Distribution of Bible prompts complaint

sunherald.com ^

[chance33_98]

Distribution of Bible prompts complaint

Student's mom unhappy with the version

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MOBILE - A public school let an evangelical group distribute Protestant versions of the Bible to students, prompting complaints from a Roman Catholic mother.

Leigha Arnez said she doesn't have a problem with the Bible but she would rather her 10-year-old son be brought up on the Douay-Rheims translation favored by many Catholics, not the King James Version handed out by members of Gideons International.

She also was concerned that parents were not notified before the group gave away Bibles in a hallway at Semmes Elementary School, where her fifth-grader received a copy after classes a few weeks ago.

"With a child being 10 years old, my feeling is it should be the parent's decision," she said.

Principal Sharon Anderson said the Gideons have passed out Bibles at Semmes Elementary for years with the permission of system administrators. They also distributed Bibles at other public schools, she said.

The state Attorney General's Office has told schools that citizens are free to distribute religious literature in public schools as long as people handing out other material unrelated to curriculum are treated the same way.

Based in Nashville, the Gideons are a Christian men's missionary organization best known for placing Bibles in hotel rooms. Gideons say they pass out some 60 million scriptures worldwide annually, almost all of them either New Testaments or complete Bibles.

Buddy Adams, a member of the west Mobile County camp of the Gideons, said the group tries to visit every school in the county each year. Students are not required to take a Bible, but Adams said he has seen fewer than 50 students decline a book while visiting more than two dozen schools this year.

Arnez said she would rather her son Zachary not read the New Testament provided by the Gideons because it was the King James Version, often preferred by conservative Protestants. The Douay-Rheims translation version favored by Arnez is most commonly used by Catholics and was based on early Latin texts rather than the original Greek and Hebrew.

Anderson said she would require students next year to have a signed permission slip allowing them to take copies.

[Gil4]

Permission slips are fine with me, "as long as people handing out other material unrelated to curriculum are treated the same way."

Sorry about the cut-and-paste error.

[Tax-chick]

What a noodle! She insists on the Douay-Rheims, instead of the stylistically very similar, contemporary, King James Version, but she has her child in public school? MASSIVE COGNITIVE DISSONANCE!

We got New King James Version New Testaments at the county fair from the Gideons; it's a pretty translation. My kids are reading it, but we use the Revised Standard for memorization, just because it's what I like best!

[cinFLA]

Arnez said she would rather her son Zachary not read the New Testament provided by the Gideons because it was the King James Version, often preferred by conservative Protestants. The Douay-Rheims translation version favored by Arnez is most commonly used by Catholics and was based on early Latin texts rather than the original Greek and Hebrew.

I thought the Bible was the word of God and not subject to human manipulation ...

[Zack Attack]

The Protestant Bible has a big whole in the history God's Chosen People.

Seems those books were left out of the Jewish scriptures also. Maybe Protestants just accepted the Jewish canon?

[Mr. Lucky]

I'm sure you're just being cute with your Protestant friends here, but in fact the Gideon Bible distributed in grade schools is only the New Testament, together with the Book of Psalms.

How substantive do you believe the difference between the Douay - Rheims and the King James versions to be with regard to the New Testament?

[VRWC_minion]

Only about 6 billion Catholics... just a few.

If someone gave you a cook book that covered all sorts of basic meals but it omitted deserts would you complain ?

Listen, I am protestant. I have the apocrypha books in my bible. I have read them. I have also mentored bible studies and I also know many catholics and ex-catholics who have expressed a desire to attend because they never read the bible in any type of guided study before. Its my observation that regular bible study is not a way of life for Catholics and the reading of the apochrapha would be above and beyond the call of duty.

In as much as these were a gift and in as much as the included 90% of the texts that catholics read, what is the big deal ?

[george wythe]

Seems those books were left out of the Jewish scriptures also. Maybe Protestants just accepted the Jewish canon?

Maybe Protestants were blind men following blind men?

The Greek version of the OT used by Jesus had the deuterocanonical books, but later Jewish rabbis rejected the books mainly because no original Hebrew language could be located. Of course, recent discoveries, such as the Dead Sea scrolls suggests that Hebrew versions did exist.

At any rate, Christians make their decisions by themselves, not by listening to Jewish rabbis who don't accept Christ as God's Son.

If the schools want to distribute Bibles as an academic exercise, they should distribute the Bible with the most books, not an incomplete Bible. Otherwise, students are being deprived to the complete history of God's Chosen People.

JMHO.

[VRWC_minion]

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:NjgdoUIHUoMJ:www.catholicculture.org/docs/doc_view.cfm%3Frecnum%3D4300+Douay+-+Rheims+and+the+King+James&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

[Ignatius J Reilly]

..."free to distribute religious literature in public schools as long as people handing out other material unrelated to curriculum are treated the same way."

You can bet if someone were handing out satanist tracks there would be a huge outcry. You can bet it will happen too, just to force the district to stop the Gideons

[Mr. Lucky]

Kinda sobering how much orthodox Christians would have in common if they would sop p*ssing on each other's shoes for awhile, huh?

[MegaSilver]

In the sixteenth century, the Protestant Reformers removed a large section of the Old Testament that was not compatible with their theology. They charged that these writings were not inspired Scripture and branded them with the pejorative title "Apocrypha."

Eh... it didn't quite happen that way.

As I understand it, the Old Testament in the original Bible as canonized by the early Church was taken from the Greek Septuagint. The Protestant Reformers used the Hebrew Bible, which (at the time, at least) did NOT include the deuterocanonical books (which probably relates to the reason why they were disputed early on).

As I do not have strong denominational commitments, I take no position as to whether or not they are canonical. However, the language you use in your post reflects something of a bitter sentiment toward Protestantism, just as many Protestants espouse needless Romophobia. Neither one is something the other side will receive well or that will go very far toward healing these 500-year-old wounds.

[MegaSilver]

In many respects I wish I had more instruction in the muslim religion because it is affecting me so much.

Think about WHAT they would have taught, though...

[Snickersnee]

When I was a Catholic kid in catechism class in the 50's, we were forbidden from having Bibles. It was too complex for us lay rabble, you see. Anything we needed to know about the Bible could be gotten thru our priest. Just ask him and he'll give you the approved line. But whatever you do, don't read the Bible yourself or you'll go to hell! That's why I'm a Protestant today.

[sarasmom]

I am torn on this one.
I guess I want more details on the actual set-up of the bible give-aways.
I am uncomfortable with any denomination giving any version of their scriptures to elementary aged children, with out the permission of the parent.
I love books, but I respect the biblical scriptures.
Like the difference between a "flag" of a sports team, and the USA flag. A different level of respect and treatment should be expected.

[NCjim]

Leigha Arnez said she doesn't have a problem with the Bible but she would rather her 10-year-old son be brought up on the Douay-Rheims translation favored by many Catholics, not the King James Version handed out by members of Gideons International.

Then why didn't she just give her son the Catholic Bible and tell him she would rather him use it? If nothing else, tell him that according to their beliefs, the one the Gideons gave him was missing a couple of chapters. In my humble opinion this would be a better example than making the proverbial Federal Case about it!

Of course this more rational approach would not get her on TV and in the newspaper...

[Blue_Ridge_Mtn_Geek]

Public schools are there to educate everyone.

---

???

Wise up. A good place to start your education would be:

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

For a quick summary, see:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/historytour/history1.htm

For more detail, read the free book at:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm

[Blue_Ridge_Mtn_Geek]

I am uncomfortable with any denomination giving any version of their scriptures to elementary aged children, with out the permission of the parent.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Then this might be a bit unsettling to you as well:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm

School As Religion

Nothing about school is what it seems, not even boredom. To show you what I mean is the burden of this long essay. My book represents a try at arranging my own thoughts in order to figure out what fifty years of classroom confinement (as student and teacher) add up to for me. You’ll encounter a great deal of speculative history here. This is a personal investigation of why school is a dangerous place. It’s not so much that anyone there sets out to hurt children; more that all of us associated with the institution are stuck like flies in the same great web your kids are. We buzz frantically to cover our own panic but have little power to help smaller flies.

Looking backward on a thirty-year teaching career full of rewards and prizes, somehow I can’t completely believe that I spent my time on earth institutionalized; I can’t believe that centralized schooling is allowed to exist at all as a gigantic indoctrination and sorting machine, robbing people of their children. Did it really happen? Was this my life? God help me.

School is a religion. Without understanding the holy mission aspect you’re certain to misperceive what takes place as a result of human stupidity or venality or even class warfare. All are present in the equation, it’s just that none of these matter very much—even without them school would move in the same direction. Dewey’s Pedagogic Creed statement of 1897 gives you a clue to the zeitgeist:

"Every teacher should realize he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of the proper social order and the securing of the right social growth. In this way the teacher is always the prophet of the true God and the usherer in of the true kingdom of heaven."

What is "proper" social order? What does "right" social growth look like? If you don’t know you’re like me, not like John Dewey who did, or the Rockefellers, his patrons, who did, too.

Somehow out of the industrial confusion which followed the Civil War, powerful men and dreamers became certain what kind of social order America needed, one very like the British system we had escaped a hundred years earlier. This realization didn’t arise as a product of public debate as it should have in a democracy, but as a distillation of private discussion. Their ideas contradicted the original American charter but that didn’t disturb them. They had a stupendous goal in mind—the rationalization of everything. The end of unpredictable history; its transformation into dependable order.

From mid-century onwards certain utopian schemes to retard maturity in the interests of a greater good were put into play, following roughly the blueprint Rousseau laid down in the book Emile. At least rhetorically. The first goal, to be reached in stages, was an orderly, scientifically managed society, one in which the best people would make the decisions, unhampered by democratic tradition. After that, human breeding, the evolutionary destiny of the species, would be in reach. Universal institutionalized formal forced schooling was the prescription, extending the dependency of the young well into what had traditionally been early adult life. Individuals would be prevented from taking up important work until a relatively advanced age. Maturity was to be retarded.

During the post-Civil War period, childhood was extended about four years. Later, a special label was created to describe very old children. It was called adolescence, a phenomenon hitherto unknown to the human race. The infantilization of young people didn’t stop at the beginning of the twentieth century; child labor laws were extended to cover more and more kinds of work, the age of school leaving set higher and higher. The greatest victory for this utopian project was making school the only avenue to certain occupations. The intention was ultimately to draw all work into the school net. By the 1950s it wasn’t unusual to find graduate students well into their thirties, running errands, waiting to start their lives.

For more, follow the link and read the rest of the (free, online) book.

[stands2reason]

Thanks for your unbiased input.

I'm just here to learn --I have little to no knowledge of early Church history or Jewish history for that matter. It's hard to learn from prejudice.

[stands2reason]

got any non-anticapitalist sites?

[MegaSilver]

Thanks for your unbiased input.

You're welcome. :)

I'm just here to learn --I have little to no knowledge of early Church history or Jewish history for that matter. It's hard to learn from prejudice.

Yes; unfortunately prejudiced accounts are often all we have to work with.

Incidently, if you're interested in learning about early Church and Jewish history, the Bible is a good place to start. I know you're a deist (peeked at your About page), but there's a lot to be learned if you can read it with the mentality that it is Jewish and Church history from Jewish and Christian perspectives.

Most of what I know about early Church history after the first few decades following Christ, I learned in history, high school Theology classes, and gleanings from the internet, so I couldn't recommend many good books on the subject.