Classical Christian Dictionary: Biographies

Remember this is a work in progress . . . I am not leaving people out.

Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS)

ACCS was formed shortly after the publication of Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning. The book generated enough interest for a conference to be held in order to generate recordings that could serve to answer all the inquiries about starting a school. After that first conference in Moscow, Idaho (1994), the legal papers for ACCS were drawn up. The Founders of ACCS were Tom Spencer, Marlin Detweiler, and Douglas Wilson.

The next two annual ACCS conferences were also held in Moscow. The fourth was in Raleigh, which began the practice of moving the annual conference to different locations around the country. The first two (annual) conferences were held in the same calendar year, 1994, one early and one late. But the first three were in Moscow.

Roy Atwood (1952- )

Atwood was one of the founders of New St. Andrews College, with the first classes being held in his home. He earned his Ph.D. in 1984 from the University Iowa. He served as the Dean of NSA from 2000-2004, and as the president from 2004-2014. He also served as the founding president of the Reformed Evangelical Seminary (2023-2026). He received the Disciplina Christiana Award for Leadership and Service in 2015, awarded by the New St. Andrews Board.  

Jon Amos Comenius (1592-1670)

Comenius was a Czech bishop in the Reformed tradition, and an education reformer. He is widely regarded as the father of modern education, and was an earnest advocate of universal education. This was a priority for many of the Reformers, who wanted everyone to be literate in order that they might have access to the Scriptures directly. But the move to universal education created some challenges, one of them being the need to establish a system of prerequisites, which was the contribution of Comenius.

Marlin Detweiler (1956- )

Laurie Detweiler (1960- )

The Detweilers attended the first ACCS conference in Moscow, Idaho, and were enthusiastic early adopters. They founded Geneva Academy in Orlando in 1993, and Veritas Academy in Lancaster, PA in 1996. The first catalog for Veritas Press was published in 1998. They began the process of publishing the widely used Omnibus textbooks in 2005, with the final volume coming out in 2011. See the entry for the Omnibus series.

Ty Fisher (1972- )

Fisher is the Head of School for Veritas Academy in Lancaster, PA. He serves on the board of the ACCS, and was the lead editor for the Omnibus textbook series.

David Goodwin (1967-)

Goodwin has served as the president of the ACCS since 2015. He was one of the founders of the Ambrose School in Meridian, Idaho (near Boise). In 2022, he co-authored a book with Pete Hegseth which became a #1 New York Times bestseller, entitled Battle for the American Mind. He is an active promoter of the classical Christian approach to education.

George Grant (1954-)

Grant is the Chancellor of Franklin Classical School which was founded in 1992, although they offered homeschool enrichment classes earlier. He has been a long-time speaker at the national ACCS conferences, and serves as an Educator-in-Residence for the ACCS board.

Logos School (1981- )

Logos School is the flagship school of the classical Christian resurgence, and has been a charter member of ACCS since the founding of that association. The first year fewer than 20 students were enrolled, and as of 2026 around 700 are. Because of the extraordinary growth, the school has moved from a one-site K-12 program to a school district approach. A campus for the secondary is currently under construction, and the plan is to have distinct elementary schools as feeder schools.

Ben Merkle (1972- )

Merkle has been the president of New St. Andrews since 2015, serving as the second president of the college. He earned his DPhil in Oriental Studies from Oxford, an MSt in Jewish Studies from Oxford, an MBA from Washington State University, and an MA in English Literature from the University of Idaho. He is the author of Defending the Trinity in the Reformed Palatinate (Oxford University Press, 2015), and The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great (2009). As the president of NSA, the first college in this resurgent classical Christian education movement, he is a leading spokesman for that movement.

Omnibus Textbooks

The Omnibus is a series of textbooks with the purpose of integrated the subjects of literature, history, and theology. The editors were Ty Fisher, Gene Veith, and Douglas Wilson. Published by the Detweilers through Veritas Press, the six volumes worked through three phases of history, Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, doing this in two passes. Omnibus 1 (Ancient) was published in 2005, Omnibus II (Medieval) in 2006, Omnibus III (Modern) in 2007. This completed the first cycle. Omnibus IV came out in 2009, Omnibus V in 2010, and Omnibus VI in 2011. The series has been widely used in classical Christian schools and homeschools both.

Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957)

Sayers was an Oxford graduate who launched her writing career as a crime novelist, writing the famous Lord Peter Wimsey stories. She was also a playwright, essayist, and a highly regarded translator of Dante. Her connection with the revival of classical Christian education came through her address, given in 1947, entitled The Lost Tools of Learning. In this piece, she argued that we could match the three elements of the Trivium (grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric), with three stages of child development, which she called the poll parrot, the pert, and the poetic. In effect, she was taking three key elements of medieval education and mapping them onto the idea of prerequisites, as pioneered by Jon Amos Comenius. That address was reprinted in National Review in the 1970’s, and was consequently picked up by Logos School in Moscow, Idaho, and used as their foundational blueprint for their curriculum.

Douglas Wilson (1953- )

As a result of God’s blessing on his work in classical Christian pedagogy, none of Wilson’s children or grandchildren are in the penitentiary.