My passion for decolonized Christian education did not begin with me. It began with my parents’ determination to secure a Christian education for their children despite the challenges they face. Their fight became the foundation of my own calling. This is the story of how their struggle shaped my mission.
In the early 1970s, when my parents became Christians, they chose to send my brother and me to Christian schools. Like many Black Christian families during that era, they believed faith-based education would provide moral grounding, academic structure, and spiritual formation. What they did not initially realize was that many Christian schools in America emerged during the years following Brown v. Board of Education as a direct response to integration. Across the South and beyond, many so-called Christian academies or segregation academies were established as White families withdrew from public schools rather than allow Black children to enter their classrooms. Religion was often used to justify separation based on the scripture “Don’t be unequally yoked…” These schools created environments where Black students were either unwelcome or expected to assimilate into a culture that denied the value of their own history and identity.
Although not every Christian school was founded with those intentions, the broader history of Christian education in America cannot be separated from resistance to integration. For Black families like mine, this created a painful contradiction. We loved Jesus and desired Christian education, yet we often entered spaces where Christianity had been intertwined with exclusion, silence around race, and distorted theology. Because of this, I experienced overt racism early in my educational journey. There were schools where our Black bodies were clearly not welcomed, where harmful interpretations of Scripture such as the so-called curse of Ham were used to justify prejudice, and where curricula erased or ignored the stories of people of African descent.
My parents faced an impossible choice. Public schools often felt spiritually hostile to their newfound faith, while Christian schools could be racially hostile to our presence. Yet instead of giving up, they fought. They chose to fight racism instead of fighting those institutions that did not align with our faith. They challenged racist treatment, questioned biased curricula, and sought out schools where faith and humanity could coexist more honestly. Eventually, I attended Riverdale Baptist for 7th-12th grade years. Many of the teachers were kind and supportive, even while broader institutional resistance to true inclusion still existed. Yet over time, change slowly emerged. My parents became involved in the school community, and by the time I graduated, my father gave the opening prayer at graduation. The school itself evolved into a more welcoming place that reflected a broader range of voices and experiences.
At the same time, the church my parents founded became a different kind of witness. Within our church community were many families who shared a commitment to educating their children within a Christian worldview. Some chose Christian schools, while others homeschooled. Long before homeschooling became commonplace, families in our church were creating educational pathways that sought to nurture both the faith and identity of their children. They understood that Christian education was not limited to a building or institution. It was a commitment to raising children who loved God, knew who they were, and understood their responsibility to serve others. The church became a place where parents encouraged one another, exchanged ideas, and supported different approaches to Christian education while remaining united around the shared goal of discipling the next generation.
Those experiences shaped the course of my life. As an adult, I remained convinced of the value of Christian education, but I also knew I could not simply recreate the systems that had wounded me as a child. I wanted to create something different—something rooted in Christ while fully embracing the dignity and humanity of all people. That conviction led me to found The Living Water School.
At The Living Water School, the goal is not to align with political ideologies or use Christianity as a tool of exclusion. The mission is to cultivate a Christ-centered education that welcomes all human stories into the learning experience. Students encounter rigorous classical education while also learning histories, literatures, and perspectives that have too often been ignored, erased or completely left out of the Great human conversation that has spanned the centuries and continents. The school seeks to embody the truth that every human being bears the image of God and therefore deserves to see themselves reflected in the story of humanity.
For me, a decolonized Christian worldview means teaching children that God did not place Europe or the West at the center of the world, but loves all of humanity equally, and because of that, we should too. A key way to teach loving as God loves is to welcome diverse human stories into the curriculum. Those stories exist, though historically and even today they are often erased. As parents and educators, we must do the work of uncovering them and sharing them.
I remember my parents teaching my brother and me that Jesus was not White and that His own genealogy reflects the diversity of the ancient world. The lineage recorded in Scripture includes people from different ethnic, cultural, and geographic backgrounds whose stories connect Israel to neighboring peoples and nations. These lessons helped me understand that Christianity has never belonged to a single race, nation, or culture, but has always been part of a larger human story. I also learned that when the Church was born on the Day of Pentecost, God intentionally revealed the gospel in a way that affirmed the dignity of many peoples at once. Rather than requiring everyone to adopt a single language or culture, the Holy Spirit enabled people from many nations to hear the good news in their own tongues on the same day. From the very beginning, Christianity was for all people. Teaching students these truths is providing a decolonized Christian education. It is helping them understand that all people are made in the image of God and that all human stories belong in the classroom.
I recall watching Roots and learning about Passover from a Rabbi my father invited to the church he founded when my brother and I were very young. I remember my parents starting Camp Kush, where we learned about African civilizations and Black history. I remember learning about Malcolm X alongside C.S. Lewis and Laura Ingalls Wilder. A decolonized Christian education centers all human stories because He sent His Son to die for the world. The entire gospel is grounded in this truth.
The work I now do through The Living Water School is a continuation of the struggle my parents began decades ago. Their refusal to surrender to exclusion planted the seeds for a new vision of Christian education—one where children can love Jesus deeply while also honoring the humanity of themselves and others who felt less than human in this world. I remember being in 5th grade and I hated school, because my teacher clearly stated how much she hated me and my brown skin. Only a few Black students were in her class and we each have stories of how her racism hurt us. It affected my desire to do well in school, because she only gave Black students a C or below no matter how hard we worked. It was during that time that I formerly decided to be a teacher so that no student would ever go through what I went through. Every student who joins our school community, represents the possibility of a future where faith-based education does not require the erasure or rejection of identity, culture, or history.
This story is ultimately about perseverance, faith, and educational freedom. It is about a Black family exercising its constitutional right to choose the education that best aligns with its convictions. It is about refusing to accept that you have to choose between the Christian faith and inclusivity. Through the model of my parents, I know that these two can co-exist and that their co-existence is part of the original theology of Christianity.
So I cannot be silent about my passion for decolonized Christian education because, even at the risk of people rejecting my work, I must be clear that the Christian education I offer is not in the spirit of those who used Christian schools to resist integration. Neither is it in the spirit of those who, through abuse and coercion, forced Christianity upon marginalized people as a means of control and cultural erasure. It is also not in the spirit of saviorism—the belief that certain people must rescue, fix, or speak for others rather than walk alongside them as equals. The Christian education offered at The Living Water School welcomes the gifts, wisdom, and partnership of people from every background, but it is grounded in the belief that every person bears the Imago Dei and possesses inherent dignity and agency. We teach in a way that reflects the value and humanity of every person who joins our community and we expect anyone involved, whether it is through donating, volunteering, or working at the school to share this same mindset.
This is part of the legacy my parents began when they fought for my brother and me to receive a Christian education that was equitable and rooted in the truth of God’s love for all of humanity. It is part of the legacy of my father showing me the lie of the curse of Ham and telling me to correct my teacher the next time she taught it. It is part of the legacy of my parents founding a classical school where students learned to bring the writings of Black authors into conversation with the works of the classical tradition. I continue that work so that this legacy never dies. My prayer is that it will continue to be manifested in the lives of my students, my children, and future generations—that they will know who they are and never forget that they are all children of God, whose Son gave His life for every single one of them, no matter who they are, where they are from, or what they look like. That is the foundation of a decolonized Christian education, and it is the legacy I hope will endure long after I am gone.
Dr. Anika T. Prather 