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A leader among America’s Founding Fathers made the following statement about education:
“We have a dangerous trend beginning to take place in our education…We’ve become accustomed of late of putting little books into the hands of children containing fables and moral lessons…We are spending less time in the classroom on the Bible, which should be the principal text in our schools…The Bible states these great moral lessons better than any…manmade book.”
(Ames, Fisher. September 20, 1789, in an article published in the Palladium magazine. | D. James Kennedy, The Great Deception (Fort Lauderdale, Florida: Coral Ridge Ministries, 1989; 1993), p. 3.)
Thus spoke Fisher Ames, the Founding Father who authored the wording of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Could this Founder have possibly wanted the “separation of church and state” idea that liberals now use to remove the Bible from schools?
But to continue with our thoughts on education: Since education teaches children how to think; and since, in the next generation, those thought processes become the ideas which operate our economy and our government, as well as our education system; education is the most important cultural institution of the three. Nothing is more important in the life of a Republic than what is taught to its children!
So, if America became the greatest nation in world history, what type of education made it that? Listen again to the words of Fisher Ames, he asked:
“Should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a schoolbook? Its morals are pure, its examples are captivating and noble…The reverence for the sacred book that is thus early impressed lasts long; and, probably, if not impressed in infancy, never takes firm hold of the mind…By teaching all the same…the Bible will justly remain the standard of language as well as of faith.”
(Ames, Fisher. | Stephen Abbott Northrop, D.D., A Cloud of Witnesses (Portland, Oregon: American Heritage Ministries, 1987), p. 12 | Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Glory of America (Bloomington, MN: Garborg’s Heart’N Home, Inc., 1991), 12.27.)
George Washington agreed with Fisher Ames concerning the Bible being taught to school children. When three Delaware Indian Chiefs sent their sons to Washington, asking that they be educated in our schools, Washington replied,
“You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do everything they can to assist you in this wise intention…”
(Stephen McDowell and Mark Beliles, The Providential Perspective (Charlottesville, VA: The Providence Foundation, January 1994), Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 8.)
George Washington understood the importance of children being taught the way of Jesus Christ if they were to be a help to this new nation which he and many others were sacrificing so much to establish.
Likewise, Dr. Benjamin Rush, the Father of our original public schools in America, believed the very same way. Dr. Rush stated:
“…the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid on the foundation of religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”
(Rush, Benjamin. July 13, 1789, in a letter to Jeremy Belknap. | L.H. Butterfield, ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush (Princeton, New Jersey: American Philosophical Society, 1951), Vol. I, p. 521.)
So what’s different in our schools of today? Dr. Rush answers with these words:
“The great enemy of the salvation of man, in my opinion, never invented a more effective means of [removing] Christianity from the world, than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at schools.”
(Rush, Benjamin. July 13, 1789, in a letter to Jeremy Belknap. | L.H. Butterfield, ed., Letters of Benjamin Rush (Princeton, New Jersey: American Philosophical Society, 1951), Vol. I, p. 521.)
Would the KEA leaders in Frankfort be just as quick to fight for the Bible to be restored in our schools—as they are for pension reform? If they wouldn’t—should you be following them?
Think about it; because if you don’t, someone else will do your thinking for you—and for your children! And you won’t like what that brings to you. I’m Don Pinson this has been Think About It.