By Sandy Szwarc
© Szwarc 2024
This past week, Texas became the first state in the nation to return the Bible to school classroom curriculums. Despite the feigned lockstep outcry of mainstream media, the Bible has historically held the core of school curriculums in America.
With 77% of Texans professed Christians and 68% of all Americans identifying as Christians, it is understandable that Texas voted to adopt a school curriculum that includes the historical and literary role of the Bible. Oklahoma and Louisiana have also recently included the Bible and Ten Commandments at their schools.
States and local communities, as well as homes and families, are taking back the role of educating children, which was the original intent and tradition of education in America. Homeschooling and Christian schools have exploded, far outpacing government schools, as parents rush to provide better education for their children.
Our nation is recognizing that the U.S. Constitution gives no authority over education to the federal government, which has become bloated and corrupted, failing scholastically, and detoured from the Biblical ethics and values of most of the country. Our Founding Fathers wanted most aspects of life managed by those closest to the citizens and that would reflect and uphold the values of the people.
It is one of the most important ways we can begin to heal our nation and unify and restore our Country. Generations of revisionist secular education has led America to lose its soul. Millions of young people no longer understand or appreciate what it once meant to be an American, to grasp and value the unique freedoms and self-government established in our Constitution, and hold the guiding protections of Divine providence.
“Sad will be the day when the American people forget their traditions and their history, and so longer remember that the country they love, the institutions they cherish, and the freedom they hope to preserve, were born from the throes of armed resistance to tyranny, and nursed in the rugged arms of fearless men.” – Roger Sherman, the Founding Father who signed all four of our Country’s Founding documents.
No book shaped America’s founding more than the Bible.
As God’s people, the colonists faced horrendous hardship, sacrifice and danger to flee religious persecution and cross the Atlantic. Known as the “people of the Book,” the first colonists carried the Geneva Bible when they departed Holland. They were part of the Virginia Charter for colonization, primarily guided by their Christian purpose, believing “the way to achieve good success, is to make yourselves all of one mind for the good of your country and your own, and to serve and fear God, the Giver of all Goodness; for every plantation which our Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted out.”
Upon landing on the shores of Virginia, they knelt in prayer and Thanksgiving, and erected a wooden cross. Three days later, on April 29, 1607, they shared communion and dedicated this land to God, establishing the First Landing Covenant of Dedication. They vowed the Gospel of Jesus Christ would go forth through the New World, and to raise up Godly generations as long as this earth remains.
There was broad agreement among the Founding Fathers, regardless whether they were all Christians, although most were, that the Bible was essential for nurturing the civic virtues that give citizens the capacity for self-government and that are necessary for a republic form of government to succeed. It promotes the principles of wisdom, justice, dignity, virtue, and goodness. They understood that without a national morality a representative republic form of government could not survive.
“The Bible contains the most profound Philosophy, the most perfect Morality, and the most refined Policy, that ever was conceived upon Earth. It is the most Republican Book in the World.”- John Adams
The Bible can actually be seen as the fourth Founding document. It was the most frequently read and cited book throughout America’s founding era and played a major role in the establishment of our government. The Declaration of Independence expressed the soul of the new Country, establishing the moral, spiritual, rational, political and legal grounds for its founding. Each sentence came from the Bible.
The Constitution laid out the fundamental features of our country’s representative republic form of governing. While the authors made no actual mention of God in the Constitution, they didn’t need to as the Bible was a core of daily life at that time. Judeo-Christian concepts − of covenant, sovereignty, limited government, consent of the governed, social contract, unalienable rights, separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism, rule of law, due process of law and representative government – also all came from the Bible.
The Bill of Rights – which laid out the essential principles of human liberty and rights given to all people from the Creator – came from the Bible. First among those rights was the First Amendment: freedom of religion to believe and practice our faith without interference from the government; the freedom of speech and a free press and the right of people to assemble and petition to the government. The Founding Fathers understood that religion, speech and assembly were essential for a free and sovereign country. Totalitarian rulers understand this, too, which is why these are the key freedoms they try to destroy.
To recapture the Spirit of ’76, the critical first step is to bring understanding of the Bible, the fourth Founding Document of our Country, and the admirable beliefs and qualities of our Founding Fathers. Biblical author, B. Nathaniel Sullivan, shares twelve essential characteristics to instill in our children, communities and leaders in order to meet the challenges we face as we work to restore our country.
The Bible had a fundamental role in education and in school curriculum throughout America’s early history. The Puritans strongly supported education and literacy, which they believed was necessary to read and understand the Bible, and to have an informed citizenry. They believed that building a Christian culture needed knowledge of God’s Word and the ability to think and reason through its truths. During America’s first 150 years as English colonies, most children were home schooled. The Bible was their primer.
“All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction,
for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good
work.” – 2 Timothy 3:16-17
The Puritans passed the first education law, the 1647 Old Deluder Satan Act, requiring large towns of 50 households to set up grammar schools and hire schoolmasters.
The New England Primer, often called “The Little Bible of New England,” was the first reader in America and the main textbook for millions of children for more than 150 years. As many as eight million copies had been sold by 1830, in 450 editions. It included Bible stories, poems, hymns, lessons and prayers. It is said to have been instrumental in laying the moral foundation of America and developing American values.
Even the Father of American Education, Noah Webster, believed it was important to teach the worldview of the U.S. Constitution and its underlying Christian principles of liberty and civil governance, wrote theological professor, Dr. Elizabeth Youmans. Webster understood that words are the building blocks of ideas and that the “colonies had fought eight years to win independence from England in order to be self-governing under God.” His first 1828 American Dictionary referenced the root meaning of words in Greek and Hebrew and defined them according to how they were used in Scripture.
“In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children under a free government ought to be instructed. . . . No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people…Education is useless without the Bible.” – Noah Webster
In The Remarkable Role of the Bible in Early American Education, Dr. Youmans explains how Scripture was heavily relied upon by early leaders and in America’s public schools in order to produce thinkers. The Bible defined “education” and learning in America’s schools. And that learning is not gained by passively sitting in front of computer screens, filling out endless worksheets and checking multiple choice boxes, she said. “Christian imagination is cultivated to dream God-sized dreams and to wonder at His glorious creation and His overruling hand in their lives and nations,” she said.
Dr. Benjamin Rush, a physician and co-founder of five colleges, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and founder of the Bible Society, wrote in 1791 that teaching the Bible in schools could “eradicate infidelity among us and render civil government scarcely necessary in our country.” A biblical curriculum was designed to nurture children and give them an understanding of Christian history, with each lesson built on a biblical principle to guide them to reason and rightly apply truth to their own lives.
That’s why the Bible matters. If we fail to embrace and teach the Bible and its role in our lives and in the soul of America, we will lose who we are, where we’ve come from, and what we can become. Bringing the Bible back to education is long past due. It is not a radical idea. It is America’s educational tradition.
Our work has just begun if we are to save our children and our Country. Scripture calls upon all of us to be Salt and Light. Being passive and uninformed is not an option.
