Bringing the Bible Back: Could Growing Public School Movement Backfire?
“A movement to start Bible classes in public schools is gaining ground. Seven states already recognize these classes and six more could soon follow….the same schools teaching their kids about sexuality and science would now teach them the Bible.” - CBN
….keeping public school Bible teaching honest is going to be difficult. My experience with public prayer is that it is so often blasphemous that I often pray myself for forgiveness for being there. It is also worth noting that most European countries have religion classes in school, and that doesn’t seem to result in their attending church except perhaps to marry, baptize, and bury.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
[Bert Perry]….keeping public school Bible teaching honest is going to be difficult.
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It is also worth noting that most European countries have religion classes in school, and that doesn’t seem to result in their attending church except perhaps to marry, baptize, and bury.
Those European religion classes may not seem to offer much that is good. I do know that my sister-in-law, who teaches in the German school system, teaches religion as part of her duties. When she gets to Christianity, since that “religion” is presented as part of the religion class, she gets to actually give a true representation of Christianity and the Gospel, in many ways much more clearly than could be done here, though it has to be presented along with many other religions. Even if it’s not immediately visible, she never knows what influence her teaching the truth about Christianity may have later in a student’s life, and I’m sure her testimony with the students helps to flesh it out.
Dave Barnhart
I grew up in the era when Bible reading and prayer was part of the public school day. I even had teachers who were Christians. That addition to the educational experience had zero impact.
When I went to college I took a class on the Bible, taught by a man who viewed it as a piece of literature.
Please excuse me if I don’t get optimistic.
"Some things are of that nature as to make one's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache." John Bunyan
I think its meaningless. Unless it’s taught by believing teachers in a context where the truth can be applied, I don’t care if bible teaching (or prayer) is ever a major feature in public schools. I view public schools as nothing more than incubators for leftism, anyway.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
When Trump did a shout out in favor of Bible Classes being taught in the Public Schools, I saw several progressive left Christians tweet in glee that if this happened, they would look to teach a more progressive social agenda in the schools using the Bible in the Public Schools. For example, the year of Jubiliee would be used to teach redistribution of income from the Rich to the Poor. And the Sheep and the Goats parable describing the last judgement (Matt. 25:31-46) would be taught as an indictment against conservatives because they don’t embrace a large-scale government intervention strategy to help the poor (even if they personally gave a signifant portion of their income towards poverty-fighting charities). Given today’s toxic political climate, the negative unintended consequences would be disasterous to say the least because the Bible would be taught from a socialistic perspective throughout our nation.
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