Memoria Press Christian Studies

Memoria Press Christian Studies is a four-level Bible and early Church history program for elementary and middle-grade students, built on the classical grammar-stage posture of memorization, narration, and structured comprehension. It is the Bible spine of the Memoria Press classical sequence, and it travels well outside it.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Classical (grammar-stage), subject-specialist, narrative-plus-workbook
Worldview	Christian-ecumenical (broadly orthodox; non-denominational in framing)
Grades	3-8 typical (levels I-IV sequential)
Formats	Print only, student text, student workbook, teacher guide
Cost tier	Budget
Parent intensity	3
ESA-common	Yes
Accredited	No (program is not a standalone school; accreditation tracks through the parent school if used)
Established	Christian Studies series released in sequence beginning 2008; Memoria Press itself founded 1996
Website	memoriapress.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	4	Real comprehension work at grade level; students actually learn biblical geography, chronology, and named figures
Ease of teaching	4	Teacher guides provide direct answer keys and discussion prompts, minimal prep required
Content quality	4	Clean prose retellings; maps and summaries support the narrative spine
Flexibility	4	Designed for the MP sequence but routinely used as a stand-alone Bible program
Value for money	5	Under $40 per level for a full year of Bible/Church history
Worldview scope	3	Broadly orthodox Christian, works across most Protestant and Catholic homes, less comfortable for secular or non-Christian households
Visual/design	2	Black-and-white interior, minimal illustration, functional rather than decorative
Support resources	3	Teacher guides and online academy videos available; thinner supplementary content than the literature lines

Who the publisher is

Memoria Press is a classical Christian curriculum publisher founded in 1996 by Cheryl and Martin Cothran in Louisville, Kentucky. The company grew out of Highlands Latin School, a classical Christian school the Cothrans helped establish, and for its first decade its catalog was shaped by what Highlands needed in its own classrooms. Memoria Press is not a large conglomerate, it remains a family-owned publisher with a specific editorial voice, but within the classical Christian homeschool world it is a foundational name, particularly for its Latin program and literature guides. The Christian Studies series sits inside that larger classical sequence.

Christian Studies was developed to fill a specific slot in the classical grammar-stage curriculum: a Bible and Church-history program that respected the classical method, memorization, narration, structured comprehension, rather than adopting the thematic-unit approach common in Protestant Sunday-school curriculum. The series is written to a non-denominational editorial standard: the texts reflect mainstream Christian orthodoxy (the creeds, the canonical books, the broad arc from creation through the early Church) without arguing for specific confessional distinctives. Both Reformed Protestant and Roman Catholic families commonly use the program, and many Eastern Orthodox families use it as well, with a few content notes we address below.

The series reached its current four-level form in the late 2000s and early 2010s, with Christian Studies IV (Early Church History) completing the sequence. The publisher page for the series describes all four levels, sample pages, and placement guidance.

The core pedagogy

Christian Studies follows the classical grammar-stage pattern for a religious subject: read the narrative, memorize the core facts (names, places, dates, quotations), answer comprehension questions in writing, and review cumulatively. It is not a devotional program. It is a content program that treats the Bible and early Church as a body of material to be learned in the same way a classical student learns the narrative of Greek myth or Roman history, with careful attention to who, what, where, when, and in what order.

Each level pairs a student text (the narrative), a student workbook (comprehension questions, vocabulary, map work, review), and a teacher guide (answer keys, discussion prompts, quiz answers). Lessons are organized into weekly units; each unit covers a chunk of biblical or historical narrative and builds a cumulative review of material covered earlier. Memorization of Scripture and basic theological vocabulary runs throughout. Map work is a genuine feature, students learn the geography of the ancient Near East, the journeys of the patriarchs, the division of the kingdoms, the Gospel-era Judea and Roman world, and the spread of the early Church across the Mediterranean.

The four levels proceed in sequence: Christian Studies I covers Genesis through roughly the early monarchy; Christian Studies II continues through the later Old Testament; Christian Studies III is the New Testament, centered on the Gospels and Acts; Christian Studies IV addresses the early Church through the conversion of Constantine and the great councils. A family can start at any level, the series does not require mastering all prior levels, but the assumption in the Memoria Press sequence is that a student encounters them in order, typically one level per year, across grades three through six or four through seven depending on placement.

The teacher-facing posture is light. The teacher guide contains the answer key to the workbook, suggested oral review questions, and notes for the weekly quiz. A parent who has read the unit the night before can teach the lesson the next morning without further preparation. Christian Studies does not require the parent to have formal theological training or facility with original languages; all content is delivered in English and at an elementary reading level.

A day in the life

A fourth-grader using Christian Studies III opens the student text on a typical morning and reads the assigned narrative section, usually two to four pages covering a section of a Gospel or a passage in Acts, aloud or silently. The student then completes the corresponding workbook page: a short set of comprehension questions (Who was Zacchaeus? Where did the encounter take place? What did he promise?), a vocabulary section (disciple, Pharisee, publican), and often a map exercise or a short Scripture memory passage. The parent reviews the work, goes over any wrong answers, and leads a brief oral discussion keyed to the teacher guide. Total time: twenty to thirty minutes, four days a week, with a cumulative review and quiz on the fifth day.

In a Memoria Press full-classical household, Christian Studies typically runs parallel to Latina Christiana or First Form Latin, a literature guide (D'Aulaires' Greek Myths or Famous Men of Rome), a math program, and Memoria Press-published composition and spelling. The daily Christian Studies slot is one of the shorter ones, it is not meant to be the backbone of the day but one discipline among several.

What they do exceptionally well

Structural coverage of the biblical narrative. By the end of Christian Studies III, a student has a working knowledge of the main events, figures, and geography of both Testaments, not in a devotional or topical-sermon sense, but as a body of historical and literary material. Students finish the four-year sequence able to order biblical events, place them geographically, and identify the major figures in each period. This is a higher bar than most family-Bible-story curricula reach.

Cross-denominational usability. Because the program teaches the biblical and Church-historical narrative without arguing Reformed distinctives, Catholic sacramental theology, or a particular ecclesiology, it is one of the rare programs that travels across Protestant and Catholic households with minimal editing. The publisher's own framing is that the series reflects "mainstream Christian orthodoxy." This is accurate. A careful Reformed Protestant family will find nothing objectionable; a Catholic family will find nothing that contradicts the Catechism, though they may want to supplement with a specifically Catholic catechetical text for sacramental formation.

Price per year. At under $40 per level for the student text, workbook, and teacher guide combined, Christian Studies is among the cheapest year-long Bible programs in the homeschool market. The budget tier is real; this is not a program that becomes expensive by the time all the add-ons ship.

Map work and chronology. Most children's Bible curricula treat geography and chronology as optional. Christian Studies makes them central. A student who completes the series can place Abraham in Ur, trace the Exodus route, identify the northern and southern kingdoms, locate the cities of Paul's missionary journeys, and place Nicaea on a map of the late Roman Empire. This is a distinguishing feature.

What they do poorly

Visual design is utilitarian. The interior of the texts and workbooks is black-and-white, with simple line illustrations and maps. Compared to The Good and the Beautiful, Catholic Heritage Curricula, or Veritas Press Bible, the visual experience is plain. Children who respond to visual richness may not love Christian Studies on sight. Parents who value substance over aesthetic will not care.

Narrower than a full catechism program. Christian Studies teaches the biblical and Church-historical narrative well; it does not catechize. Families seeking systematic doctrinal instruction, the sacraments, the creeds, Reformed theology, confessional Lutheranism, Catholic moral theology, will need to pair Christian Studies with a catechism-specific program (Baltimore Catechism, Westminster Shorter Catechism, Luther's Small Catechism, etc.).

No Orthodox-specific edition. Christian Studies IV covers the early Church through Nicaea in a way that works for Orthodox families, but the broader series does reflect a Western (Latin / Protestant) framing of Church history. Orthodox families typically supplement with Orthodox sources on the Church fathers and the later Eastern tradition.

Minimal multimedia. Christian Studies is a print program. There is no video course, no app, and no audio narration. Memoria Press Online Academy offers live or recorded classes for many of its products; the Christian Studies online academy course exists but is a smaller offering than, for example, the Latin program's video support.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Christian Studies if: you are already using Memoria Press for other subjects and want editorial consistency; you want a structured Bible and Church-history program that teaches content rather than devotional application; you are Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox and want a cross-denominational spine; you are working within a budget; you want map work and chronology embedded in the Bible program.

• Skip Christian Studies if: you want visual richness or multimedia as a primary feature; you need a systematic catechism as your Bible program (not a supplement); you are secular, Jewish, LDS, or from a non-Christian religious tradition, the material is unambiguously Christian scripture and Church history; your student responds poorly to workbook-style comprehension work.

Cost honest assessment

Each level of Christian Studies, the student text, student workbook, and teacher guide, runs approximately $35-$42 as a complete set per the Memoria Press pricing pages as of April 2026. A family running one level per year will spend roughly $35-$42 annually on Bible/Church history. Four years of the sequence, across grades three to six or four to seven, totals under $170 for the full Christian Studies track.

Compared to Veritas Press Bible (which at $100+ per year for the full Bible cards-and-text program is substantially more expensive) and The Good and the Beautiful Bible (which sells a more visually elaborate program at moderate cost but from an LDS-authored editorial perspective), Christian Studies is priced at the budget tier and does not require premium materials or subscriptions to function.

An all-in cost for one student running Christian Studies III for the year, including replacement workbooks if a second child uses the series later, is roughly $35-$50 for the first child, with the workbook being the main consumable on subsequent uses.

ESA eligibility notes

Memoria Press as a publisher is approved on most state ESA marketplaces that permit Christian materials, including Arizona's ClassWallet, Florida's Step Up For Students, West Virginia's Hope Scholarship, and Iowa's Student First Scholarship, with Christian Studies typically listed among the approved titles. Some state ESA programs restrict materials with explicitly religious content; Christian Studies is unambiguously a Bible and Church-history program and may fall under those restrictions in states that enforce them. Families in states that do restrict religious curriculum should verify the specific title's status within their program before ordering.

Alternatives

• Veritas Press Bible, a family would choose Veritas Press over Christian Studies for a more elaborate multimedia Bible program with memory songs, art-card review, and a signature timeline sequence, at a higher cost and with a more overtly Reformed editorial frame.
• Catholic Heritage Curricula Bible, a Catholic family would choose CHC over Christian Studies when they want a program explicitly rooted in Catholic catechesis, sacramental preparation, and saints' lives rather than a cross-denominational narrative spine.
• Telling God's Story (Peace Hill Press), a family would choose Peace Hill Press's Bible curriculum over Christian Studies when they want a narrative-only, discussion-led approach that does not use workbooks and that emphasizes conversation over written comprehension.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Memoria Press Christian Studies product pages, sample pages, and teacher-guide excerpts available at memoriapress.com in April 2026, cross-referenced the series' ecumenical framing against the publisher's stated editorial approach, and checked pricing and availability on the publisher's catalog. We reviewed Cathy Duffy's published notes on the Memoria Press Christian Studies series and surveyed parent discussion in classical-Christian homeschool forums. Prices and program details verified April 2026.