The Bible and Education

[For once, I wrote an article ON Facebook first, and now I'm transferring it over here for my blog readers to read! Not going to say it's never happened before, but I can't recall doing it this way...]

The Bible was used for the first 120 years of this country in the public schools. That would mean they stopped using it in the late 1800s - actually, it might have even been into the very early 20th century. School textbooks didn't exist until the MacGuffin readers came along (sp?). When actual educationally designed textbooks started becoming practical, the Bible was no longer as practical or as necessary in the classroom. None of us should have ever used it in school unless you're my grandparents' age.

Having said all that, it was apparently not a problem for the first 120 years of our country. That's because to the Founding Fathers, "freedom of religion" literally meant freedom from Catholicism and the C of E. They couldn't imagine a non-Christian country, so they didn't specify that; just as they couldn't imagine a non-English speaking country, so the language was never specified, either.

Reading the writings of the Founding Fathers, they to varying degrees could not conceive of a nation of democratic rule functioning without the God of Christ; even Jefferson and Hamilton took it as a tacit truth, and our first two presidents, Washington and Adams, expounded on it at length.

And a truly Christian nation would have done exactly what we did (barring the slavery, of course): welcomed immigrants from throughout the world, regardless of race, creed, color, or religion. There was always the underlying assumption that those coming to our country would join into our "melting pot", assuming our language and ways. But there were no laws explicitly saying they had to.

It's fascinating to wonder where the tipping point was to go from USING the Bible in schools to it being ILLEGAL to use the Bibles in school under the same Constitution. We have a governing document that was designed to be as flexible as possible to go with the times; it has only needed about two dozen amendments over more than two centuries to govern what should be the greatest nation on earth, the role model for more other national governments across the globe than any other nation in existence.

But it could not account for a government where there was a ruling collusion of men (mostly) who did not believe in the principles of Christ, regardless of their spoken positions, and whose primary interest was not the betterment of this nation but their own financial gain and the gain of those whose interests they support through being bought and paid for by those interests. NO government can. Only a strong and moral populace can overcome such a governance of criminals.

Would being a "Christian nation" have prevented this mess? Probably, but that ship has sailed. We stopped being a Christian nation about 60-100 years ago, given even a generous definition of the term.

Would being an ethical, educated nation have prevented this? Yes, and only if that vestige is still strong enough can it be saved. If either of those adjectives no longer apply to the USA, then this may very well be the last 4th of July worth celebrating, my friends.

(And if you're interested in a contrary reaction to this post, click the link to the original post and read the discussion on the first comment. Or don't. Your life won't be any worse for not having done so.)