Jordan Hall & Annie Crawford: Education as Spiritual Warfare
Date: September 16, 2025 Participants: Jordan Hall, Annie Crawford, Grey Hamilton Context: Continuation of conversation about civilizational wartime and education as battleground
Core Thesis
Jordan Hall on Education as Central to War:
"Not only is it a move in war, it is one of the more central moves in war... the most important strategic element, which is the cultivation of human beings who can orient themselves towards God."
Annie Crawford's Definition:
"I define education very briefly as the formation of the soul, the formation of the human soul, the development, the maturing of the human soul into its designed telos, its true capacity, which as you say, is to be in right relationship with God, made in the image of God."
The Nature of the Human Child
Annie Crawford on What a Human Is:
"What is a human? It's an embodied soul made in the image of God for participation in the life of God. If that is what a human is, and that is what we're made for, and so education is the raising up of a child into that calling, then of course, this is a central battleground of the war. Because the war is over the human soul."
Anthony Esolen Quote (read by Grey):
"We do not know what or how to teach children because we do not know what a child is, and we do not know what a child is because we do not know what man is, and him, capital H, him, from whom and for whom man is. A human being is made not for the processing of data but for wisdom, not for the utilitarian satisfaction of appetite but for love, not for the domination of nature but for participation in it, not for the autonomy of an isolated self but for communion."
The Problem with Institutional Education
Jordan Hall on the Impossibility of Mass Education:
"Education is beginning at conception... Every human being is perfectly singular and therefore every human being has a perfectly singular pedagogy. Any effort to mass produce that pedagogy is antithetical to the nature of education."
"There is no way at all that anything vague-like the kinds of institutions that can be produced in public education could ever hope or dream to produce education as we are currently defining it. The chasm is infinite. It is an impossibility in principle."
Annie Crawford on the Machine:
"Beginning in the mid 19th century... you can see it being framed on utilitarian and materialist assumptions about the nature of the human person and the nature of the social good. And once you move your telos away from the human soul in participation with the life of God through the created order to utilitarian goods... you begin to create a whole system, educational system that is deformative to the child soul."
The State and Market Have No Role
Jordan Hall's Categorical Statements:
"Education cannot be the domain of the state. I'll just say that categorically... The state has no proper role in education. It has no interest and no role."
"The market can play a role in education, but cannot play the primary role in education. That the category of education fits within a domain... which if we work backwards, we could recover in the context of what would be called the commons... it would be known as the sacred and the domain of the church."
The Collapse is Good News
Jordan Hall on Why the Collapse is Liberation:
"If you haven't been paying attention, all the wheels are coming off the bus anyhow... There will be no jobs in Mudville. Everybody's going to be unemployed. There will be no functional government of any sort... Now that is very bad news, but it's also very good news because all of that was death anyway. It was a beautiful trap that we were stuck in that we tried to swim against, but we couldn't swim against no matter how hard we tried. Now we have no choice but to actually find a way to live properly."
The True Cost of the Machine
Jordan Hall on the Price:
"The machine will extract the full price. All of it. The machine wants all of it. So the price that you will pay is something like maybe you'll never have grandkids. Or maybe you will have grandkids and you'll never meet them... Or they'll hate you. And more importantly, they'll hate what is true and good. They'll hate God. That's the full price."
Annie Crawford on False Difficulty:
"It is hard. It's hard. But I more and more look at the lives of people I know who have their kids in public school, and their lives are hard too because they own you. They own you... You're not a free person, and that's hard too. So pick your hard. Life's just hard. Pick your hard. And the hard of following Christ-created order bears sweetness and real freedom and goodness and joy."
The Parish Scale Solution
Jordan Hall on Proper Scale:
"You will discover that the parish scale is the proper scale. And the parish is not just a group of people worshiping together. A parish is a village. These things are the churches in the center. It's the tallest building. Everybody sees it. There's a whole ontological design element that is also part of this."
Annie Crawford on Home-Based Education:
"God gives the authority over the formation of the child to the parents in Deuteronomy... education, the proper, you know, basic unit that God has given in his created order for society and for education is the family... I like the word home-based education to understand that the foundation for the child is coming out of the home... And then the home and the family should be located within another circle, a community, a neighborhood, a Eucharistic community."
The Church's Abdication
Annie Crawford on Church and Education:
"If education is the formation of the human soul and cultivating a human soul towards its telos, which is participation in the triune life of God, that's discipleship. Education and discipleship are the same thing. And so when the church abdicated its role, it abdicated education. It was like, oh, the state can do that. It abdicated discipleship."
"When the church gave up on education, the church gave up on discipleship."
Form as Content
Jordan Hall on Institutional Form:
"There are formal characteristics of the nature and design of an institution, which convey the essence of it regardless of the intent of the people involved... If I have a school, and that school has scaled past the ability for relationships to be the primary medium of encounter... then that form is the content, and it is no longer able to convey the sense that it may endeavor to convey."
Annie Crawford on Medium as Message:
"Marshall McLuhan's axiom that the medium is the message... the structures, the liturgies, the symbols through which we think create the substance of the content."
The Problem of Authority Without Relationship
Grey Hamilton on Megachurch Pastors:
"If you are not in the inner ring of a church that has... more than 500 people... you don't have a relationship with that person... There is a line beyond which I don't have the authority to say that to you in your life because I do not know you."
Jordan Hall on Speaking with Authority:
"To speak with authority, he has to know you well enough to be truly in communion with you, which requires real relationship. And then the spirit can use him to speak truth to you. And that is true, a true pastoral relationship."
Fruitfulness vs. Multiplication
Jordan Hall on Divine Order:
"God told us to be fruitful and multiply. Those words go together... emphasis on fruitfulness. Now, what we have found is it is really easy to multiply... I become minimum viable evangelists... I saved a thousand souls yesterday... Fruitfulness happens at the scale of intimate relationships. It can't move any faster than real reality."
Annie Crawford on Tower of Babel:
"The Tower of Babel is God says be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth with this sacred structure... You have to have the fruitfulness first, you have to have the proper structure, the proper order. And then you need to go out and fill the earth... our tendency to just want to build, multiply in one place... Let's just make it really, really, really big versus the obedience of going out and filling the earth with that fruitful structure, that sacred structure."
The Generational Journey
Jordan Hall on the Moses Generation:
"I've been calling my generation the Moses generation... It's quite unlikely that we will get to the promised land, but we might be able to see the promised land if we get real high and have binoculars... You're the Joshua generation. So you will come up to the river, to the Jordan, and you will cross it. I'm just going to say it that way. You will cross it."
Key Strategic Insights
- Education as Primary Battlefield: The formation of human souls is the central strategic element in spiritual warfare
- The Machine Must Be Abandoned: Public education and scaled institutions are irredeemable - they must be replaced, not reformed
- Parish Scale is Optimal: True education requires intimate relationships possible only at village/parish scale
- Home as Foundation: Parents have divine authority over child formation; education must be home-based
- Collapse as Opportunity: The failing of institutional structures creates necessity and space for proper order
- Church Must Reclaim Education: Education and discipleship are identical; the church must resume its proper role
- Fruitfulness Before Scale: Quality of relationships must precede quantity of reach
Practical Model: Annie Crawford's Co-op
- One day per week co-op for preschool through 6th grade
- Two days per week for high school (more social and instructional needs)
- Parent-centered with community support
- Church provides space ($1000/year in Austin)
- Teachers brought in based on relationships and expertise
- Prioritizes time for children to "run and play and cook and garden"
The Vision
A return to proper order where:
- Education serves soul formation toward God
- Churches operate at parish scale with real relationships
- Families are the primary educators
- Communities support each other in shared endeavor
- The sacred governs the commons
- Human dignity and singularity are honored
- Discipleship and education are unified