Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 4 · column 4 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
the use of the Bible for religious teaching in schools?
Today the First Amendment is interpreted to order the separation of church and state. Of course everybody knows this means that staterun schools can’t teach the Bible, Christianity, or any other religion in particular. My purpose in writing is to prove that our interpretation of the First Amendment has slowly been curved away from the writer’s intentions. Our new conveniently open minded interpretation kills the same religion in education that the authors of the amendment tried to include.
Is there any tangible evidence that tells how the founding fathers felt about religion and education? The First Amendment was fashioned after Article 12 of the Articles of Confederation which preceded the Constitution. The author, Fisher Ames, repeatedly wrote that it was impreative to keep the Bible as a major textbook in schools. Samuel and John Adams are well known for having a hard time agreeing in politics, because of their liberal and conservative views, but the two agreed on one topic. They agreed that the Bible and Christianity should be taught in schools. Thomas Jefferson is accredieted with the idea of the separation of church and state. Many court decisions have been based on the interpretations or misinterpretations of his law.
However, if Jefferson’s actions in government are examined more thoroughly, a different story emerges. Thomas Jefferson, while President, also served as a leader on the Washington, D.C. city school board. In this position he authored the plan of education for the city which made the Bible and Watts hymnal the most important textbooks in the curriculum. There are many more supporters and signers of the first amendement who thought it competely imperative that Christianity be as big part of education as arithmetic and reading.
You could say that the examples named so far are personal references that shouldn’t be applied to how we
93.0%