Posted on 04/09/2009 11:05:24 AM PDT by lifeisacarnival
The resurgence of traditional Christian mores and culture that began in the late 1970s has ended.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
The GOP gave up. The MSM has taken sides solidly to the point where other views are ignored.
Drive through Utah during Christmas and **all** the school signs say “Winter Break”!
This is **UTAH** of all places! Geeze! Even in Mormon Utah where some communities are 95%plus Mormon are cowled into using secularist language.
My husband and I like to ski in Utah, and even here we see the encroachment of the Progressive-Marxist influences.
(Yes, I am shouting. I am exasperated!)
Well, my thought is that we need to get public(government) schools out of the US.
Things look bleak right now, but whether we’re winning or losing I will never give up the fight. We may ultimately lose, but I’ll never surrender.
We’re about to take Pregnancy Care Centers which have traditionally been in the suburbs and place them in the innercity, where minorities and college students, those most affected, reside.
Remember, God is in control.
That actually is the answer.
Take care of the fundamentals and the politics will take care of themselves.
We are allowing the pursuit of perfection be the enemy of the good.
The Libs absolutely love it.
You said — Well, my thought is that we need to get public(government) schools out of the US.
—
Well, maybe, but it was different in the beginning, though...
The Bible: The Foundation of Liberty
By Paul Strand
CBN News
April 29, 2007
CBNNews.com - CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. - The Bible was American children’s first textbook. And most textbooks for centuries after were Bible-based.
In fact, in this age where many think that the Founding Fathers wanted a high wall of separation between church and state, it’s surprising to see how much the Bible was at the root of almost everything that made America free, well-educated and prosperous.
Right from the start of America’s history, the Bible has been in the thick of things.
Stephen McDowell from the Biblical Worldview University, said, “The Bible was the most central influence in the beginning, birth, growth and development of the United States — in education, government, law — in every area.”
McDowell and Mark Beliles of the Providence Foundation co-authored America’s Providential History, where they present the facts of this overwhelming influence.
The authors say that the Founding Fathers found knowledge of the Bible absolutely vital.
Beliles said, “Many, in fact, who were lawyers actually first went and got theological degrees, because they understood the need to know biblical ideas of law.”
“The very laws and constitutions were written and drawn from the Scriptures,” said McDowell.
Patriot Patrick Henry stated, “the Bible is a book worth more than all the other books that were ever printed.”
Congress found the Bible so important, it even printed it for the American people back in 1782.
When George Washington was inaugurated, he didn’t just swear on the Bible.
“But he actually kneeled before it and kissed it,” said Beliles.
Thomas Jefferson these days is seen as a Deist who wanted to erect a high wall between church and state.
But Beliles said that Jefferson filled The Declaration of Independence with biblical concepts.
“He refers to our Creator as the source of our rights and liberties,” Beliles explained.
Beliles and McDowell took us to the courthouse in Jefferson’s hometown, Charlottesville, Virginia, where the young lawyer helped set up a church right inside that government building in 1777.
“Thomas Jefferson himself called it ‘the common temple,’” said Belilies
President Jefferson jotted down notes that he thought would be helpful to convert Indians to Christianity.
And he commanded that federal resources be used in that effort.
It’s also evident that Jefferson wasn’t afraid to mix religion and state as you walk the grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, a college designed by Jefferson himself.
Even there, at the center of one of America’s most prominent public universities, inscribed on a building, are the biblical words: ‘The truth shall set you free’ — a concept of particular significance to the Founding Fathers.
That’s because they believed that no one could be truly free without knowing the God who makes men free.
Beliles said, “And they understood that where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
“The founders of America realized that true religion was the foundation for liberty,” said McDowell.
The founders believed that the Bible laid out most clearly what’s right and wrong, and with that moral foundation, a people could govern themselves.
Without such self-control, their freedom would have to be curtailed and government would need to control them.
“The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom,” stated newspaper publisher Horace Greeley.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court wrote in 1824, “No free government now exists in the world unless where Christianity is acknowledged and is the religion of the country.”
McDowell says that even America’s prosperous economy can be traced to the Word.
“Our economic philosophy, principles of individual enterprise, benefiting from the fruit of your labor and the concept of wanting to labor hard,” McDowell said, “all are rooted in the Bible.”
Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, explained that Christianity gave men a sublime and pure morality and that “without morals, a republic cannot subsist any length of time.”
That’s why Benjamin Rush, another prominent signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote “the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty.”
And that’s why American education began with the Bible.
The colonists believed that Satan wanted to keep people ignorant of what’s in the Scriptures and how it could set them free. So to battle that, the colonists passed what’s called “the Old Deluder Law” of 1647, establishing the first common schools.
And at the start, the Bible was the only textbook, since it was the only book every home and school were sure to have.
Then the Pilgrims and Puritans began to print for students what are known as “hornbooks.”
McDowell said, “And what it has is an alphabet around the edges, some syllables, then the invocation of the Trinity: ‘In the name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen,’ and then the Lord’s Prayer.”
In 1690 came the first printing of The Primer, a school book some call the most influential in American history, because it shaped the thinking of the Founding Fathers.
And you can see how Bible-based it was just from the way it taught the alphabet:
“C: Christ crucified for sinners died. D: the Deluge drowned the earth around, and on and on,” said McDowell.
Then came Noah Webster, most famous for Webster’s dictionary, but also enormously influential in education because of his Blue-backed Speller.
From 1783 on, Americans bought more than one hundred-million copies of the little book, which contained sentences like:
“God governs the world in His infinite wisdom. The Bible teaches us that it is our duty to worship Him,” explained McDowell.
But after that came the school books that would dominate the nation almost up to the modern era —The McGuffey Readers, with 122 million copies sold across 75 years, from the 1800s into the 1900s.
For this, William McGuffey was dubbed “the Schoolmaster of the Nation.”
We met with McDowell right outside the Virginia school building where McGuffey taught for decades.
He told us that McGuffey leaned heavily on the Scriptures to shape the minds and character of generations of young Americans, as McGuffey himself mentioned in the preface to one of his readers:
McDowell read, “From no source has the author drawn more copiously in his selections than from the sacred Scriptures.”
McDowell also showed us the first history book used in the schools, published in 1818. Its author, Frederick Butler, wrote in it, “What is the use of history? To expand the mind of man and to lead it up to God as the great Author, Preserver and Governor of all things.”
Today, almost all this has been stripped away from the public schools.
And now, much of the country’s youth are biblically illiterate.
One out of 10 think that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.
Only one out of three can name the four Gospels.
And 50 percent of today’s high school seniors think Sodom and Gomorrah were a married couple.
And with secular beliefs replacing scriptural doctrines, today it’s widely assumed that man stands atop the evolutionary ladder, proud master of his own fate — free from having to answer to anyone.
Many Americans today seem to think that the path to freedom is to be free of God and the command of His holy Scriptures.
But the Founding Fathers believed that the only true freedom comes from knowing this God and knowing His holy Word.
—
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/143661.aspx
Just the RINO’s have
Some are just noticing that the culture war was abandoned. Now the right has been reduced to being identified with tax cuts, free trade and interventionism.
What "resurgence" is the author refering to? From my perspective, the United States has been moving farther from its traditional Christian morals for decades. I saw no "resurgence" in the late 70s.
Demographics determines destiny. Look at the birthrates among evangelical Christians as compared to everyone else in the country. Within 3 or 4 generations, 5 at the most, the discussion will be over and we will have won.
SHAME ON CONSERVATIVES ( Christian and non-Christian) for failing to set up a system of tuition-free school so that every child in the U.S. could have had ( and have now) access to a conservative education based on traditional values.
The following is from the article "We are Losing Our Children".
http://www.exodusmandate.org/art_we_are_loosing_our_children.htm
We are losing our children. Research indicates that 70%of teens who are involved in a church youth group will stop attending church within two years of their high school graduation. Think about that statement. It addresses only teenagers who attend church and participate in the youth group. What does that suggest about those teens who may attend church but do not take part in the youth group, or who do not go to church at all?
In a talk at Southwestern Seminary Josh McDowell noted that less than 1/3 of today's youth attend church. If he is right and 67% do not go to church and then we lose 70% of those who do, that means that within two years of finishing high school only 10% of young Americans will attend church.
We are losing our youth.
The idiots running the country has revitalized it.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
We will win **only** if these children receive a thoroughly Christian education. The chances of remaining active in the faith for children (from active evangelical Christian homes) who attend government school are **abysmal**!
http://www.exodusmandate.org/art_20050404-salt-and-light.htm
The research data on the success of the public schools in indoctrinating Christian youth with humanistic or neo-pagan worldviews is overwhelming. The Nehemiah Institute's worldview PEERS test shows that 83-percent of the children from committed Christian families in public schools adopt a secular humanist or Marxist socialist worldview. At the SBC's 2002 annual meeting, the Southern Baptist Council on Family Life reported, among other disturbing things, that 88-percent of the children raised in evangelical homes leave church at age 18. Barna Research reports that only 9-percent of born-again teens believe in moral absolutes, and more than half believe that Jesus sinned while He was on earth. We believe the fact that 80-percent of Christian families send their children to public schools is a prime reason for this lost legacy.
But "the MSM is keeping us down" rhetoric is defeatist. If the gays, for instance, can take over the newsrooms and shout conservatives down, it's because their opponents were incompetent or lazy enough to let them.
So since their triumph is a sign of laziness or incompetence, conservatives need to conduct a PR audit. Maybe we should have been flattering news editors and cultivating "pet" journalists and Hollywood producers instead of merely complaining about them.
The Barna #s and anecdotal evidence both make the point that large families among evangelicals, or Catholics or Mormons will not guarantee us demographic victory. Too many good kids from good families get sent to public schools and get “reducation” 3 hours in Church - a few hours each evening (maybe) with Mom and Dad 40 hours in reducation camp, 30-40 hours of media (overwhelmingly dominated by the folks who brought you the reducation camps. Home schooling is the only reliable (large scale) way to insure that good kids stay that way.
I completely agree!
I can't find the link but the stats for homeschoolers remaining steadfast in their faith is just the opposite. 95% are active in their faith two years after high school.
Also...We should disabuse ourselves of the idea that parents have time to “deprogram” their kids. Let's look at the daily life of a child:
1) They must sleep 9 to 11 hours a night.
2) Time outside to freely play ( 1 to 3 hours). Often this is in the company of secular humanist neighbor children.
3) They wait at school bus stops and travel to from school for 1 to 2 or more hours a day. ( An atheistic secular environment)
4) We can fully discount the time spent in the morning rush to get to the bus stop on time. Once there, they associate with kids with secular values.
5) There is secular school homework ( 30 minutes to a half hour for younger children and several hours for older children.)
6) Time for the child to “socialize” with secular humanist friends via cell phone and Internet. ( 30 minutes to hour)
7) And....Maybe the kid would just like to relax with a secular humanist TV program. If adults would like time to relax with a TV program why wouldn't a kid? ( 30 minutes to hour)
8) There are after-school practices with sports, theater, and other clubs. ( 1 to 2 hours)
9) Time spent with secular humanist kids in non-school activities ( soccer, karate, or dance) ( 1 to 5 or more hours a week).
So??....Add it up. When and how can parents have the time to overcome the influence of the atheistic, secular humanist, Marxist government k-12 school? It's almost a lost cause. This is especially true if it is a single parent home.
Nope. It is, however, pretty clear that a change of tactics is in order.
Oh, you can counter all that by spending an hour with them twice a week...
/sarc
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