I think I need to be clearer about what I mean when I talk about welcoming all people into the classical and liberal arts tradition. Let me begin with a story.
Years ago, a Latino family enrolled at The Living Water School after leaving a predominantly African American public school. The mother shared something that surprised me. She said her children had never attended a school where they could openly talk about their country, their heritage, or even speak their language. In their previous school, her sons had been bullied for speaking Spanish. She thanked me for intentionally including Latino stories in our curriculum and for creating space for her family to share their culture and experiences.
That experience taught me an important lesson: what makes an educational space welcoming is not simply affordability. Too often, people assume that if a school becomes more affordable, it will automatically become more diverse. That assumption can unintentionally communicate that diverse families cannot afford these opportunities. In this case, that was certainly not true. This family regularly hosted our school’s annual pool party and had the resources to participate fully in our community. What made the difference was representation.
People are drawn to spaces where they can see themselves reflected in the stories being told, the history being studied, the images on the walls, the faculty leading the work, and the culture of the institution. Scholarships can help remove financial barriers, and they are important. But representation removes a different barrier: the feeling that one’s story does not matter. Diversity does not mean one ethnic group leading and teaching another group. Diversity means representation. It means ensuring that the people who make up a community are reflected throughout the community—in its students, faculty, staff, leadership, curriculum, and decision-making structures.
At The Living Water School, this has been one of our goals from the beginning. Our staff includes Black, Latino, and White educators. Our advisory boards include Latino, Black, Asian, and White members. It took years of intentional effort to build that kind of representation, and even now it is a work in progress. It did not happen by accident. What I have learned is that if we want diverse communities, we must first build diverse leadership. People are more likely to participate in spaces where they see themselves represented among those shaping the vision, making decisions, and telling the story.
Our next challenge is continuing to cultivate that same diversity within our student population. That has not been easy. Building genuinely diverse communities takes time, intentionality, patience, and trust. There are historical, cultural, geographic, and relational factors that influence where families choose to invest their time and energy. I am still learning, still growing, and ultimately trusting God in the process.
I have also had to do this work in my own heart. A few years ago, my husband and I felt called to attend a new church. To be honest, I thought my heart would break into a million pieces. For nearly fifty years, I had attended the church my father founded and where my brother now serves as the lead pastor. It was more than a church; it was part of my identity, my history, and my heritage. I could not understand why God would lead me away from a community that had shaped so much of who I am.
Then one Sunday, as I sat in our new church, I looked around the sanctuary and saw people from every continent. During worship, songs were being sung from different cultures and in different languages. As I watched, I felt the Holy Spirit gently opening my eyes. I realized that God had not brought me there simply because my husband felt called to attend. He was teaching me something. He was asking me to live out the very principles I had been teaching others. What surprised me most was recognizing how much I missed being in a space where my own culture and heritage were the dominant ones. I had to confront that honestly. I had to learn that celebrating diversity does not simply mean asking others to value my story; it also means learning to value theirs with the same enthusiasm and respect.
At the same time, I want to be clear that this is not a criticism of churches that are predominantly made up of one ethnic group. For many Black Christians, the Black church has been a sacred refuge—a place of healing, dignity, resilience, and belonging in a society that has often denied those things. My church taught me to love who God created me to be. It nurtured my faith, shaped my identity, and helped me understand my worth as a child of God. For that, I will be forever grateful. But I also believe God calls all of us to find ways to welcome diversity into our lives. That calling may look different for different people. For some, it may mean joining a church that is more diverse than the one they have always known. For others, it may mean inviting people into their homes who come from different backgrounds, building friendships across cultural lines, or encouraging their children to form meaningful relationships with children who do not look like them.
The goal is not to abandon our own heritage or the communities that shaped us. The goal is to allow God’s family to become larger than our immediate experience. We honor our own stories while making room for the stories of others. What I love about our church is that it did not require me to abandon my heritage. It did not silence my story or diminish my cultural experiences. Instead, it welcomed them alongside the stories and traditions of many others. No single culture was centered above the rest. There was room for all of us.
That experience deepened my understanding of what true diversity and Christian community can look like. It is not the replacement of one culture with another. It is not the silencing of anyone’s story. Rather, it is the creation of a community where many stories are honored together, reflecting the beauty of the body of Christ. When I read Scripture, I see a God who is constantly bringing people together across cultural and ethnic lines. The early church did not become diverse by chance. God sent people out to draw people in. He created spaces where individuals from different backgrounds could belong together as one body. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit empowered the disciples to speak in the languages of the nations gathered before them. God met people where they were. The message did not require everyone to become culturally identical before they could belong.
The same principle applies today. We must be intentional about creating spaces that reflect the beauty and diversity of God’s creation. This is not primarily about being nice. It is not primarily about affordability. It is not even primarily about making people feel emotionally welcomed. It is about ensuring that people can see themselves reflected in the work.
I say this to all of us, including myself. I do not believe God is calling us to build schools, conferences, churches, or educational movements where one people group is consistently centered while others remain on the margins. Nor do I believe He is calling us to erase the histories, traditions, and contributions of any people group. Instead, I see a kingdom made up of every tribe, tongue, people, and nation—a kingdom in which all are invited to bring their gifts, stories, and perspectives to the table.
My concern is that conversations about diversity often become polarized. Some people believe diversity requires silencing or minimizing the Western tradition. Others believe stories outside the Western tradition are less valuable and therefore not worth telling. I reject both positions. I believe all of our stories should be told, understood, and valued. The goal is not to replace one tradition with another. The goal is not to exchange one dominant culture for a different dominant culture. The goal is to widen the table so that the full human story can be seen more clearly. When we do that, we not only strengthen education, schools, churches, and communities—we more faithfully reflect the kingdom of God. Classical and liberal arts schools should be able to accomplish this because so many diverse people groups have found inspiration in this tradition throughout history. It has been a shared heritage for centuries. People from all over the world have engaged with it, contributed to it, and found wisdom within it. It is time for our schools to tell the story of that shared heritage. I see classical education as a thread sewing each of our different human stories together into one beautiful quilt, and it is my prayer that our schools can reflect that one day.
Dr. Anika T. Prather 