutions follow a God-centered view of education.

[1] Douglas Wilson, Repairing the Ruins, (Moscow, ID: Canon Press,1996) p.15.

Spring Hill Christian Academy
500 Saturn Pkwy #201, Spring Hill, TN 37174
615-392-0088

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