Free Republic

Deputy Minister of Religious Affairs Eli Ben-Dahan (Jewish Home) on the first day of classes Monday visited the “Reishit” school in Tel Aviv, a rapidly growing religious school in the traditionally secular city. At the school, located in southern Tel Aviv, Ben-Dahan spoke before hundreds of students. Reishit boasts some 400 students, the highest number in its history. If the students "work hard they can get to anywhere they want. Any one of you can be an IDF general, a rabbi, minister, or director of a large company," remarked Ben-Dahan at the school. "We need faith in religious and state...

One of the most significant losses in the modern era has been the loss of the Biblical narrative in the hearts and minds of most people. Scripture is the story of the human family, told by God himself. In story form He tells us how we were made and why, what happened why that things are the way they are today. Why do we have infinite longing in a finite world? Why do we struggle with sin so much? How can we be rescued from sin and death and find our hearts true satisfaction? The Biblical narrative answers these sorts...

MONTREAL -- Half of American high-school seniors surveyed recently thought Sodom and Gomorrah were a married couple. A McGill University professor's reference to the patience of Job drew blank stares from students in his religion course. An art history teacher in France found children were mystified by the "strange bird" (a dove representing the Holy Ghost) common in Renaissance paintings. Until recently, such confusion was little more than fodder for faculty-room jokes, evidence of the increasing secularism of Western societies. But educators attending a conference at McGill University yesterday heard there is growing recognition in Europe and North America that...

WHITEHOUSE, TX (KLTV) - The school year is almost here, and if literature of the Bible is not already offered in your child's school, it will be this fall. Books are a common sight in classrooms around the nation, but the Bible is one book that is not. Come this fall, a Texas law says all public schools must offer information relating to the Bible in their curriculum. "By the end of the year, what they begin to realize is that it is pervasive. You can't get away from it. The kids came back and were like 'It's everywhere,'" said...

A federal judge banned Bible trailers from an area school district, granting a request by a woman who claimed the religious education program violated her child’s civil rights. In a ruling issued Thursday, U.S. District Senior Judge James T. Moody agreed with the findings of Magistrate Judge Roger Cosbey and granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting Huntington County Community Schools from continuing to allow a religious education program to operate on school grounds. In November, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the school district on behalf of a parent, identified only by her initials, of a child at...

A gifted teenager killed himself with an overdose of painkillers after his comprehensive school sidelined Christianity in favour of 'alternative religions', an inquest heard today. Tragic Harry Tucker, 15, read the Bible at home because he believed his religious studies teachers focused on the teaching of Islam and Sikhism. Straight-A student Harry, was also troubled by his own sexuality and what he saw as unfair detentions. Harry, of Southville, Bristol, was found unconscious in bed on February 20, 2006, after taking an overdose of the painkiller co-proxamol. He was taken to Bristol Children's Hospital but staff were unable to resuscitate...

Christian kids are typically sent to Sunday school for lessons on the Bible and morals. For nonbelievers, there's atheist Sunday school. With an estimated 14 percent of Americans professing to have no religion, according to the Institute for Humanist Studies, some are choosing to send their children to classes that teach ethics without religious belief. Bri Kneisley sent her 10-year-old son, Damian, to Camp Quest Ohio this past summer after a neighbor had shown him the Bible. "Damian was quite certain this guy was right and was telling him this amazing truth that I had never shared," said Kneisley, who...

NEW YORK, June 18, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Religious education is a form of child abuse and violates the rights of children, contends a thesis to be considered by secular humanists at the Center for Inquiry's congress in Beijing this October. The Center for Inquiry, an organisation recently awarded special consultative status as an NGO at the United Nations (UN) will consider the proposals of Innaiah Narisetti, the chairman of the Center for Inquiry's India chapter, that portend the next stage in the assault on the rights of parents to educate their children. Nasiretti called the influence of religion a "severe...

Moses has demonstrated the signs Pharaoh demanded of him as a messenger of G-d. Several of the destined ten plagues have already struck Egypt and the stubborn king is prepared to bargain with Moses. "Go bring offerings to your G-d in the land (Egypt),"1 he proposes. Moses refuses. Israel must take a three-day journey into the desert there to worship G-d. The three-day journey is repeated a number of times in the Exodus account. Why wasn't Pharaoh's reasonable offer acceptable to Moses? Moses had not yet demanded the unconditional freedom from slavery -- that thought had not even been broached...

ST. LOUIS - A federal judge ordered a small-town school to suspend a program that gives free Bibles to students, saying it improperly promotes Christianity. U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Perry also scolded school officials for continuing the program after warnings that it violated the Constitution. South Iron Elementary in Annapolis, a town of 300 in southeastern Missouri, has quietly allowed Gideons International to hand out Bibles to fifth-graders for years. After concerns were raised last year, the then-superintendent consulted with the district's attorneys and insurance company and recommended that the handouts stop, but the school board voted to continue...

Religious material ban lifted in N.B. schools Updated Sat. Apr. 22 2006 7:05 PM ET CTV.ca News Staff Schoolchildren in New Brunswick can once again receive religious material in class, but texts like the Bible can't be distributed freely as they had been for 60 years. The Gideons, a Christian group that hands out Bibles to hotel rooms and hospitals, had been distributing copies of the New Testament to Grade 5 students for 60 years before a school board policy changed stopped the practice in 2003. In lifting the province-wide ban Thursday, Education Minister Claude Williams said the Gideons will...

A well-known, local Christian pastor is denouncing a controversial new Bible curriculum designed for public schools which he says encourages students to question whether the Bible is the inspired Word of God. The Virginia-based Bible Literacy Project (BLP) has been promoting a new textbook for public schools called The Bible and Its Influence. Among respected evangelicals who have endorsed the BLP’s curriculum are Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson and Ted Haggard, president of the National Associations of Evangelicals. A school district near San Antonio, Texas, recently approved The Bible and Its Influence for its use. But state legislatures in both...

Georgia is about to become the first state to approve the use of the Bible as a textbook in public schools. On Monday, the state Senate passed a bill providing money to high schools that offer elective classes in the Bible and setting specific guidelines for those classes. The bill was approved by Georgia's state House of Representatives last week. Gov. Sonny Perdue is expected to sign the law. The bill creates two courses - History and Literature of the Old Testament Era and History and Literature of the New Testament Era - that can be offered as electives. It...

A bill that allows public high schools to offer classes on the Bible sped through the House on Monday, passing overwhelmingly with no debate. The legislation, which passed 151-7, would allow high schools to form elective courses on the history and literature of the Old Testament and New Testament eras. The classes would focus on the law, morals, values and culture of the eras. State Rep. James Mills, the proposal's House sponsor, said the legislation would withstand a court challenge because it treats the Bible as an educational supplement. Under the proposal, the Old Testament and New Testament would be...

LONDON - Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's Superman and he's bringing his otherworldy powers to British schools to teach godless children about Christianity. The Daily Telegraph reported that religious education teachers were being encouraged to use the cartoon superhero as a modern-day model for Jesus Christ to give youngsters an insight into morality and religious thinking. "Teenagers visit the cinema and see films on television and DVDs, so it's hardly surprising that their assessments of what is heroic and what is evil, possible or impossible, are partly based on what they watch," said academic Helen...

WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 — Democrats in Georgia and Alabama, borrowing an idea usually advanced by conservative Republicans, are promoting Bible classes in the public schools. Their Republican opponents are in turn denouncing them as "pharisees," a favorite term of liberals for politicians who exploit religion. ...The Democrats who introduced the bills said they hoped to compete with Republicans for conservative Christian voters. "Rather than sitting back on our heels and then being knocked in our face, we are going to respond in a thoughtful way," said Kasim Reed, a Georgia state senator from Atlanta and one of the sponsors of...

High schools across the nation are considering an elective course in Bible literacy. That's pitting advocates of church-state separation against proponents of the class who say their mission is purely scholarly. Lawmakers in Alabama and Georgia in the past few weeks have introduced legislation clearing the way for their high schools to offer the course, which is based on the textbook The Bible and Its Influence. The book's publisher, the Fairfax, Va.-based Bible Literacy Project, says about 300 school districts are considering the course, which covers the Old Testament, followed by both Jews and Christians, and the New Testament, the...

One public school district voted Monday night to begin offering a new bible class as part of its curriculum. The elective course is called "The Bible and its Influence." Board members voted six to one to approve the new class. "The Bible is a fundamental document," says Rosalyn Bratcher with the New Braunfels ISD. "It has had a great influence in terms of politics, art, music, literature." The district says this course does not violate the First Amendment. "What makes it compliant is that we are teaching the Bible as a textbook and a document," adds Bratcher. Northeast ISD already...

MONTGOMERY - Democratic lawmakers are pressing for a uniform Bible literacy class in Alabama's public schools. At a news conference today, the legislators plan to announce they will push in the Legislature early next year a bill that would allow local school boards to offer "Bible literacy" classes as elective high school courses. House Majority Leader Ken Guin, D-Carbon Hill, and Speaker of the House Seth Hammett, D-Andalusia, were expected to make the announcement. Opponents say the Democrats' bill sanctions one religion; Republicans say Democrats are stealing their ideas. The course will center on "The Bible and Its Influence," a...

Textbook teaches Bible literacy By DAVID YONKE BLADE RELIGION EDITOR After five years of work involving 41 scholars and a cost of $2 million, the Bible Literacy Project has released a textbook designed to bring academic study of the Bible into the public high school. The Bible and Its Influence (BLP Publishing, $67.95) is an oversized, 388-page book lavishly illustrated with glossy photos and drawings, published just in time to hit the high school classrooms in the 2006-07 school year. The publishers cited the need for a textbook offering objective and fair presentations of the Bible without crossing the First...