High schools across the nation are considering an elective course in Bible literacy. That's pitting advocates of church-state separation against proponents of the class who say their mission is purely scholarly.
Lawmakers in Alabama and Georgia in the past few weeks have introduced legislation clearing the way for their high schools to offer the course, which is based on the textbook The Bible and Its Influence.
The book's publisher, the Fairfax, Va.-based Bible Literacy Project, says about 300 school districts are considering the course, which covers the Old Testament, followed by both Jews and Christians, and the New Testament, the story of Jesus and his disciples....
True. Most "Protestant" churches are becoming progressively more & more Roman Catholic in doctrine & practice, over time. This may be why hostility to Catholicism is becoming passe among them. Catholics have their pope; "evangelicals" have media star pastors. Whether it's incense or rock bands, crowd pleasing is the goal. Form replaces content.
I know of a man in a local Baptist church I used to attend who loved walking thru the whole Bible w/ his Sunday School class. Well, the church leadership decided to impose a canned curriculum on all the teachers, which he couldn't live with - he is old and was used to doing it his particular way - so he resigned.
I hardly believe the replacement was superior to his course. And in any case, since when is teaching method a matter for church leadership to impose?
Thus the true church dies from a thousand such little deaths.
Good point you made Protestant from the UK. Would you want to have your children taught about the Bible from a mainline church member or atheist snickering away at the Bible went teaching it?
We see what type of Christianity which was brought to Latin America. This is why many Latinos wish they were colonized by the British.
50 years of Humanists teaching Christianity to children in the UK have turned us into one of the most Godless societies on earth. I hope that the US won't make the same mistake.
John, that's true, Columbus was a missionary of sorts. Materialistic "human progress" is indeed the lesson of schools. It is a popular form of Darwinism - we're all climbing the Great Chain of Being into higher life forms, Hindu-like. It also feeds consumerism (I shop, therefore I am), where people buy new things not because they're necessarily better but because they're there.
Right now I am adapting some software to use a new compiler. Turns out, the old British one (which we're dumping because it runs on obsolescent hardware) is superior to the new one which runs on Windows. How's that for "progress?"
hope it inspires some churches to have their own bible literacy classes--then they would not be so many cults and false doctrines popping up all the time
Yep. I was never told, and didn't find out until much later that one of the chief aims of Christopher Columbus was to try to convert the indians to Christianity/Catholicism.
Public school in my day (1970s) had long-since omitted any serious spiritual dimension of any historical figure or event. It was all considered superfluous to the "real" history of "human progress".
Good point. Another problem at schools (even "Christian" ones) is, history has been dumbed down when it has not been distorted (really the same thing).
Example: how many students learn that the Mayflower Pilgrims considered Anglican rites "popish trash?" This would offend Anglican or Catholic students! Or that they were Calvinists? Don't wanna go there, either!
Instead, all they get is the vague "freedom of worship" mantra which is meaningless when not explained in the Protestant context.
The Bible is Satan's greatest fear. Those who do not serve Christ serve Satan. The Bible will never be allowed into the schools, even under the name of "literature". "The Bible as Literature" was on the curriculum of my College 40 years ago. It was removed a quarter of a century ago. Did you catch the little statement about the Bible being responsible for "anti-Semitism"? They weren't just speaking about the New Testament. The Old Testament is opposed under the same guise. The history of God's dealing with the Jews is rife with their rebellion, idolatry, harlotry, punishment, occasional requests for forgiveness and then subsequent reclamation. There are those who will point to this as anti-Semetic. O.T. prophets were even harder on their fellow countrymen than the N.T. writers were on their own fellow countrymen. This fact is not lost on the group who is at the forefront of every effort to wage war on God's Inerrant Word. This is why for the past 1000 years (at least) the Talmud is the source of authority for that faith known world wide as Judaism and not the Tenach. (Hebrew acronym for "Torah, Prophets, Wisdom" what we refer to as the Old Testament.
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