Jefferson Review

"Your Liberty is Our Interest"

Home /  Archives / Search / Links / Quotes / Book Reviews / Advertise /Contact us / Subscribe / Calendar

The Religious Nature of Education

by David Sant

Most Americans think of education as a value-neutral arena in which children are taught the knowledge and skills they need to function as adults in society. As Christians, we must realize that education is inherently religious. What is education, if not teaching children about the way the world works?

Children are taught the rules of language and reason, the laws of mathematics, the laws of nature, and the laws of society. Education is the process of teaching children the laws of the God who created the universe,

logic, language, and men. All education is indoctrination into a religious worldview, whether it be the true religion of Christianity, or any of the

myriad false religions invented by men.

All education is undergirded by presuppositions about the origin of the universe, the origin of man, the purpose of man, ethics governing relationships between men, and the continuing existence of the universe in an orderly and predictable manner. It is an inescapable fact that all of these basic assumptions are fundamentally religious. Therefore, we must view the

schoolroom as the place where children are indoctrinated into the religion of their society. The school is, in effect, a temple. The question which Christians in twentieth century America are late in asking is this: Into what religion do the government schools educate our children?

When God reaffirmed the covenant with Israel just before their entry into the Promised Land, He gave the Ten Commandments for the second time and then gave them the greatest commandment of all. "You shall love the

Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk

of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."

(Deuteronomy 6:5-9)

Here we find that God commands parents to educate their children in His Covenant.  This is to be done in every place (home and away) and at all times (from rising to retiring). Christian children must never be in a situation where God's commandments are not being taught.

Proverbs tells us that "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all knowledge." (1:7) The whole of education from physics to spelling falls under this command to use all of life to teach children to know the Lord. The corollary to this is that we should use the knowledge of the Lord to teach children about all of life.

||  Public Education is Religous  ||

Christians tend to be naïve in the ways of the world. What we are only beginning to realize at the end of the twentieth century, the Unitarians and humanists who designed and run the nation's public school system realized 150 years ago. Public education is fundamentally religious; and their intent was to use public education to remove children from the influence of Christian ideas. The public schools were designed to educate children out of Christianity into the secular religion of humanism. This may seem like a brash statement, until we look at actual writings of the supporters of the public school system.

C. F. Potter, a signer of the _Humanist Manifesto_ (1933), self consciously saw public education as the means of educating Christian children into a new religion:

"Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism and every American public school is a school of humanism. What can the theistic Sunday-schools, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?" - _Humanism, A New Religion_ (1930)

Lest you think this is an isolated example, there are ample proofs that the humanist establishment is still deliberately using the schools to destroy Christianity in the present era. John Dunphy writes in _The Humanist_ (Jan/Feb 1983):

"I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their roles as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever they teach, regardless of the educational level - preschool, day care, or large state university.

"The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new - the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent

evils and misery, and the new faith of Humanism, resplendent in its promise of a world in which the never-realized Christian ideal of love thy neighbor will finally be achieved."

Paul Blanchard notes what most Christians fail to see as one of the primary causes of adolescents turning away from the Christian faith in _The  Humanist_(Mar/Apr 1976):

"I think the most important factor moving us toward a secular society has been the educational factor. Our schools may not teach Johnny to read properly, but the fact that Johnny is in school until he is 16 tends to

lead toward the elimination of religious superstition. The average high school child acquires a high school education, and this militates against Adam and Eve and all other myths of alleged history.

"When I was one of the editors of The Nation in the twenties, I wrote an editorial explaining that golf and intelligence were the two primary reasons that men did not attend church. Perhaps today I would say golf and a high school diploma."

There is no doubt that the humanists recognize that the public school system is designed to destroy the Christian faith in children and replace it with

another, faith in man. Why do Christians continue to blindly send their children to be taught in these temples of false religion?

View the rest of this essay online at: http://tinyurl.com/2mg52 =======================================

|||  Related Web Sites  |||

Alliance for the Separation of School & State: http://honested.com/

Considering Homeschooling: http://www.consideringhomeschooling.org/

Exodus Mandate Project:

http://www.exodusmandate.org/

Nehemiah Institute, Inc.:

http://tinyurl.com/7ga0

Parents United in Responsibility for Education(PURE) http://www.pureeducation.com

Rescue 2010:

http://www.nace-cee.org/rescue2010.htm

============

Weather (Louisville) / Mapquest / Search / White Pages / Business Search / CNN / Dictionary / E-card / MSN