by Pete Talbott
When I first met Chuck Swindoll, the well-known Protestant preacher, I nearly fell off my chair when he said: “The biggest sin in the American church is we have divided life into two categories: sacred and secular.”
We know we have been infected with SSD [the Sacred/Secular Divide] when we think Jesus and Scripture are only relevant to spiritual or “sacred” things, and the Bible does not apply to the “secular” areas of life, such as work, pop culture and political issues. This is how most people think today. But it hasn’t always been this way.
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for decades, you know Christianity has been marginalized. It’s been confined to Sunday morning church. It’s been privatized and relegated to one’s personal life alone.
How did this happen?
We did this to ourselves. We did this by sending our children to public schools for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, for 13 years, where they were given the persuasive and unavoidable impression that Jesus and the Bible are irrelevant to math, art, science, music, civil government and economics. Americans have been successfully indoctrinated into Secularism, and thoroughly infected by SSD.
Now for the hard truth: the vast majority of Protestants and Catholics in this country were led by their pastors to make public schools the default “education du jour” for their children. I write this as a life-long Protestant. Pastors did this by making public schools a viable option through their silence about Secularism and SSD. The public schools were “Protestant.” It’s where the King James Bible was read. Until 1962, that is, when the radical secularists took over.
It’s time to be silent no longer, Pastors and Church leaders, both Protestant and Catholic. You may be perfectly willing to say you don’t endorse the blatantly evil teaching now imposed upon children in Washington State, but are you willing to tell parents to remove their children from the public schools?
If there ever was a time for pastors to tell parents to not send their children back to the public schools, it’s now. Pastors missed the cue in 1962. They had best not miss the cue in 2021.
Some Christian parents may want their kids to be “lights” in public schools. These parents are naïve. You can’t fill a sponge with vinegar and expect orange juice to come out when it’s squeezed.
Sadly, most parents don’t acknowledge that God expects them to be responsible for seeing their children embrace a biblical worldview. They actually hope an hour in church on Sunday will counteract the indoctrination into Secularism their children receive 30 hours on Monday through Friday at school.
John Piper, respected Protestant leader, recently stated, “It’s the parent’s responsibility, not first the church, not first the government, to shape a child’s worldview…according to Bible-saturated, Christ-exalting, God-centered Truth.”
Christian parents of all stripes should not wait for their pastors to tell them to pull their children out of public schools. Just because church leaders silently endorse Secularism, this does not mean parents must succumb to their pastor’s spineless acquiescence.
Parents have the responsibility to do what is right for their children. If this means the Holy Spirit is leading parents to not leave them behind in public schools, they must keep them out.
Thankfully, there are affordable options. For those needing help sorting through possibilities, there are organizations like Renewanation who will help families find an appropriate way forward, to a distinctly Christian education that effectively shapes a child’s worldview “according to Bible-saturated, Christ-exalting, God-centered Truth.”
By the way, Humanist and Atheists described their own belief as religion in Humanist Manifesto 1, 1933, which was signed – among others – by John Dewey, humanist and primary framer of modern education.
Excerpts from Humanist Manifesto 1, 1933 –
“…FIRST: Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created…”
“…FIFTH: Humanism asserts that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values. Obviously humanism does not deny the possibility of realities as yet undiscovered, but it does insist that the way to determine the existence and value of any and all realities is by means of intelligent inquiry and by the assessment of their relations to human needs. Religion must formulate its hopes and plans in the light of the scientific spirit and method…”
“…SEVENTH: Religion consists of those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant. Nothing human is alien to the religious. It includes labor, art, science, philosophy, love, friendship, recreation–all that is in its degree expressive of intelligently satisfying human living. The distinction between the sacred and the secular can no longer be maintained. EIGHTH: Religious Humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man’s life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now. This is the explanation of the humanist’s social passion….”
The Supreme Court explicitly defined Humanism and implicitly defined Atheism as being a religion in 1961 Torcaso v. Watkins. So what the schools are doing violates the First Amendment. Humanism / Atheism has become a government official respect towards religion in exclusion of others, and worse than that, according to SCOTUS it meets the definition of an official state religion; it is an official national religious denomination such as the Catholic Church of Spain or the Anglican Church of England, the very thing our Founders sought to avoid. This must be ended at once. Which is why we need to give, volunteer and work towards having constructionist, textualist judges and legislators who constrain themselves to the limited, delegated powers under Article 1, Section 8 and the Amendments, principles extended by Amendment 14 to the states. Furthermore we need laws officially repealing the doctrine of judicial review, for ALL legislative powers, both federal and state are VESTED in legislatures. That word “vested” means non-transferrable. And finally we need to amend our State constitution with a section defining the delegated powers of our legislature, for right now our State constitution assumes government inherently hold all powers and delegates limited, defined powers to “We, the people of the State of Washington”. Which is completely backwards.
TORCASO v. WATKINS | FindLaw
Decision text –
…We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government can constitutionally force a person “to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.” Neither can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against non-believers, 10 and neither can aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs. 11 …
…[ Footnote 11 ] Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others. …