Apparently a large majority of American parents believe that the exclusion of God from the public schools is not very important and has had little effect on how and what Johnny learns. Otherwise, they would not have so easily acquiesced to the takeover of the schools by the atheists. In other words, for many parents God is a meaningless, ineffective, but comforting concept that need not interfere with anything as important as education. After all, atheist teachers are only interested in education, not religion, and they really care about the children in their charge.
But Martin Luther, on the subject of schooling, wrote:
I am afraid that schools will prove to be the gates of hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures, engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount.
The truth is that removing God from the public classroom has had a devastating effect on the schools and the children who attend them. Even Thomas Huxley, Charles Darwin’s friend and a champion of evolution, supported teaching the Bible in schools. According to Wikipedia:
Huxley supported the reading of the Bible in schools. This may seem out of step with his agnostic convictions, but he believed that the Bible’s significant moral teachings and superb use of language were relevant to English life. “I do not advocate burning your ship to get rid of the cockroaches.” However, what Huxley proposed was to create an edited version of the Bible, shorn of “shortcomings and errors … statements to which men of science absolutely and entirely demur…. These tender children [should] not be taught that which you do not yourselves believe.” The Act of Parliament which founded board schools permitted the reading of the Bible, but did not permit any denominational doctrine to be taught.
Here in the United States a school principal could read a passage from the Bible at assemblies until atheists convinced judges to ban the practice. The public schools were never intended to be Protestant parochial schools, but they were expected to teach biblical morality. In those days there were no school shootings or massacres, no widespread depression among students, no distribution of condoms to encourage premarital sex, no ADD, no epidemic of teen suicide.
All of that came after God was evicted from the schools and the atheists began preaching their humanist or nihilist morality. Some will contend that student behavior has also been greatly influenced by the immoral entertainment industry, Satanic music, and other negative cultural influences. But schools were supposed to counter cultural immorality with the morality of the Ten Commandments, which cannot even be posted now in a public school. In other words, the public schools are now owned by the very forces of moral evil that they were supposed to fight against.
The simple truth is that the spiritual health of the nation requires an educational system that acknowledges the existence of Almighty God and the power He exerted over the founders of this nation. George Washington said in his Inaugural Address:
It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States…. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted can not be compared with the means by which most governments have been established without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past seem to presage.
John Adams, second President of the United States, said at his inauguration in 1797:
May that Being who is supreme over all, the Patron of Order, the Fountain of Justice, and the Protector in all ages of the world of virtuous liberty, continue His blessing upon this nation and its Government and give it all possible success and duration consistent with the ends of His providence.
Thomas Jefferson, in his second inaugural address, asked for God’s blessings. He said:
I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with His providence and our riper years with His wisdom and power, and to whose goodness I ask you to join in supplications with me that He will so enlighten the minds of your servants, guide their councils, and prosper their measures that whatsoever they do shall result in your good, and shall secure to you the peace, friendship, and approbation of all nations.
James Madison, in his inaugural address in 1809, referred to “that Almighty Being whose power regulates the destiny of nations, whose blessings have been so conspicuously dispensed to this rising Republic, and to whom we are bound to address our devout gratitude for the past, as well as our fervent supplication and best hopes for the future.”
Andrew Jackson, in his inaugural address, acknowledged his “firm reliance on the goodness of that Power whose providence mercifully protected our national infancy, and has since upheld our liberties in various vicissitudes, encourages me to offer up my ardent supplications that He will continue to make our beloved country the object of His divine care and gracious benediction.”
Probably the most fervent acknowledgment of God’s role in the American experience was made by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his first inaugural address in 1953:
My friends, before I begin the expression of those thoughts that I deem appropriate to this moment, would you permit me the privilege of uttering a little private prayer of my own. And I ask that you bow your heads:
Almighty God, as we stand here at this moment my future associates in the executive branch of government join me in beseeching that Thou will make full and complete our dedication to the service of the people in this throng, and their fellow citizens everywhere.
Give us, we pray, the power to discern clearly right from wrong, and allow all our words and actions to be governed thereby, and by the laws of this land. Especially we pray that our concern shall be for all the people regardless of race, or calling.
May cooperation be permitted and be the mutual aim of those who, under the concepts of our Constitution, hold to differing political faiths; so that all may work for the good of our beloved country and Thy glory. Amen.
Can any of these professions of faith in God by our presidents be read in the public schools? It would be interesting to see if some teacher of American history might actually read these words in an American public classroom.
School prayer has been banned. But can President Eisenhower’s prayer be recited in a public classroom?
Removing the spiritual component from the public school classroom has created a vacuum that is now filled with anti-biblical, anti-God doctrines that lead to student hatred of the school. That’s why the massacres, vandalism, and disrespect of teachers have been aimed at the very schools that deny the existence of God. Many students blame the schools for their learning problems, their illiteracy, their lack of success, their moral confusion, their emotional pain. They consider the school to be an enemy, and that’s why they target it with their destructive behavior. A godless school can only be seen by the student as a temple of evil. He must absorb its teachings even though he senses its evil. A young mind knows when it is being morally poisoned and that is why he or she acts up in the classroom. How does one resist evil when it is being taught as good?
Children are born with a strong spiritual sense. That is why they believe in God. That is why they believe in the supernatural. That is why they believe in Santa Claus. That is why they love fairy tales and Bible stories. But when they enter the public school at the preschool or kindergarten level, sophisticated methods are used to undermine their spiritual beliefs. By the time they are in the primary grades they have learned about evolution and that they are animals, no different from cats and dogs. In elementary school they learn that morals are relative and that there is no God to punish them for their sins, and by middle school they are convinced that life has no purpose other than to experience pleasure.
The idea that tampering with and destroying a child’s spiritual sense have no consequences is why educators cannot understand or control the negative, self-destructive behavior of children. Their recourse is to send such disturbed children to secular behavioral psychologists and psychiatrists who also deny the existence of God. Thus the child is trapped in a web of disbelief and atheism and given drugs that are supposed to change the child’s behavior. The result for some children is suicide.
Fortunately, there still are in America private schools and parochial schools where a child’s spiritual needs are nourished by a strong belief in the Bible. Most homeschoolers are devout Christians who educate their children to rely on God’s providence for their future happiness. They become well-educated, productive, emotionally healthy citizens with the knowledge that God has given them a purpose in life. Without this army of young believers, our country would not be able to sustain itself at the high technical level it has achieved.
The spiritually crippled young Americans who emerge from the public schools become the drug-addicted young men, the unwed mothers, the delinquents, the functionally illiterate youths who become the nation’s social problems. They were led by their educators into the blind alley of social dysfunction. Some of them are eventually saved by finding God. But many of them remain dependent on government programs for the rest of their lives as members of the underclass.
Thus, the idea that destroying a child’s belief in God has no evil consequences is what keeps this nation from looking at its public schools without blinders. Self-deception is the surest road to social ruin, and that’s what the godless public schools are into.
