Discipling the Market’s Servants
Public Education, Economic Formation, and a Theological Call to Freedom
Timothy P. Cotton
www.truthandway.org
Abstract This paper argues that American public education functions not only as a civic institution but also as a form of discipleship—discipling students into the service of Mammon. Through analysis of official mission statements, the hidden curriculum, credentialing systems, debt structures, and the anthropological assumptions of human capital theory, I demonstrate that public schooling often reduces students to economic actors valued for their productivity and consumption. Drawing on Karl Barth’s critique of religion as unbelief and Jürgen Moltmann’s theology of hope, I frame this economic captivity as a form of idolatry in which education becomes catechesis for the market. The paper further explores how practices such as standardized testing, surveillance, nationalist rituals, and the student loan system function as liturgies and rites of initiation into economic allegiance. Finally, I propose a constructive vision of education shaped by Christian hope: one that affirms the imago Dei, prioritizes vocation over employability, resists debt bondage, and anticipates the Kingdom of God through practices of justice, freedom, and community.
Introduction: Sunday School for Mammon In the United States, public education is often regarded as a neutral, civic good—an engine of opportunity and social mobility. Its stated mission, to prepare students for “global competitiveness” and for “college and career,” appears at first glance to be pragmatic, even benevolent. Yet when read through a theological lens that names Mammon as a rival lord (Matt. 6:24), these goals can be seen as liturgical acts in a national religion of economic devotion. Far from forming students in wisdom, virtue, or the love of neighbor, the dominant structure of American schooling often catechizes them into the habits, desires, and dependencies required by the market: productivity, consumption, debt, and compliance.
This paper contends that public education functions—both intentionally and through its hidden curriculum—as a form of Sunday school for Mammon. This is not an indictment of teachers, many of whom resist this formation from within, but rather a theological diagnosis of systemic captivity. By bringing Karl Barth’s critique of “religion as unbelief” into conversation with Jürgen Moltmann’s theology of hope, alongside sociological research on the hidden curriculum, I show how the prevailing aims of education have been subsumed into an economic soteriology. The paper then sketches alternative practices of formation—rooted in vocation, community, and freedom from debt—that point toward a hope-shaped pedagogy resisting Mammon’s rule.
Section 1: Name the GodThe first step in theological analysis is naming the power we are confronting. In the case of U.S. public schooling’s captivity to economic ends, that power is not a mere abstraction but a biblical rival: Mammon. In Matthew 6:24 Jesus declares, “No one can serve two masters … You cannot serve God and Mammon.” Likewise Luke 16:9–13 personifies Mammon as a master who demands service. New Testament scholars note that the term functions as a personified rival deity in the first-century context, echoing Israel’s prophetic critique of idols that enslave their worshipers (cf. Isa. 44). Craig Blomberg observes that the word’s use in Jesus’ teaching signals not neutrality but lordship—Mammon stands as a master demanding allegiance.
The early church read Mammon this way. John Chrysostom called Mammon a “barbarous master” whose service requires “the slavery of the soul,” and Augustine warned that those who serve Mammon seek happiness in material possessions, which become dangerous chains. Modern theologians such as Walter Wink and William Stringfellow extend this reading by locating Mammon within the realm of the “Powers,” social and economic structures that take on spiritual agency and demand worship.
Karl Barth’s dictum that “religion is unbelief” exposes how noble institutions can sacralize their own ends and supplant the living God. Transposed into the educational sphere, a system that defines the good entirely in economic terms—no matter how progressive the rhetoric—has enthroned Mammon as lord. Jürgen Moltmann complements this perspective by insisting that Christ’s lordship relativizes all economic and political orders by subjecting them to the eschatological horizon of the Kingdom of God.
Section 2: The Official Aims of American Schooling If Mammon is the master, then every institution under his service will have a creed—a statement of purpose that reveals its ultimate loyalty. In the United States, public education’s official aims are codified in federal mission statements, national standards, and state-level frameworks. When examined closely, these aims consistently define educational success in economic terms: producing globally competitive workers, preparing students for college and career, and enhancing the nation’s economic growth.
At the federal level, the U.S. Department of Education states its mission plainly: “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” (U.S. Department of Education, “Mission of the U.S. Department of Education,” accessed August 17, 2025). The phrase “global competitiveness” is not incidental—it is the guiding telos of federal educational policy. It frames students primarily as economic actors whose purpose is to maintain or improve the nation’s standing in the global marketplace.
The Common Core State Standards likewise frame the purpose of K–12 learning in terms of postsecondary and labor-market outcomes. The standards themselves speak of a goal of “college and career readiness for all students” (Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, Introduction).
State mission statements echo these national goals. Texas articulates a vision of “every child, prepared for success in college, career, or the military” (Texas Education Agency, Strategic Plan). Florida’s State Board of Education declares: “Increase the proficiency of all students within one seamless, efficient system …” and its vision specifies a system that prepares students to be “globally competitive for college and careers.” Virginia’s Board of Education mission is to “develop policies and provide leadership that improve student achievement and prepare students to succeed in postsecondary education and the workplace, and to become engaged and enlightened citizens.”
From a theological perspective, such language functions as a creed for the civil economy. Salvation is defined as employability, market adaptability, and competitiveness; the school becomes the discipling institution that prepares children for that salvation. Barth would call this idolatry—the substitution of a created good for the Creator—while Moltmann’s eschatological horizon challenges the reduction of education to market ends.
Section 3: The Hidden Curriculum and the Correspondence Principle If mission statements function as creeds in the religion of Mammon, then the hidden curriculum is its liturgy—the unspoken, habitual practices that form students’ attitudes, values, and dispositions long before they enter the workforce.
Philip Jackson used “hidden curriculum” to name the lessons schools teach implicitly: punctuality, obedience to authority, competitiveness, conformity. Michael W. Apple showed how this hidden curriculum reinforces dominant social and economic arrangements by shaping students into compliant participants in the existing order.
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis’ “correspondence principle” describes how the structure of schooling mirrors the structure of the workplace: principals as managers, teachers as foremen, students as workers; grades as wages; tracking as stratification; competition for grades as competition for promotions. The result is not incidental but structural—schools produce workers who accept hierarchical authority and equate achievement with external rewards.
Seen through our theological lens, these practices function as Mammon’s catechesis: bells and schedules teach time-discipline for future employers; grades and rankings cultivate a meritocratic worldview; standardized testing privileges quantifiable outcomes; credential dependence conditions students to seek external validation through diplomas and certifications. These patterns habituate students to live by the liturgy of scarcity, competition, and self-promotion—shaping desire away from shalom and toward Mammon’s economy.
In many districts—especially those serving lower-income or predominantly minority communities—School Resource Officers (SROs) and on-campus police have become normalized features of the educational environment. Officially justified as safety measures, these arrangements often extend what scholars call the school-to-prison pipeline. Embedding law enforcement into daily school life habituates students to the presence of armed authority as part of ordinary life.
Students learn that authority is enforced through surveillance, control, and threat of force; minor misbehaviors that once would have been handled by educators become criminal matters; and the disproportionate impact on students of color reinforces racial hierarchies and stratification. Theologically, this is catechesis into Empire: a visible, coercive arm that maintains economic order. It pairs neatly with Mammon’s demand for compliant, disciplined subjects and stands in tension with the Kingdom’s vision of peacemaking and restorative justice.
Alongside economic and disciplinary formation, U.S. schools conduct civil-religious rituals that cultivate allegiance to the nation-state. The daily Pledge of Allegiance is liturgical in structure—invocation, object of loyalty, creedal confession—and annual observances such as Veterans Day assemblies present the military as a pinnacle of civic virtue. Robert Bellah termed this complex “American civil religion”: a fusion of national identity with transcendent sanction. In the religion of Mammon, these rituals link economic allegiance with political allegiance, binding the prosperity of the market to the security of the state and tacitly conflating devotion to God with devotion to the nation.
Section 4: Credentialism, Debt, and Economic Initiation The formation described above culminates in an initiation rite: the pursuit of credentials—often financed by debt—that binds students materially to the system they have been formed to serve.
Credentialism names the overemphasis on diplomas, degrees, and certifications as prerequisites for employment, even when the required skills could be learned otherwise. Randall Collins describes a dynamic of “credential inflation,” in which ever-higher levels of schooling are required for jobs that have not fundamentally changed in skill.
In the United States, credentialing is deeply intertwined with student loan debt. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit (Q2 2025), student loan balances stood at approximately $1.64 trillion. Many borrowers carry balances for decades, shaping life choices, delaying family formation, and constraining vocational freedom. This burden operates as a rite of passage into adulthood within Mammon’s economy: borrowing against future labor to purchase the credential; binding oneself to consistent wage-earning work; and remitting interest as a perpetual tithe to financial institutions.
Biblically, debt-bondage was a condition from which God commanded release (Lev. 25; Deut. 15). Theologically, credentialism plus debt narrows vocation to mere employability and subordinates human freedom to repayment schedules—an inversion of Jubilee.
Section 5: Human Capital Theory and the Reduction of the Imago Dei The mission statements, hidden curriculum, and credentialing systems of U.S. public education are rooted in a larger economic philosophy—human capital theory—that views human beings primarily as assets whose value is measured by potential for productivity and economic growth.
OECD defines human capital as “the knowledge, skills, competencies and other attributes embodied in individuals that facilitate the creation of personal, social and economic well-being.” In practice, policy and assessment emphasize economic output: education as investment; returns calculated in higher wages, productivity, and GDP growth; students treated as inputs and schools evaluated by workforce readiness.
Christian theology grounds human dignity in the imago Dei (Gen. 1:26–27). Karl Barth warns against anthropologies that locate human worth in function rather than in relationship to God: human beings are defined by their Lord, not by their productivity. Under human capital logic, education becomes a process of re-imaging people into ideal economic actors—flexible, competitive, and ever-marketable—eclipsing the image of God and the call to love God and neighbor.
Moltmann cautions that when economic necessity defines human purpose, freedom is reduced to competition and hope is reduced to individual success. Such narrowing is not merely a policy problem; it is a theological crisis.
Section 6: Theological Diagnosis and Hope-Shaped Alternatives The analysis above shows how U.S. public education functions as a formative apparatus for Mammon: a system discipling students into market-centered visions of life. Barth’s critique reveals systemic idolatry—education absolutized as economic competitiveness—and Moltmann’s theology of hope exposes how such captivity closes the future to God’s new possibilities.
A hope-shaped education will: (1) affirm the imago Dei (intrinsic dignity apart from output); (2) foster vocation over employability; (3) prioritize justice and the common good; (4) cultivate critical consciousness that questions economic ultimacy; (5) reject debt bondage and create debt-averse pathways. These are not optional add-ons but flow from the confession that Christ—not Mammon—is Lord.
Practically, this entails curricular reform (integrating justice, ecology, and community engagement), debt-free pathways (public funding, community scholarships, apprenticeships), democratized governance (shared decision-making), and counter-liturgies (cooperative learning, global solidarity, peacemaking practices) that resist nationalist and market catecheses. Faith communities can provide parallel formative spaces where students are valued apart from performance.
Moltmann reminds us that Christian hope is eschatological—it anticipates God’s future as measure and critique of the present. Education under Christ’s lordship becomes a foretaste of new creation: a place where gifts are discovered, justice is practiced, and hope is learned.
Conclusion: Freedom from Economic Captivity American public education is not merely a neutral delivery system for literacy, numeracy, and civic knowledge. Its official mission statements, hidden curriculum, credentialing systems, debt structures, and economic anthropology reveal a deeper pattern: it functions as a formative apparatus for the religion of Mammon. From the Pledge of Allegiance to the college debt pipeline, students are not only taught skills but shaped in loyalty, imagination, and desire toward a market-centered vision of life.
To name this truthfully is to begin liberation. If the purpose of education is reimagined in light of the Kingdom of God, its practices would change dramatically: economic competitiveness would no longer be the highest aim; schools would form people for justice, stewardship, reconciliation, and service to neighbor; learning would be freed from debt bondage; and the classroom would become a place where the freedom of Christ—not the demands of the market—sets the agenda.
This is both diagnosis and invitation. Diagnosis: American schooling too often disciples the market’s servants. Invitation: by the grace of God, it can be reformed to disciple servants of Christ—free, hopeful, and creative citizens of the coming Kingdom.
References
Apple, Michael W. *Ideology and Curriculum*. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Augustine. *Sermon on the Mount*. In *Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers*, Series 1, Vol. 6.
Barth, Karl. *Church Dogmatics I/2*. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956.
Barth, Karl. *Church Dogmatics III/2*. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1960.
Barth, Karl. *Church Dogmatics III/4*. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961.
Bellah, Robert N. “Civil Religion in America.” *Daedalus* 96, no. 1 (1967): 1–21.
Blomberg, Craig L. *Matthew*. NAC 22. Nashville: Broadman, 1992.
Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. *Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life*. 2nd ed. Chicago: Haymarket, 2001.
Chrysostom, John. *Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew*. In *Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers*, Series 1, Vol. 10.
Collins, Randall. *The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification*. New York: Academic Press, 1979.
Denton-Borhaug, Kelly. *U.S. War-Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation*. Sheffield: Equinox, 2011.
Dorn, Charles. *For the Common Good: A New History of Higher Education in America*. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017.
Federal Reserve Bank of New York. *Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit*, Q2 2025.
Jackson, Philip W. *Life in Classrooms*. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968.
Kupchik, Aaron. *The Real School Safety Problem: The Long-Term Consequences of Harsh School Punishment*. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016.
Moltmann, Jürgen. *Theology of Hope*. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993.
Moltmann, Jürgen. *The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology*. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996.
Moltmann, Jürgen. *God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology*. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999.
Nance, Jason P. “Students, Police, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline.” *University of Washington Law Review* 93, no. 4 (2018): 919–987.
OECD. *The Well-Being of Nations: The Role of Human and Social Capital*. Paris: OECD, 2001.
Stringfellow, William. *An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land*. Waco: Word Books, 1973.
U.S. Department of Education. “Mission of the U.S. Department of Education.” https://www.ed.gov/about/ed-overview/mission-of-the-us-department-of-education (accessed August 17, 2025).
Common Core State Standards Initiative. *Common Core State Standards for Mathematics* (Introduction). https://corestandards.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/ADA-Compliant-Math-Standards.pdf (accessed August 17, 2025).
Texas Education Agency. *TEA Strategic Plan*. https://tea.texas.gov/about-tea/welcome-and-overview/tea-strategic-plan (accessed August 17, 2025).
Texas Education Agency. *2021–2025 TEA Strategic Plan* (PDF). https://tea.texas.gov/about-tea/welcome-and-overview/2021-2025-tea-strategic-plan.pdf (accessed August 17, 2025).
Florida Department of Education. *Strategic Plan*. https://www.fldoe.org/policy/state-board-of-edu/strategic-plan.stml (accessed August 17, 2025).
Florida Department of Education. *About Us – Mission*. https://www.fldoe.org/about-us/ (accessed August 17, 2025).
Virginia Department of Education. *Virginia Board of Education – Mission*. https://www.doe.virginia.gov/data-policy-funding/virginia-board-of-education (accessed August 17, 2025).
Public Education, Economic Formation, and a Theological Call to Freedom
Timothy P. Cotton
www.truthandway.org
Abstract This paper argues that American public education functions not only as a civic institution but also as a form of discipleship—discipling students into the service of Mammon. Through analysis of official mission statements, the hidden curriculum, credentialing systems, debt structures, and the anthropological assumptions of human capital theory, I demonstrate that public schooling often reduces students to economic actors valued for their productivity and consumption. Drawing on Karl Barth’s critique of religion as unbelief and Jürgen Moltmann’s theology of hope, I frame this economic captivity as a form of idolatry in which education becomes catechesis for the market. The paper further explores how practices such as standardized testing, surveillance, nationalist rituals, and the student loan system function as liturgies and rites of initiation into economic allegiance. Finally, I propose a constructive vision of education shaped by Christian hope: one that affirms the imago Dei, prioritizes vocation over employability, resists debt bondage, and anticipates the Kingdom of God through practices of justice, freedom, and community.
Introduction: Sunday School for Mammon In the United States, public education is often regarded as a neutral, civic good—an engine of opportunity and social mobility. Its stated mission, to prepare students for “global competitiveness” and for “college and career,” appears at first glance to be pragmatic, even benevolent. Yet when read through a theological lens that names Mammon as a rival lord (Matt. 6:24), these goals can be seen as liturgical acts in a national religion of economic devotion. Far from forming students in wisdom, virtue, or the love of neighbor, the dominant structure of American schooling often catechizes them into the habits, desires, and dependencies required by the market: productivity, consumption, debt, and compliance.
This paper contends that public education functions—both intentionally and through its hidden curriculum—as a form of Sunday school for Mammon. This is not an indictment of teachers, many of whom resist this formation from within, but rather a theological diagnosis of systemic captivity. By bringing Karl Barth’s critique of “religion as unbelief” into conversation with Jürgen Moltmann’s theology of hope, alongside sociological research on the hidden curriculum, I show how the prevailing aims of education have been subsumed into an economic soteriology. The paper then sketches alternative practices of formation—rooted in vocation, community, and freedom from debt—that point toward a hope-shaped pedagogy resisting Mammon’s rule.
Section 1: Name the GodThe first step in theological analysis is naming the power we are confronting. In the case of U.S. public schooling’s captivity to economic ends, that power is not a mere abstraction but a biblical rival: Mammon. In Matthew 6:24 Jesus declares, “No one can serve two masters … You cannot serve God and Mammon.” Likewise Luke 16:9–13 personifies Mammon as a master who demands service. New Testament scholars note that the term functions as a personified rival deity in the first-century context, echoing Israel’s prophetic critique of idols that enslave their worshipers (cf. Isa. 44). Craig Blomberg observes that the word’s use in Jesus’ teaching signals not neutrality but lordship—Mammon stands as a master demanding allegiance.
The early church read Mammon this way. John Chrysostom called Mammon a “barbarous master” whose service requires “the slavery of the soul,” and Augustine warned that those who serve Mammon seek happiness in material possessions, which become dangerous chains. Modern theologians such as Walter Wink and William Stringfellow extend this reading by locating Mammon within the realm of the “Powers,” social and economic structures that take on spiritual agency and demand worship.
Karl Barth’s dictum that “religion is unbelief” exposes how noble institutions can sacralize their own ends and supplant the living God. Transposed into the educational sphere, a system that defines the good entirely in economic terms—no matter how progressive the rhetoric—has enthroned Mammon as lord. Jürgen Moltmann complements this perspective by insisting that Christ’s lordship relativizes all economic and political orders by subjecting them to the eschatological horizon of the Kingdom of God.
Section 2: The Official Aims of American Schooling If Mammon is the master, then every institution under his service will have a creed—a statement of purpose that reveals its ultimate loyalty. In the United States, public education’s official aims are codified in federal mission statements, national standards, and state-level frameworks. When examined closely, these aims consistently define educational success in economic terms: producing globally competitive workers, preparing students for college and career, and enhancing the nation’s economic growth.
At the federal level, the U.S. Department of Education states its mission plainly: “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.” (U.S. Department of Education, “Mission of the U.S. Department of Education,” accessed August 17, 2025). The phrase “global competitiveness” is not incidental—it is the guiding telos of federal educational policy. It frames students primarily as economic actors whose purpose is to maintain or improve the nation’s standing in the global marketplace.
The Common Core State Standards likewise frame the purpose of K–12 learning in terms of postsecondary and labor-market outcomes. The standards themselves speak of a goal of “college and career readiness for all students” (Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, Introduction).
State mission statements echo these national goals. Texas articulates a vision of “every child, prepared for success in college, career, or the military” (Texas Education Agency, Strategic Plan). Florida’s State Board of Education declares: “Increase the proficiency of all students within one seamless, efficient system …” and its vision specifies a system that prepares students to be “globally competitive for college and careers.” Virginia’s Board of Education mission is to “develop policies and provide leadership that improve student achievement and prepare students to succeed in postsecondary education and the workplace, and to become engaged and enlightened citizens.”
From a theological perspective, such language functions as a creed for the civil economy. Salvation is defined as employability, market adaptability, and competitiveness; the school becomes the discipling institution that prepares children for that salvation. Barth would call this idolatry—the substitution of a created good for the Creator—while Moltmann’s eschatological horizon challenges the reduction of education to market ends.
Section 3: The Hidden Curriculum and the Correspondence Principle If mission statements function as creeds in the religion of Mammon, then the hidden curriculum is its liturgy—the unspoken, habitual practices that form students’ attitudes, values, and dispositions long before they enter the workforce.
Philip Jackson used “hidden curriculum” to name the lessons schools teach implicitly: punctuality, obedience to authority, competitiveness, conformity. Michael W. Apple showed how this hidden curriculum reinforces dominant social and economic arrangements by shaping students into compliant participants in the existing order.
Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis’ “correspondence principle” describes how the structure of schooling mirrors the structure of the workplace: principals as managers, teachers as foremen, students as workers; grades as wages; tracking as stratification; competition for grades as competition for promotions. The result is not incidental but structural—schools produce workers who accept hierarchical authority and equate achievement with external rewards.
Seen through our theological lens, these practices function as Mammon’s catechesis: bells and schedules teach time-discipline for future employers; grades and rankings cultivate a meritocratic worldview; standardized testing privileges quantifiable outcomes; credential dependence conditions students to seek external validation through diplomas and certifications. These patterns habituate students to live by the liturgy of scarcity, competition, and self-promotion—shaping desire away from shalom and toward Mammon’s economy.
In many districts—especially those serving lower-income or predominantly minority communities—School Resource Officers (SROs) and on-campus police have become normalized features of the educational environment. Officially justified as safety measures, these arrangements often extend what scholars call the school-to-prison pipeline. Embedding law enforcement into daily school life habituates students to the presence of armed authority as part of ordinary life.
Students learn that authority is enforced through surveillance, control, and threat of force; minor misbehaviors that once would have been handled by educators become criminal matters; and the disproportionate impact on students of color reinforces racial hierarchies and stratification. Theologically, this is catechesis into Empire: a visible, coercive arm that maintains economic order. It pairs neatly with Mammon’s demand for compliant, disciplined subjects and stands in tension with the Kingdom’s vision of peacemaking and restorative justice.
Alongside economic and disciplinary formation, U.S. schools conduct civil-religious rituals that cultivate allegiance to the nation-state. The daily Pledge of Allegiance is liturgical in structure—invocation, object of loyalty, creedal confession—and annual observances such as Veterans Day assemblies present the military as a pinnacle of civic virtue. Robert Bellah termed this complex “American civil religion”: a fusion of national identity with transcendent sanction. In the religion of Mammon, these rituals link economic allegiance with political allegiance, binding the prosperity of the market to the security of the state and tacitly conflating devotion to God with devotion to the nation.
Section 4: Credentialism, Debt, and Economic Initiation The formation described above culminates in an initiation rite: the pursuit of credentials—often financed by debt—that binds students materially to the system they have been formed to serve.
Credentialism names the overemphasis on diplomas, degrees, and certifications as prerequisites for employment, even when the required skills could be learned otherwise. Randall Collins describes a dynamic of “credential inflation,” in which ever-higher levels of schooling are required for jobs that have not fundamentally changed in skill.
In the United States, credentialing is deeply intertwined with student loan debt. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit (Q2 2025), student loan balances stood at approximately $1.64 trillion. Many borrowers carry balances for decades, shaping life choices, delaying family formation, and constraining vocational freedom. This burden operates as a rite of passage into adulthood within Mammon’s economy: borrowing against future labor to purchase the credential; binding oneself to consistent wage-earning work; and remitting interest as a perpetual tithe to financial institutions.
Biblically, debt-bondage was a condition from which God commanded release (Lev. 25; Deut. 15). Theologically, credentialism plus debt narrows vocation to mere employability and subordinates human freedom to repayment schedules—an inversion of Jubilee.
Section 5: Human Capital Theory and the Reduction of the Imago Dei The mission statements, hidden curriculum, and credentialing systems of U.S. public education are rooted in a larger economic philosophy—human capital theory—that views human beings primarily as assets whose value is measured by potential for productivity and economic growth.
OECD defines human capital as “the knowledge, skills, competencies and other attributes embodied in individuals that facilitate the creation of personal, social and economic well-being.” In practice, policy and assessment emphasize economic output: education as investment; returns calculated in higher wages, productivity, and GDP growth; students treated as inputs and schools evaluated by workforce readiness.
Christian theology grounds human dignity in the imago Dei (Gen. 1:26–27). Karl Barth warns against anthropologies that locate human worth in function rather than in relationship to God: human beings are defined by their Lord, not by their productivity. Under human capital logic, education becomes a process of re-imaging people into ideal economic actors—flexible, competitive, and ever-marketable—eclipsing the image of God and the call to love God and neighbor.
Moltmann cautions that when economic necessity defines human purpose, freedom is reduced to competition and hope is reduced to individual success. Such narrowing is not merely a policy problem; it is a theological crisis.
Section 6: Theological Diagnosis and Hope-Shaped Alternatives The analysis above shows how U.S. public education functions as a formative apparatus for Mammon: a system discipling students into market-centered visions of life. Barth’s critique reveals systemic idolatry—education absolutized as economic competitiveness—and Moltmann’s theology of hope exposes how such captivity closes the future to God’s new possibilities.
A hope-shaped education will: (1) affirm the imago Dei (intrinsic dignity apart from output); (2) foster vocation over employability; (3) prioritize justice and the common good; (4) cultivate critical consciousness that questions economic ultimacy; (5) reject debt bondage and create debt-averse pathways. These are not optional add-ons but flow from the confession that Christ—not Mammon—is Lord.
Practically, this entails curricular reform (integrating justice, ecology, and community engagement), debt-free pathways (public funding, community scholarships, apprenticeships), democratized governance (shared decision-making), and counter-liturgies (cooperative learning, global solidarity, peacemaking practices) that resist nationalist and market catecheses. Faith communities can provide parallel formative spaces where students are valued apart from performance.
Moltmann reminds us that Christian hope is eschatological—it anticipates God’s future as measure and critique of the present. Education under Christ’s lordship becomes a foretaste of new creation: a place where gifts are discovered, justice is practiced, and hope is learned.
Conclusion: Freedom from Economic Captivity American public education is not merely a neutral delivery system for literacy, numeracy, and civic knowledge. Its official mission statements, hidden curriculum, credentialing systems, debt structures, and economic anthropology reveal a deeper pattern: it functions as a formative apparatus for the religion of Mammon. From the Pledge of Allegiance to the college debt pipeline, students are not only taught skills but shaped in loyalty, imagination, and desire toward a market-centered vision of life.
To name this truthfully is to begin liberation. If the purpose of education is reimagined in light of the Kingdom of God, its practices would change dramatically: economic competitiveness would no longer be the highest aim; schools would form people for justice, stewardship, reconciliation, and service to neighbor; learning would be freed from debt bondage; and the classroom would become a place where the freedom of Christ—not the demands of the market—sets the agenda.
This is both diagnosis and invitation. Diagnosis: American schooling too often disciples the market’s servants. Invitation: by the grace of God, it can be reformed to disciple servants of Christ—free, hopeful, and creative citizens of the coming Kingdom.
References
Apple, Michael W. *Ideology and Curriculum*. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Augustine. *Sermon on the Mount*. In *Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers*, Series 1, Vol. 6.
Barth, Karl. *Church Dogmatics I/2*. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956.
Barth, Karl. *Church Dogmatics III/2*. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1960.
Barth, Karl. *Church Dogmatics III/4*. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961.
Bellah, Robert N. “Civil Religion in America.” *Daedalus* 96, no. 1 (1967): 1–21.
Blomberg, Craig L. *Matthew*. NAC 22. Nashville: Broadman, 1992.
Bowles, Samuel, and Herbert Gintis. *Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life*. 2nd ed. Chicago: Haymarket, 2001.
Chrysostom, John. *Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew*. In *Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers*, Series 1, Vol. 10.
Collins, Randall. *The Credential Society: An Historical Sociology of Education and Stratification*. New York: Academic Press, 1979.
Denton-Borhaug, Kelly. *U.S. War-Culture, Sacrifice and Salvation*. Sheffield: Equinox, 2011.
Dorn, Charles. *For the Common Good: A New History of Higher Education in America*. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017.
Federal Reserve Bank of New York. *Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit*, Q2 2025.
Jackson, Philip W. *Life in Classrooms*. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968.
Kupchik, Aaron. *The Real School Safety Problem: The Long-Term Consequences of Harsh School Punishment*. Oakland: University of California Press, 2016.
Moltmann, Jürgen. *Theology of Hope*. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993.
Moltmann, Jürgen. *The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology*. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996.
Moltmann, Jürgen. *God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology*. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999.
Nance, Jason P. “Students, Police, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline.” *University of Washington Law Review* 93, no. 4 (2018): 919–987.
OECD. *The Well-Being of Nations: The Role of Human and Social Capital*. Paris: OECD, 2001.
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