By Joseph Woodard

America’s Christian culture was first eroded over the past century by Progressive public schools. The belated Christian reactions to this were homeschooling, co-operatives, independent Christian schools, and now classical charter schools. Yet, when compared to their agnostic fellow citizens, next-gen Christians are proving equally susceptible to loneliness, anxiety, family breakup and divorce, voluntary infertility or tiny families, warehousing seniors and ‘bowling alone’ levels of civic non-engagement.

While supposedly safe, Christian secondary education hasn’t been enough. Why? Because Christian formation isn’t finished at 18. Having carefully shepherded their kids through high school, Christian parents then ship them off to distant colleges and universities, where they’re educated, at best, by Christian scholars, detached from any local community, or at worst, by atheistic socialists. They may meet a marriage partner from a more distant city or town, with whom they try to raise kids, far from any grandparental help. (And given how hard that is, they end up having fewer kids than they wanted.) Or, equally likely, their atheist professors will seduce them into lives of nihilistic despair. Meanwhile back home, their communities and local governments are abandoned to the rootless, avaricious and radical. 

Private Christian schools can be the worst for this, says Christian Halls International founder Nick Ellis, because they think they’ve succeeded only when they’ve shipped their grads off to distant, prestigious, and expensive universities or colleges — as if training trendy professional nomads is more honorable than nurturing faithful, cultured, engaged community members. Then they complain about the collapsing society? Christian society is first and foremost a family of charity, love and trust. This happens only when those bonds are nurtured between generations — elders and mentors, grandparents, and parents — more than some varsity peer group.

Christian kids need to be shepherded, not into consuming careers, but into fruitful, faithful communities.

So the problem is: how can Christian young adults receive a superior academic, professional, or technical education, nurturing their organic human formation — and do it affordably — in Jackson, Springhill, or Meridian?

Christian Halls International

Enter Christian Halls International. Since its 2020 founding in Midland, TX, Christian Halls has been facilitating postsecondary, degree-granting ‘Halls’ that are local, intergenerational, and self-governing. The growth has been exponential: five Halls in 2021, 12 in 2022, 50 in 2023, and 177 in 2024. The target for 2025 is predictably 521. Local Halls educate anywhere from five to 500 students each. So far, CHI is affiliated with twenty accredited universities or colleges, offering 500 different programs for any feasible career. This is not pie-in-the-sky. It is a practical, grass-roots rebuilding of Christian society and culture, cutting the corrupt and bloated mainstream universities completely out of the loop, to die with their endowments.

What is Christian Halls International?

What goes into a local Christian Hall? CH International has a sophisticated, secure internet platform that serves as a kind of ‘brokerage’ for online courses, either already offered at its affiliated universities and colleges, or developed by the local Christian tutors and endorsed by the universities. Of course, on-line learning is notoriously mechanical, lonely, and bereft of human formation. So the local Hall provides community and structured seminars, tutored by local ‘elders’ — senior homeschool veterans, pastors, retired academics, tradesmen, artists, or businessmen.

Each student’s program is tailored to their particular needs and the available tutors, with CHI running interference between the local Hall and the accrediting university. “We’ve disaggregated the curriculum from the accreditation, the local Hall from the university, so we’re in charge of our programs,” says Ellis. “This is self-government.” Yet, when he’s asked if he’s primarily a program broker, Ellis objects, “No, I’m really a community designer. Part of that is brokering programs, but mainly I’m there to help build a Christian learning community.”

Intergenerational Teaching

This is where the local and intergenerational come in, tapping unused resources: “Christian teachers and professionals — Christian grandparents — have no right to retire to the golf course,” he insists. “They’ve got a wealth of experience and wisdom that’s desperately needed by the next generation.” They should have no false-modesty about their ability, given the manifest ignorance and corruption of the mainstream universities. The instructional method is the “Oxford tutorial” or seminar, face-to-face reading and discussing the recipe for their own lifelong learning.  So how does community building look, wherever Ellis next lands his hand-me-down Cessna? His interested clients and tutors are well-established homeschool co-ops, local churches, private schools, and Christian businessmen — and best of all, a combination of all of them. The co-ops are energetic, right off the blocks, while churches and private schools already have the facilities. Co-ops have a cohort of experienced homeschoolers stepping up as tutors, but their time is limited. Churches and schools have the credentials and time but must be shaken from a naïve complacency.  In contrast, Christian businessmen are fully aware of the decadence of the mainstream schools and desperate for virtuous employees. They can offer paid internships which allows students to work debt-free toward a degree or professional certificate.

Best of all, freed from the false narrative that they must wander to mature, the young adults can grow up in their home towns, fully engaged with their public-spirited elders, and primed to start families of their own.

Student and Community Benefits

This is a win-win, all around. The students get credit hours at a highly competitive rate, the tutors exercise often forgotten aptitudes, and families keep their young adults in the local community while awaiting grandchildren. Meanwhile, CH International is building on its platform a library of content-rich, Christian-friendly courses, and it’s painless for an accrediting university.  Christian Halls programs cost a bargain $100/credit hour for dual credit courses, up to age 19, then $250/hour for straight post-secondary credits—under four grand per semester. Tuition is split 50 percent for the accrediting university, 25 percent for CH International, for their growth and upkeep of their platform, and 25 percent back to the local Halls, for their (usually existing) facilities and remunerating tutors. This sweet deal for the universities ensures their cooperation. Christian Halls International is committed to the revival of a Christian society, so Ellis has already politely turned down a request from some Mormon communities for their involvement. However, he also calls himself ‘a Nicene Christian,’ with reference to the ancient Trinitarian Creed, so he is already gearing up a Christian Halls stream for Catholics. Recognizing the distinct culture of liturgical churches, and in conversation with savvy, conservative bishops, he decided to develop a separate stream for Catholic course development and university affiliation. Thus began Campion Halls, named for a priest who was brutally martyred in the Elizabethan persecution.  

What’s Next

What’s more, true to the ‘International’ in its name, Ellis is already working on expansion into Canada. While Canada’s homeschooling population runs roughly half the United States’ ten percent, education is likewise a provincial jurisdiction, and some provinces are quite homeschool friendly. With the exception of a few, isolated Christian universities, Canadian postsecondary education is almost entirely public and ‘woke,’ like the American Ivy League. Christian Halls should find a warm, even desperate welcome here. Ellis plans to be travelling north of the border in 2025 and 2026.    

Joseph K. Woodard earned a BA at University of Alberta (Pol Phil), MA’s at Dalhousie and St. John’s (Great Books), Greek and Latin diplomas at Berkeley, and a PhD at Claremont. He invested fifteen years as an academic (Bethany, Brock), fifteen as a journalist (Alberta Report, Calgary Herald), and eleven as a tribunal judge (Citizenship Canada). He has helped his wife, Kathy, raise ten children with homeschooling and parent-run school start-ups, and always taught adjunct at independent high schools and colleges. He writes for websites like The Imaginative Conservative and Public Discourse, serves as director of research for the Canadian Centre for Home Education, and moderates Great Books seminars online with Angelicum Academy.