The Academy hosted its first annual Civitas Dei Banquet on September 11, 2026. Below is the headmaster's speech from the event, explaining the vision of the academy and how it is that our work is part of building the Civitas Dei, the City of God.
The year was 410 AD. And the once mighty Roman empire was starting to fracture. The Visigoths invaded, sending Rome into a state of disarray and shock. Yes, Rome was crumbling. And by 476 the empire was no more. How could such a city and empire fall?
This question plagued the Romans. Why was their grand empire only a shadow of its former self? Were their gods unhappy with them? Had they overused their resources? Had they become decadent and forgotten the virtues that made them strong?
Or was it the Christians’ fault, that growing group of people with a different set of virtues? Yes, many Romans came to think, it was the Christians’ fault: those people who subverted and undermined Roman values – who refused to offer a pinch of incense to the emperor, and instead worshiped a man who supposedly rose from the dead, gathering on Sundays to read their book and sing hymns, to dip their babies in water and eat and drink what they call his flesh and blood. Yes, it was those people, who loved their wives and were faithful to them instead of treating them as property; who raised their children with kindness instead of throwing unwanted babies onto the trash heaps; who buried their dead with care and provided for widows and orphans instead of leaving them to die. Yes, it was the Christians’ fault.
How were Christians to respond to this charge?
Enter Augustine to clear the fog and answer this question that has long fascinated historians. For Augustine the great bishop, philosopher, and theologian, the answer was found in something deeper than the causes historians usually give for Rome’s Fall, though those factors certainly all contributed. Augustine understood that history was about more than material causes; that God is the God of history, who acts in history. And that history is the stage upon which the greatest drama of all is being played out: the drama of salvation. And that drama is the story of two competing cities: the earthly city and the heavenly city – the City of Man and the City of God, the Civitas Dei.
The City of Man consists of people who love themselves more than God. They seek power, fame, security, and a lasting home in this world. The City of God consists of people who love God more than themselves. They live fully in this world, building families, communities, institutions, and serving as virtuous citizens; but they know that their true home lies beyond this world.
To put it another way, for Augustine it all hinged on the ordo amoris. A proper ordering of our loves. The City of Man has disordered loves where people are consumed by the pleasures of this passing world. And thus all cities of men eventually fall. But even as empires rise and fall, there is one lasting city: the City of God, which doesn’t look like the cities of men; it isn’t an actual city or country with government structure and military power, it consists instead of a pilgrim people who forego earthly pleasure to dedicate themselves to the eternal things of God, who mark the landscape with their churches, homes, and schools, founded on faith and love. The city of God has properly ordered loves: God is most worthy of love, for he is love, and we experience that love first within the context of the family and the church. And that love first manifest in these foundational, pre-political institutions of church and home, then overflows into the broader community.
All the cities of men, no matter their power and legacy, somehow end up disordering these loves, distorting these loves, desecrating these loves, fragmenting these loves.
But Christians know how to order these loves rightly. And that is what the church does. Each week the church sets you right again as you are recalibrated in faith toward God and love toward neighbor. And the church has always known that forming these loves rightly requires education and enculturation. That is why the church from its earliest days has prioritized the education of its children. In the early church it was the catechetical schools, in which many church fathers, Augustine included, devoted so much of their time to teaching the young and new converts. Those catechetical schools grew into the cathedral schools of Christendom in its Byzantine and Roman forms, and blossomed into the medieval universities upon which so much of western civilization rests. This rich stream flowed into the Reformation schools that emerged across Europe and came with those who made the trek to America. And many of those colonists and settlers built churches and schools in the center of their new communities before even building their own homes. They knew what they and their children needed most.
This is what the historic Christian church has done in its great traditions, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. This is our shared inheritance.
Augustine helps us not squander this inheritance, as his grand story of the two cities still has much to offer us today.
First, perhaps in a loose parallel, 25 years ago this day, America experienced a shaking of its empire with the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And in the years since, what once seemed an invincible empire no longer seems so invincible. We’ve felt shocks and tremors. And Augustine reminds us where our hopes should lie: not in the city of man, but in the city of God.
Second, Augustine reminds us of the importance of rightly ordering our affections and loves. In a time and place where our loves are so disordered, an education rooted in the church and in the family plays a key role in putting them back in their proper order.
A rightly ordered education doesn’t neglect God or leave him out of the curriculum, but places him as the center, recognizing that there is no such thing as neutral education and that true education reaches its pinnacle in the worship of the Holy Trinity who is the fullness of knowledge, wisdom, truth, goodness, and beauty.
A rightly ordered education doesn’t reject the family or usurp its role, but partners with and honors parents as the God-ordained primary educators of their children.
A rightly ordered education does not see as its goal the self-expression of the child constructing their own truth or following their dreams, but forming children into mature human beings who love what is beautiful, believe what is true, and do what is good.
And this is precisely what we are doing here. What the cities of men separate and fragment, we are putting back together through a church-centered academy, with a hybrid model that partners with parents, built on a classical approach that doesn’t reject our past but embraces it as a living tradition from within which we teach and dwell.
Third, just like in Augustine’s day, the City of God did not seem mighty or powerful in the moment, but it would grow into something strong. It started small, as leaven, as a mustard seed. Christians remade the ancient world not through politics or military campaigns, but by a long, slow fermentation process of proclaiming truth, demonstrating love and service, and forming human beings through education and catechesis. This alternative way of being and living drew people in and subverted Rome’s colossal power. And what was it that would eventually rise from the ashes of the fallen pagan power like Rome? Christendom.
We too, start small, with nothing glamorous or mighty: simply a group of families, a supportive church and community, and our Lord’s command to “teach them all that I have commanded, even to the end of the age.”
It began about five years ago with questions, interviews, and meetings at church. It grew into a preschool co-op and an education committee, and now our first official year as All Saints Classical Academy has begun with 6 students at the elementary level and plans to add more grades each year to serve our families.
This type of thing is happening all over the country. Little platoons, as Edmund Burke called them; little enclaves, oases in the desert that will outlast the cities of men.
The Charlotte region is filled with stories like these to which we can look for inspiration and also support one another. Covenant Classical School, founded over 25 years ago in Concord. Greyfriars Classical Academy in Matthews, founded over 15 years ago. The CiRCE Institute, one of the nation’s leaders in classical education headquartered in Concord. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Now it’s our turn. A new batch of little platoons, outposts of the City of God, are starting, as leaven and mustard seeds.
Theophany Academy, an orthodox village school in the one-room schoolhouse model opened this fall in Concord.
The St. Sophia School on the campus of St. Nektarios in South Charlotte, opened in 2024 and is expanding through grade 8 in the coming years.
And yes, even a classical college has been founded just north of Charlotte. New Aberdeen College is now in its second year of operation.
These are the types of things Christians have always done. As my friend Ryan Smith, President of New Aberdeen, likes to say, “this is one of the least novel things we could do.”
Indeed, a church starting a little academy is one of the least novel things we could do. And these are the things we’ve been given to do: to labor in the city of God in ways that will endure. For we are not passing on the fleeting culture of the cities of men. We are passing on the greatest culture, the only one worthy of passing on without qualification: The eternal culture of the Kingdom of God, where all knowledge, wisdom, and virtue culminate in Christ, the one in whom all things hold together. For he is King over all things, the cities of men and the city of God, and he will one day put all things under his feet. The City of Man will crumble, but the city of God will endure.