During the last third of the twentieth century, Christian schooling in the United States was typically identified with the growing conservative, evangelical Protestant movement of that time period. After several United States Supreme Court cases had effectively secularized public schooling by the mid-1960s, the American educational landscape was significantly altered by the rapid expansion of the Christian day school movement. Christian schools have now surpassed 15% of the total private school enrollment in the nation--and they continue to grow. Yet, despite their spectacular growth in enrollment, Christian schools have historically not been identified with either academic excellence or diversity by many professional educators. Likewise, Christian schools have not much been studied by the main body of educational researchers, as evidenced by the small number of papers presented on them at recent American Educational Research Association meetings. In this article, the author focuses strictly on the origins in the late 1980s of a Christian school, which has defied the negative images held by many educators and which may well serve as a model for Christian schooling in the twenty-first century. Named Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy (CHCA), it was and remains a diverse, Christ-centered, and academically excellent school. As described in its earliest press releases, CHCA was to be an independent, nondenominational, nonprofit, parent-directed Christian school. Opening in 1989 with just 176 students, it has quickly grown to an enrollment of approximately 1,450 on two campuses as of 2006. Approximately 23% of its current student body represents students from minority backgrounds. Most of the minority enrollment is African American, which is also true of the minority population in Greater Cincinnati. Its quickly established reputation for academic excellence has been demonstrated by a college preparatory program; which has garnered National Merit scholarships, federal Blue Ribbon awards for all three divisions of the school--elementary (1997), middle (2000), and high school (2002)--and membership in the prestigious Independent Schools Association of the Central States (ISACS) private schools organization.