Dabney, Robert L. (1820–1898)

Although most Protestants supported the creation of common or public school systems in the 19th century, a small number of dissenters expressed reservations about, among other things, the lack of attention to specific Christian doctrines in the common schools. None, however, dissented more vigorously from the concept of public education than Robert L. Dabney, whose objection to the role of the state in education was reminiscent of John Stuart Mill's criticism of government-sponsored education.

Robert Lewis Dabney was born in Louisa County, Virginia. Young Dabney imbibed class and racial attitudes common in the Old South on his parents' modest plantation, and his formal education was typical of that afforded to children of the small planter class, including “old field schools” and tutors. After attending Hampden-Sidney College in 1836–1837, where a revival cemented his commitment to the Christian faith, Dabney taught school briefly before continuing his education at the University of Virginia, where he completed work for a master's degree. In 1844, he entered Union Theological Seminary, a staunchly Old School Presbyterian institution then located at Hampden-Sidney. While at Union, Dabney embraced the same tenets of Calvinism held by the well-known Charles Hodge and his Princeton colleagues, including the absolute authority of the Bible and God's sovereignty. Upon graduation in 1846, he accepted a call from Tinkling Spring Church located near Staunton, Virginia. During his pastorate, he established a reputation for sharp, conservative social and religious commentary that earned him an appointment to the Union faculty in 1853, where he taught church history and theology until 1883. Preferring to stay in the South, Dabney declined an appointment at Princeton Seminary in 1860, despite the fervent recruiting efforts of Hodge. In 1883, he left Union due to ill health and accepted an appointment at the University of Texas, where he taught philosophy until 1894 and helped found Austin Theological Seminary.

Like Hodge, Dabney was a man of considerable intellectual depth and breadth who enjoyed the respect of friends and enemies alike and penned essays on a wide variety of topics, including race, capitalism, unions, the southern cause, ethics, slavery, religion, and education. Indeed, most scholars recognize him as the preeminent Southern Presbyterian theologian after the Civil War.

Dabney's most trenchant commentary on education appeared in two lengthy essays published in The Princeton Review in 1879 and 1880. The first of these, his complex, provocative, and often prescient educational credo titled “Secularized Education,” addressed questions regarding the nature of a proper education and the control of education. Like Hodge, Dabney argued that true education required moral culture, and moral culture could not exist apart from Christianity. In his words, “Every line of true knowledge must find its completeness in its convergency to God.” True education should be based on God's word, the [Page 258]Bible, and the doctrines derived from it, for example, sin, redemption, and God's sovereignty. Mere reading from the scriptures and instruction in “natural theology” would not suffice.

Though Dabney agreed with Hodge regarding the nature of a true education, he departed from his fellow Calvinist on the role of the state in education. Dabney disagreed with Hodge's proposal that the common school should teach the beliefs of the Protestant majority with appropriate safeguards for religious minorities. Maintaining that the state was a secular entity, Dabney claimed that it should not prefer any religious propositions over others. To do so would inevitably violate an individual's or a group's civil rights. He rejected as simply unjust the imposition of the beliefs of the majority on the minority via a state school system. He also criticized plans to distribute the school fund to various schools because some taxpayers would inevitably end up subsidizing beliefs with which they disagreed.

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