Posted on 05/21/2019 11:39:42 AM PDT by george76
Teach the Bible in public schools so that students can learn to better understand the world around them. ( Full title).
Most of the recent discussions about teaching the Bible in school miss the key points.
First, teaching the Bible in public schools is important for students because, without knowledge of the Bible, students can’t fully understand the English language, English literature, history, art, music or culture. For example, there are over 1,200 documented references to the Bible in Shakespeare’s 36 plays. If you don’t know the Bible, you really can’t understand Shakespeare. You can’t get past the first sentence of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick - “Call me Ishmael” - if you don’t understand who Ishmael was in the Bible.
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Third, in the most recent national survey that we conducted in May 2017, 80 percent of Americans wanted the Bible taught in public schools. However, we know from other surveys that only about 8 percent of public schools do so. Since Bible courses are almost all electives, where only about 25 percent of a class might take the course, the reach is 2 percent. Given that 80 percent of Americans want the Bible taught and only 2 percent are taught this is an eye -opening disconnect.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,>>>>>> or prohibiting the free exercise thereof !!
Need more be said ?
The basis for a good deal of Western art, literature, law, culture. Why would it not be taught as a unifying document? Electives should be offered in every high school.
Teaching “the Bible” in public schools is another form of indoctrination. By “the Bible”, this guy surely means the Christian one. What about the Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and other various students found in today’s public schools? Do they have to sit there and listen to the values and dictates of other religions being represented as the only way to live? How is that different from the schools criticized for forcing students to listen to lessons about Islam? Religious teachings have no place in public schools, which are supposed to be neutral.
Why yes, much more need be said. That common response is usually meant to imply that the Constitution prohibits the federal government from promoting anything that might be construed as religious.
However, nothing could be farther from the truth. If we want to properly understand the intent of the so-called “establishment clause”, all we need do is examine how those who wrote it behaved in this regard immediately after. Do so, and you will find the first Congress appropriating funds from the treasury to hire preachers and print Bibles in order to evangelize the Indian tribes. You will also find Thomas Jefferson, as President, regularly attending Christian church services in the Senate chambers (they were also, ironically, held in the chambers of the Supreme Court). And the list goes on and on....
As for public schools, those proposing the creation of a public school system in colonial times, including Benjamin Franklin, used as their primary argument the need to ensure that the People were well-versed in the Bible, and in the teachings of Jesus. They unequivocally stated that this knowledge was essential to becoming a responsible American citizen.
Yet today we’ve permitted liberals to so distort the “establishment clause”’s intent that we see school administrators constantly try to expunge any vestige of Christianity from the schools. That is 180 degrees off of the Founder’s intent.
Ask the academics why it is “so important” to teach about any Greek or Roman mythology if the history Western civilization is going to be taught in absence of understanding Judeo-Christian beliefs.
I disagree. How can we call a literature education well-rounded if you exclude that piece of literature that is the best seller of all time and is the underpinning of our language and western civilization?
We are told that Christianity represents the hegemony of dead white males while at the same time are told that early Christians were non-white (including Jesus).
Simple: Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism have nothing to do with America’s founding, nor with it’s guiding principles. Christianity and to a slightly lesser extent Judaism, on the other hand, have everything to do with what America is.
What’s Sunday School for? Teach it there to heart’s content.
Each denomination keeps its own spin. Public school can’t do that.
In an address given during that 1976 Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia for the bicentennial celebration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla spoke prophetic words.
- "We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has ever experienced. I do not think that the wide circle of the American Society, or the whole wide circle of the Christian Community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the Antichrist. The confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence. It is, therefore, in God's Plan, and it must be a trial which the Church must take up, and face courageously. - Deacon Keith Fournier, standing under the beautiful bronze statue of John Paul II in Denver, Colorado.
> Religious teachings have no place in public schools, which are supposed to be neutral. <
You are 100% correct! I’m Christian. But if the Bible is taught in a public school, then there would be no reason not to teach the Koran too. Religion aside, the Bible is a great work of literature. But a Muslim would say the same about the Koran.
As fore making it an elective course, again nope. One reason for public schools is that they tend to unite us. The Italian kid sits next to the Black kid who sits next to the Irish kid.
Teaching the Bible, the Koran, etc. would not unite us.
BUT, the free exercise of Islam would allow the Muslims to try to dominate, enslave or kill all those who decline to embrace it. So Islam must be declared to be a non-religion.
In fact it is NOT; it is a totalitarian socio-political system masquerading as one. We must recognize it for what it is and ban it.
Now you are going too far. Teaching scriptures to students would decimate the Demoncrat party.
Don’t teach them...Teach ABOUT them, but honestly. Highlight the differences, like the Muslim policy of taqiyya and their hatred of Infidels even to the point of killing, the Christian admonition to do good to those who hate you and that evil can be forgiven by accepting Christ’s sacrifice, The Torah’s Ten Commandments, etc.
I disagree. On paper, it might seem like a good idea. But in practice, discussion of the Christian bible in public schools usually takes on the format of implying--or in some cases, forcefully declaring--that it is the ONLY way to think. Especially in the more provincial areas of the country, where anyone other than a straight white Christian is rather a rarity. I know, because it happened to me. My parents were not all that religious and sent me to public school, where I was forced to put up Xmas decorations, Easter decorations, Valentine decorations and participate in other Christian holiday practices and listen to parts of Christian ideology. Judaism and its customs were never discussed, nor were any students set to decorating the classroom with menorahs, pictures of Israel, etc. There were no Buddhist, Hindu, Moslem or other religions' adherents in those classrooms in those days. There was just an overwhelming acceptance that there was one way, and it was Christian. I had to endure remarks calling me a kike and other perjorative antisemitic names, and accusations that "you people killed JC". I became adept at delivering very potent slaps or even punches when regaled by those names, because the admin could not be counted on to deliver justice or correction to those ignorant students who could not even conceive of religions or cultures other than their own.
> Don’t teach them...Teach ABOUT them, but honestly. Highlight the differences, like the Muslim policy of taqiyya and their hatred of Infidels even to the point of killing... <
I’d vote for you for school board. Unfortunately you’d be removed by a federal judge after about a week in office.
There is a religion being pushed in school. It is 100% anti science religion of anybody but an inellgent creator that will endow you , at conception, with purpose, meaning and stop the dark ages of child sacrifice that is already here.
Honestly, did the Christmas decorations hurt you? That seems extreme.
I did not grow up in a religious family. We seldom went to church and then usually for other purposes, like weddings or funerals. Around age 10-12 I had been doing a lot of reading. It occurred to me that all of Western civilization and culture had derived from the Christian bible. I read several pages every night, trying to understand the basis of Western civilization and philosophy.
I admit I bogged down in the begats. (So-and-so begat So-and-so; for page after page.) But it is still profound to think two thousand years of progress and steady growth is related to the teachings of just one book and the many religions it spawned. Yes, the bible is important. From it derives our laws, our sense of justice and, most important, our inalienable rights.
I am 65 and I saw the beginning of the government’s war against religion starting around 1965 when, if I recall, they did away with prayer in school. I think the reason for this is to take away the rights that we got from God (or, if you like) from the Christian religion and the Founder’s vision of how those rights would be distributed and protected. There has been an unrelenting attack on those rights and the freedoms they confer by the Godless Left. Yes, it is time that American students are taught from where our rights come and what would happen if they were stolen away.
I can envision this being done in a dispassionate way that didn’t preach religion, but just explained how law and civilization derived from it. That way it wouldn’t (this makes me mad) “offend” anyone.
The idea would be to inform those (@&^%#) diverse people that the reason they can trash talk America is they benefit from those rights that derived directly from Christianity. Try doing that in Iran or Saudi Arabia and you would be whipped or executed. (Frankly, I wish those “diverse” people who trash talk America and Americans would go back to whatever (*&%$#) they came from if they are so unhappy here.)
Incidentally, I have known some diverse people who love America like the most patriotic American I ever knew. They are grateful every day for being here. They are as valuable a member of our society as you can get; because they know just how bad the world can be and how good it is here.
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