What We Believe

Matters of faith are essential to parenting and educating our children, and we appreciate when parents take care to find out the viewpoints that go into the materials they use. Therefore, we thought it fitting to give a short description of some of the essentials of our beliefs.

Although the resources and articles we publish do reflect our faith and viewpoints, it is important to be aware that parts of our website allow others to share content and opinions that we don’t control.

For example, we invite anyone to participate in forum discussions and add books to the CM Organizer and Bookfinder. Obviously, those things reflect the views of the people who share them and don’t necessarily reflect our views unless, of course, we post them ourselves. We encourage everyone to get to know the others in our online community and to use discernment in choosing which opinions to trust.

So what do we at Simply Charlotte Mason believe?

We believe

  1. The Bible is the inspired and infallible Word of God, without error in the original manuscripts, and the supreme and final authority for all of faith and life.
  2. There is one God, eternally existent in the three Persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
  3. God created the heavens and the earth, including all life, in six literal days.
  4. Man was created in the image of God, but fell into sin and is therefore lost and under God’s wrath and just condemnation.
  5. In the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, who came as God in human flesh, being fully God and fully man, except without sin.
  6. In the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, His miracles, His atoning death through His shed blood on the cross, His bodily resurrection, His ascension, and His imminent bodily return in power and glory.
  7. Jesus Christ paid the penalty for man’s sin through His substitutionary death, the successful accomplishment of which was attested to by His subsequent visible, bodily resurrection.
  8. God, by His grace, offers salvation as a free gift to the sinner to be responded to in individual faith, not trusting in any personal works, but in the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ alone.

Regarding Charlotte Mason

Over our years of homeschooling we have come to appreciate the wisdom, gentleness, and effectiveness of Charlotte Mason’s educational ideas.

We believe that Charlotte had the ability to educate in ways that take advantage of how children naturally learn and that had a foundation of love and respect. She developed some wonderful methods and took the time to document her work so others could benefit, as we do now.

However, Charlotte Mason was human and, as such, was fallible and limited in her knowledge, just like the rest of us. So even though we like much of what she had to say, we don’t agree with everything.

Specifically, in areas of doctrine we at SCM look to the Bible alone as the final authority. In any points where Charlotte’s opinion and the Bible differ, we firmly yet graciously hold to the Bible’s account.

Our goal at SCM is to take the ideas and methods that we do agree with and adapt them to modern homeschooling in a way that provides a flexible, thorough, and effective education.

John and Sonya Shafer
Doug and Karen Smith