A Study By
GARY RAY BRANSCOME
Contrary to popular belief, our American government is not
now, and never has been, religiously neutral. In fact, it is impossible for any
government to be neutral when it comes to matters of right and wrong. For
example, government must condemn theft or allow it, condemn murder or allow it,
condemn homosexuality or allow it, but it cannot remain neutral. Moreover,
because the men who founded our
At the time the Constitution was drafted all but
five of the original thirteen states already had an establishment of religion,
and First Amendment was adopted to make sure that the federal government would
not abolish those statewide religious establishments, to impose one of its own.
In fact, some of the original thirteen states continued to have state supported
churches well into the nineteenth century – and the men who drafted our
Constitution did not see that as “unconstitutional”.
In order to
understand the First Amendment you need to realize the significance of the
words, “Congress shall make no law.” Those words tell us that the
amendment places a limitation on Congress alone, not the states. Moreover, its
specific reference to the freedom of speech, press, peaceful assembly, and
petition addresses specific ways in which religious freedom was denied in the
past. Under the Church of England, dissenters had been denied the right to
preach (freedom of speech), publish religious literature (freedom of press),
assemble for worship (freedom of peaceful assembly), or even petition the
government for a redress of grievances. Nevertheless, those who now yell
loudest about keeping church and state separate, treat
Bible believers as second-class citizens and seek to exclude their views from
the halls of government, while striving to make secularism the religion of the
realm.
Those who want to see Christian influence excluded
from public life have taken advantage of popular misconceptions in order to
create a religion that most people fail to recognize as a religion. In order to
better understand what they have done, I would like to go back to the to very roots of congregational worship. As the Jews
sought to preserve their national identity and culture during the Babylonian
captivity, they established synagogues, and each of those synagogues served a
threefold purpose. They functioned as a “house of fellowship” (or
community center), a “house of learning” (or school), and a
“house of prayer”. Jews were free to come to the synagogue at any
time during the week, and as they gathered those who remembered life in Israel
would teach the law, and various traditions, to the younger generation. On the
Sabbath they would then join together for worship. However, as those old enough
to remember life in
Nevertheless, even though education has always had a
place in the work of the church, Christian congregations have tended to
separate religious instruction from academic education – either dropping
academics, or treating it as an extra for which tuition is charged. However,
try to imagine a society where congregations are primarily devoted to
education, and people worship in private. In such a society churches would
function as schools, and where there was state support, the state church would
consist of a network of state supported schools. Now, suppose that another
religion took over those schools, and began teaching evolution rather than
creation. Students would be taught that they have an animal nature rather than
a fallen nature, that the environment determines behavior, that morality is
just a matter of opinion, that Jesus was just one teacher among many, and that
there is no life after death. How, I ask you, how would that religious system
differ from the public school system that we have today?
Many educators like to blame the current social
malaise on the family, however, the primary reason for the breakdown of the
family, has to do with the false religion being disseminated through the
schools. Satan has simply taken advantage of certain cultural paradigms in
order turn our schools into an educational cult that we do not even recognize
as a cult.
The state religion that I have described did not
come into existence by accident, instead, there have been people working for
generations to bring it into existence. Moreover, even though Christians
founded most of our schools and Universities, secularists have been using state
support to force Christian influence out of education.
In his book, “NEA:
TROJAN HORSE IN AMERICAN EDUCATION”, Samuel L. Blumenfeld
offers a number of quotations documenting the fact that certain key people
intended from the start to establish a secular religion. The following
quotations are from his book.
“In 1933 John Dewey and 33 other liberal humanists drew up and signed
that extraordinary document known as Humanist Manifesto… It called for
the abandonment of traditional religion and replacing it with a new secular
religion.” (Pages 225,226)
“The Ethical Culture movement had been founded in 1876 by Felix Adler who
saw the need to provide nontheistic religion for
people who no longer could accept the traditional views… This goal
dovetailed nicely with Dewey's.” (Page 71)
“It was thus Dewey who began to fashion a new materialist religion in
which humanity was venerated instead of God.” (Page 55)
In 1984
“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
role 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. They will be ministers of another sort utilizing a classroom instead of
a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach – Pre
school day care or large state university.” (Page 120).
(Quoted from A RELIGION FOR A NEW AGE, by John Durphy,
HUMANIST MAGAZINE, Jan.-Feb. 1983)
“Dr. Benjamin Bloom… in his recent book
“ALL OUR CHILDREN LEARNING” states. “The purpose of education
is to change the thoughts, feelings and actions of students.” (page 145)
“The NEA'S report, “EDUCATION FOR THE
SEVENTIES” states: Schools will become clinics whose purpose is to
provide individualized psycho-social treatment for the students.” (Page
168)
“Kohlberg
measures the degree of change in the student's moral levels. He does this by
presenting moral dilemmas, which deliberately create an internal conflict
within the student… The message of such deceitful dilemmas is crystal
clear and always the same: there are no rights or wrongs – no absolutes
by which to live and act.” (Page 178)
In light of these facts, is it any wonder that Karl
Marx, in his “Communist Manifesto,” called for the creation of free
public schools? A government controlled school system is just as antithetical
to freedom as a government controlled press, for both easily become tools for
political indoctrination.
One of the main objections to an establishment of
religion listed in The Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom reads, “To
compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions
which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical” (signed into law by
Patrick Henry, in 1786). If that complaint is valid, then it does not cease to
be valid just because we call the state-supported vehicle of religion a school.
In either case, it is evil and tyrannical for the government to force
Christians to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions
that they find abhorrent, or to have those opinions taught to their children.
At present, those who object to the secular indoctrination of their children
can avoid it only by great personal hardship, and that must change if we are to
preserve freedom. We must separate government from education!