"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports..Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion...Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
--George Washington
"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religions but on the gospel of Jesus Christ."
--Patrick Henry
"The Christian religion, in its purity, is the basis and the source of all genuine freedom in government....I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable, in which the principles of Christianity have not a controlling influence."
--James Madison
"He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of Christianity will change the face of the world."
--Benjamin Franklin
"I am much afraid that the schools and universities will prove to be the great gates to hell unless they diligently labour to explain the Holy Scriptures and engrave them upon the hearts of youth. I advise no one to send their child where the Scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution that does not unceasingly occupy its students with the Word of God must become corrupt."
--Martin Luther, Protestant Reformation
"the philosophy in the classroom of this generation is the philosophy of government in the next." --Abraham Lincoln
"We have staked the future of American civilization upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."
--James Madison
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion...Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
--John Adams
Consider the words of Noah Webster, a founding father who helped ratify the constitution, lawyer, politician, and the one who penned the dictionary to give us consistency in English:
"Education: The bringing up, as of a child; instruction; formation of manners. Education comprehends all that series of instruction and discipline which is intended to enlighten the understanding, correct the temper, and form the manners and habits of youth, and fit them for usefulness in their future stations. To give children a good education in manners, arts, science, is important; to give them a religious education is indispensable; and an immense responsibility rests on parents and guardians who neglect these duties."
--Webster 1828 Dictionary
"The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible."
"The religion which has introduced civil liberty, is the religion of Christ and his apostles, which enjoins humility, piety, and benevolence; which acknowledges in every person a brother, or a sister, and a citizen with equal rights. This is genuine Christianity, and to this we owe our free constitutions of government."
"Every civil government is based upon some religion or philosophy of life. Education in a nation will propagate the religion of that nation. In America, the foundational religion was Christianity. And it was sown in the hearts of Americans through the home and private and public schools for centuries. Our liberty, growth, and prosperity was the result of a Biblical philosophy of life. Our continued freedom and success is dependent on our educating the youth of America in the principles of Christianity."
"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."
"Education ought everywhere to be religious education..Parentss are bound to employ instructors who will educate their children religiously. To commit our children to the care of irreligious persons is to commit lambs to the superintendency of wolves."
--Timothy Dwight,
president of Yale University (1795-1817). His first move as president was to fire every professor who embraced the teaching of the French Revolution which espoused that morality can be attained without God.
"Why may not the Bible, and especially the New Testament...be read and taught as divine revelation in the school--its general precepts expounded...and its glorious principles of morality inculcated? ...Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?"
--Supreme Court decision in 1844 on why the schools must continue to teach the Bible
"The only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government...is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible."
--Benjamin Rush, youngest signer of the Declaration of Independence
"The free public schools of America are outgrowths of the parochial or pastoral schools of puritan New England, which were established by our forefathers to prepare their children for becoming useful members of society and the church. Nurtured in the lap of the church, these schools soon became so necessary to society at large that the church reluctantly relinquished her claim upon the elementary schools, and turned them over to the care of the commonwealths, retaining for herself the higher institutions of learning--the academies and colleges.
Whether this was wise or not it is not our purpose to discuss, further than to remark that, if the study of the Bible is to be excluded from all State schools, if the inculation of the principles of Christianity is to have no place in the daily programme, if the worship of God is to form no part of the general exercises of these public elementary schools, then the good of the State would be better served by restoring all schools to church control."
--Kansas Teachers Union of 1892
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HS) says teen use of illegal drugs has more than doubled since 1992. Preliminary results from a 1995 HHS study show that 10.9 percent of the 12 - 17 year olds surveyed said they had used drugs during the previous month, as compared to 5.3 percent in 1992. Other sources concur with HHS' disappointing find: the University of Michigan recently reported that almost half of high school seniors (48.4 percent) had tried illegal drugs, up from 40.7 percent in 1992.
Josh McDowell in his campaign called "Right from Wrong" finds that there is statistically little to no difference between churched and unchurched youth in terms of their beliefs and value systems. What is startling conclusion that calls into question much of the effectiveness of Sunday School programs today and whether the Church must do more.
"Education is the most powerful ally of Humanism, and every American public school is a school of Humanism. What can the theistic Sunday Schools, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?"
--Charles Francis Potter, a leading Humanist, in his book, Humanism: A New Religion.
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