Radio minister and bookstore owner Buhl Cummings opened Athens Christian School with his wife in 1970.

[7] According to historian Ashton Ellett, white elites enrolled their children in Athens Christian School as part of the transition to a class-based system of racial exclusion that was nominally colorblind and revolved around the rhetoric of individual rights, personal freedom, and meritocratic enrollment.

[8] In 1985, Athens Christian School suspend a student for participating in an off-campus theater's production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

Headmaster Buhl Cummings explained that school banned dancing because "it inflames the passions of youth".

Rock-n-roll music was also banned because the "jungle type beat" was reminiscent of the "drums of Africa where they don't know the gospel".