CHRISTIAN NATION? Well, at Least America Was Founded as One, Pt. 2
by James Rogers
Clash Daily Contributor
Continued from Part one …
Calvin Coolidge, our 30th President of the United States reaffirmed this truth when he wrote,
“The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country.”
In 1782, the United States Congress voted this resolution:
“The Congress of the United States recommends and approves the Holy Bible for use in all schools.”
William Holmes McGuffey, author of the McGuffey Reader which was used for over 100 years in our public schools with over 125 million copies sold until it was stopped in 1963. President Lincoln called him the “Schoolmaster of the Nation.” Listen to these words of Mr. McGuffey:
“The Christian religion is the religion of our country. From it are derived our notions on the character of God, on the great moral Governor of the universe. On its doctrines are founded the peculiarities of our free institutions. From no source has the author drawn more conspicuously than from the sacred Scriptures. From all these extracts from the Bible I make no apology.”
Of the first 108 universities founded in America, 106 were distinctly Christian, including Harvard University, chartered in 1636. In the original Harvard Student Handbook, rule number one was that students seeking entrance must know Latin and Greek so that they could study the scriptures:
“Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, John 17:3; and therefore to lay Jesus Christ as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him (Proverbs 2:3).”
For over 100 years, more than 50% of all Harvard graduates were pastors! It is clear from history that the Bible and the Christian faith were foundational to our educational and judicial system.
However, in 1947, there was a radical change of direction for the Supreme Court. It required ignoring every precedent of Supreme Court ruling for the past 160 years. The Supreme Court ruled in a limited way to affirm a wall of separation between church and State in the public classroom. In the coming years, this led to removing prayer from public schools in 1962. Here is the prayer that was banished:
“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on Thee. We beg Thy blessings upon us and our parents and our teachers and our country. Amen.”
In 1963, the Supreme Court ruled that Bible reading was outlawed as unconstitutional in the public school system. The court offered this justification:
“If portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could and have been psychologically harmful to children.”
Bible reading was now unconstitutional, though the Bible was quoted 94 percent of the time by those who wrote our Constitution, shaped our Nation and its system of education, justice and government.
In 1965, the Court denied as unconstitutional the right of a student in the public school cafeteria to bow his head and pray audibly for his food. In 1980, Stone vs. Graham outlawed the Ten Commandments in our public schools. The Supreme Court said this:
“If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments were to have any effect at all, it would be to induce school children to read them. And if they read them, mediated upon them, and perhaps venerated and obeyed them, this is not a permissible objective.”
James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution of the United States, had this to say:
“We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.”
Image: http://cronkitenewsonline.com/2013/12/like-nation-congress-grows-more-religiously-diverse-but-frictions-remain/
Image: James Rogers is retired from 37 years of Newspaper/printing and publishing and has written and edited a lot of copy during those decades. He currently blogs and writes short stories for his entertainment and to keep his mind sharp.
