Brit Hume & Public Square Christianity

“… the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal — the extent to which he can recover — seems to me to depend on his faith. He’s said to be a Buddhist; I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be: ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith, and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.’”

Brit Hume
Senior Anchor – Fox News
Live Comments From Fox News Sunday

After scraping myself off the floor from hearing anything so explicitly Christian coming from anything or anyone associated with the America’s pravada Journalism industry or a major media out let I said to myself, “There is going to be hell to pay by Mr. Hume for that statement.”

I was right. Ever since Hume said this the “I hate Christ” media has weighed in,

I think it’s rude and crass to drag another person’s private faith into the public square for judgment and belittlement, as Hume did to Woods.

Jay Bookman
Atlanta Journal & Constitution

“But doesn’t it also denigrate Christianity when you do that on a Sunday political talk show. This isn’t church, this isn’t some sort of holy setting, this is a political talk show.

By talking about it (Christianity) on a Sunday political talk show. Doesn’t that minimize the significance of Christianity, when you bring a discussion of Christianity into a conversation about politics?

I do think it diminishes the discussion of Christianity. My Christian friends have said as much, that it diminishes the discussion of Christianity and faith when you have a conversation out-of-the-blue on a political talk show. This wasn’t the ‘700 Club,’ this wasn’t ‘Theocracy Today.’

David Schuster
MSNBC

“The fact that a journalist — and I use that term loosely as it pertains to Hume — would go on a national news show and put down another high-profile individual’s faith should tell all of us that religious bigotry, and bigotry as a whole, is a growing problem in this country.”

Eve Tahmincioglu
Huffington Post

“If Hume wants to do the satellite-age equivalent of going door-to-door and spreading what he considers the gospel, he should do it on his own time, not try to cross-pollinate religion and journalism and use Fox facilities to do it.”

Tom Shales
Washington Post Columnist

Before we move on with more quotes notice the theme running through these quotes. The theme is that the public square is not the place to examine “private beliefs.” The assumption is that the public square should be left sanitized of all religious beliefs. Now, of course that assumption is itself just another private religious belief w/ monumental implication but these people just take it as a given and as the way the world works. The religion of Bookman, Schuster, Tahimincioglu & Shales teaches them that it is the most obvious thing in the world that the public square is not to be infected with other religious beliefs that challenge their unstated but omnipresent religious beliefs — religious beliefs that are controlling the public square.

Indeed, I would contend the reason underneath the foaming and gnashing over Hume’s comments is the reality that such a comment is an explicit challenge of the prevailing religious beliefs that hold hegemony over the public square. Hume, in his comments, has inadvertently attacked the guiding religious fiction of the dominant pagan humanists stranglehold over the public square and as such he must be crushed and Christianity put in its place.

Now oddly enough this attitude of wanting to sanitize the public square does fit in w/ some versions of Christianity. For example, I have no doubt that adherents of R2Kt likely thought that Brit Hume was in bad form. No doubt they believe that Mr. Hume would have better served Christ by appealing to what Natural Law teaches on these matters, leaving Christianity out of it. R2K adherents Lee and Misty Irons believe that the church should not be opposed of homosexual marriages and as such why should Christians like Brit Hume be opposed to Tiger Woods teeing up in every sand pit of every golf course with every hooker in America? If R2Kt has taught us anything it has taught us that the public square is no place for Christians to be pushing a Christian agenda.

What we see here is that the Escondido Hermeneutic w/ its R2Kt ancillary implications requires us to reinforce the dominant religious beliefs that Christ or Christianity has nothing to do w/ Journalism, or the public square. Somewhere in the country there are legions of R2K Christians who are sympathetic to the criticisms of Hume cited above. Somewhere in the country there are boatloads of R2K pastors who are actually thinking, “You know when guys like Hume go off like this it just makes our job more difficult.”

But there are more quotes denouncing Hume that we must turn to. In one of my more favorite ones Tom Shales of the Washington Post steps up again,

“(Hume’s comments) sounded a little like one of those Verizon vs. AT&T commercials — our brand is better than your brand — except that Hume was comparing two of the world’s great religions, not a couple of greedy communications conglomerates. Further, is it really his job to run around trying to drum up new business? He doesn’t really have the authority, does he, unless one believes that every Christian by mandate must proselytize?”

Similarly, Ubermensch Keith Olberman makes comments about ill advised Christian proselytizing in this clip,

But again as in the previous quotes the underlying problem with Brit Hume is that he has the gall to take his Christian faith public.

What shall we say in light of all this?

First, we should note that a Christian faith that can not or will not express itself in the public square and will not or can not influence and inform what the public square looks like is a Christian faith that will either die or will be relegated to Christian ghettos that will, strangely enough, measure their success by how well they ape the evil “world.”

Second, we should give up thinking that if we will just play by our enemy’s rules then we will have a chance to convert our enemies. We have for generations played by our enemies rules and what we have gotten by retiring to our safe church zones, and teaching a Christianity that is to be only private, individual and personal, is a dessicated public square that hates us with more passion with each succeeding generation. Now, this may work if one is a pessimillennialist and believes that all of these unconverted people just proves the world is going to get worse and worse before Jesus shows up but for those Christians who believe that the Kings as well as Journalist must kiss the son, retreatism from the public square is no way to leaven this present wicked age with the age to come.

Third, and similar to the paragraph above we have to give up caring if our enemies hate us. We must surrender giving a tinker’s damn if the pagan elites (and some of the Church elites for that matter) hate us for insisting that Jesus is the Lord Christ over every public square of every nation in the world. Indeed, if their hatred is driven by our public square statements that “Christianity can offer forgiveness,” then we are absolutely duty bound to cultivate their hatred. Let the Journalists rage and plot a vain thing. Let the Kings gnash their teeth and hurl invective against us. Let the Church Doctors and Academics ring their hands over our “confusing their gnostic Kingdom with Christ’s corporeal Kingdom” We must simply stop caring and put up with a generation of not being named “TIME Magazine Man of the Year” or being invited to sit at the head table of the annual “I’m More Reformed (Irrelevant?) Then You” conference. While we are contending for the crown rights of King Jesus we must be willing to embrace ignominy and the status of pariah for a generation so that those who come behind us can triumph. This doesn’t mean surrender. This means fighting against majority opinion, both within and without the Church and wearing as medals the wounds that are inflicted.

Fourth, rebuilding a vibrant Christianity will be resisted. Recognize it, live with it, and get on with the task of Reformation. If your family suggests your doing your children a disservice simply point out their obvious error, smile at them, and raise your children. If fellow saints are offended by your insisting that Christians have no business being in a military fighting to implement pagan humanism throughout the world simply point out their obvious error smile at them, and keep on pointing out the painfully obvious point. If fellow saints lob rhetorical bombs at you for insisting that Scripture has imperatives that apply to this world as well as the indicatives that apply to Redemption just politely mock them and get on with pointing out the obvious.

Fifth, earnestly pray and weep over the enemies of the Gospel and of Christianity. While it is certainly true that we must vigorously resist the pagans it is also true that our hearts must be broken not only over their rebellion but also over their lost-ness. We must petition the great benevolent sovereign of the world that the Spirit of Christ might do for them what He did for us and that is defeat them by the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ so that they who are now enemies will be friends of the Gospel. Our anger at their attacking Christ must be matched by coursing tears for their lost-ness, their ubiquitous alienation, and for the culture of death they are trapped in.

The Church has, for several generations, followed a path of retreat and appeasement.

This must end.

Promise Not Prediction

We’ve been trying to gain in the past few weeks what it means when the Scriptures teach that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s Old Testament promise. He is the one who is to crush the serpent’s head. He is the one who is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He is the one who comes as David’s greater son to rule that which David was given only a down payment of. He is the one through whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. He comes to destroy the works of the Devil. He is the end of sacrifice because the promise of the sacrifice is fulfilled in Him. In Christ the garden of Eden is restored in principle and in Christ God’s Kingdom arrives.

He is the culmination of all that God promised in the Old Covenant.

Having looked at how Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s Old covenant promise we want to spend just a few minutes looking at how the concept of “promise” itself aids us in a better understanding of the Scriptures.

We should note first off that a promise is more than a “prediction.” We note that here because there are so many who want to see the Old Covenant as merely a book we rummage around in looking for predictions. However, if all we see are predictions in the Old Covenant w/o realizing that God’s promise is much more significant than a prediction we will not appreciate the depth of God’s work.

A Promise Involves Commitment to a Relationship

God’s promise is at the heart of God’s covenant w/ His people. The promise, as part of the covenant premises a relationship between two parties. We could go as far as to say that a promise cement’s or establishes the relationship between two parties.

Ill. — Marriage

We can clearly see this is much more involved than mere prediction. This is personal.

To say that the OT declares God’s promises, is another way of saying that at a particular time in history God entered into a commitment to a relationship between himself and a people which involved mutuality, blessing and protection.

However, as we have been emphasizing, this promise involved something else as well … it involved God’s unswerving commitment to bless all the nations through the Promise He made to His people. The promise was particular means (to Israel) to a universal goal (for the nations).

For example in Gen. 18:19, the immediate promise that Abraham and Sarah would have a son w/i a year is quickly subsumed under the much longer term and ultimate promise that God would bless all the nations through the community that was yet to emerge from the loins of Abraham.

So in light of this, we must understand that the Promise God makes to OT Israel is in reality a Promise that God makes to all mankind, not just to Israel. God’s promise is Global in its intent and this OT promise is why the NT writers can speak of Christ coming to save the “world.” Because God keeps His OT Promise to bless all the nations through Abraham God saves the world.

Because all this is so it is perfectly appropriate that when the NT authors speak of Jesus as the fulfillment of the promise of the OT, they think not just of Israel but see Jesus as the savior of the World, or rather see God keeping His promise to save the world through His vice regent Jesus.

Paul for example has his whole theology of mission hinged on his understanding of the crucial importance of the promise to Abraham. Paul sees this promise having universal significance,

Galatians 3:8

And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand, saying, “In you all the nations shall be blessed.”

Because of this Paul can say a few vs. later

Gal. 3:14

that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

Then after further discussion of the relationship between God’s fundamental promise based on grace and other aspects of the OT, specifically the law, Paul concludes his words to the Galatian Gentile believers

Gal. 3:29

And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

So everyone hearing my voice today who enjoys his son-ship because of Christ enjoys it as living proof of the fulfillment of the OT promise in Jesus the Messiah.

We’re still talking here about the difference between a promise and a prediction. We’ve noted that a promise, unlike a prediction, is personal and involves a relationship. Now we want to mention that

This Promise requires a response of acceptance.

There is no evidence that Cyrus ever acknowledged Yahweh or that he knew anything of the predictions that God made concerning King Cyrus (Is. 40-45). Still, Cyrus fulfilled the predictions regarding himself remarkably even if unwittingly.

But Cyrus’ action carved out the historical and political space w/i which the promise of God for the future of His people could operate, and that called for the response of His people. Indeed the whole burden of Is. 40-55 is to stir up a response among a people who were fearful that they were finished forever as a people. There was no point in God having promised a return from exile if nobody actually got up to return.

This meant exercising faith in God’s Word, uprooting from a generation of settled life in Babylon, and setting out on a long journey back to Jerusalem. W/o faith and action, the promise that cements the relationship is pointless.

We find this pattern throughout scripture.

Abraham believes and leaves Ur
Israel believes during Exodus and embrace God’s promise by following Moses
The land is taken because based on response to God’s promise of the land

The promise comes at the initiative of God’s grace and always depends on his grace but that grace has to be accepted and responded to by faith and obedience.

And it will because what God’s Grace promises God’s Grace achieves so that we can say from the promise to the fulfillment of the promise God receives all the glory.

20% Return to Combat To Kill Americans

“One in five terror suspects released from the Guantanamo Bay prison has returned to the fight, according to a classified Pentagon report expected to stoke an already fierce debate over President Barack Obama’s plan to close the military prison.”

AP News Report

The mind boggles at this news. Would have our grandparents have tolerated a 1943 news report that came out saying that One in five unsuccessful Kamikaze pilots returned to the cockpit after the US Commander in Chief released them? Would the English have been content to have heard that One in Ten German pilots responsible for dropping ordinance on London during the Battle of Britain returned to their roles as bombardiers upon release by Winston Churchill? Would the Russian population been content to know that Stalin had released German tank Captains who had been captured in the Battle of Kursk — one in Twenty of whom returned to fight again on the Russian front?

What else can it be called but insanity to capture enemy combatants on the field of battle only to turn around and release them so that they can kill more Americans?

A country that does this is not serious about its war effort and does not care about its servicemen. If this report is true this is all we need to insist that the troops be brought back home. Why would we support a war effort when the Commander-in-chief is championing a policy that increases enemy troop numbers so as to better kill American service personnel?

This is insanity! As far as I’m concerned this is grounds for impeachment. Is this not a high crime and misdemeanor? Is this not treason against America?

I can’t believe there is not outrage across the country. There should be burning effigies in Capitals all across America at this news.

And if we can’t get this much, at least some Republicans ought to run some Willie Horton type adds against their Democratic opponents this fall. Instead of the face of Willie Horton the face of Mohammad Ahmed could be superimposed.

I’ll even provide the language that could be used in such an ad.

As the face of the candidate rises on the screen the voice over says,

“(Republican Candidates name) ________ supports not giving Muslim combatants a second chance to kill more sons and daughters of America than they did the first time when they were captured on the battlefield.”

Go to a screen showing a coffin draped with an American flag with a Islamic Crescent Moon and Scimitar in the background.

Slowly cue up the face of the Democratic opponent.

“(Democratic Candidates name) ___________ supports releasing Muslim combatants fully knowing that 20% of Muslim combatants will return to the battle field with the purpose of killing American son’s and daughters.”

Vote for the life of your Son and Daughter

Vote Republican

The Funeral Service Was Killing Me

Yesterday I attended yet another funeral. Funerals, as I have written before, are events that are guaranteed to raise my blood pressure. Indeed, after yesterday’s witness to the bizarre I told my wife that I am resolved that before attending any future funeral I will pop a Xanax. It is either that or not attend or upon attending get up and walk out and leave. I literally can not handle the embarrassment, stupidity, ignorance or sentimental twaddle any longer. If what I’m about to explain is what Christianity has been reduced to I would rather embrace the masculine religion and worship of Odin, Thor or some other pagan deity that hasn’t been castrated then the limp-wristed, lisping, eunuch deity of the Christian clergy that I constantly bump into who are officiating at funerals. I would far prefer a religion that sent me into the afterlife where the officiate lights my funeral pyre then a religion that sends me into the afterlife where the officiate belittles the matters of life and death and heaven and hell.

This member of the clergy perfectly fit the French proverb that, “there are three sexes — Male, Female and Clergy. He opened the service by saying that as the deceased wasn’t religious therefore there wasn’t going to be any ritual or religion at the funeral.

Here are a couple hundred people sitting in set rows, all facing the direction of the speaker, having gathered in honor of the deceased and in support of the grieving family and he says there isn’t going to be any ritual or religion at the funeral? Naturally, I sat their thinking… “Everything going on here is a ritual, — from the grieving widow surrounded and supported by loving family, to the “ministers” presence standing in front of us “speaking,” to the funeral luncheon afterward this whole funeral is ritual you moron.” I freely admit that I don’t understand how anybody, let alone a Christian clergy member, can honestly believe that they can avoid either ritual or religion. One never avoids either ritual or religion. It is never a question of avoiding rituals or religion. It is only a question of which ritual or religion will be embraced. So I had to sit there with this genius Clergy member thinking that if he isn’t explicitly Christian then he will have successfully avoided both religion and ritual. More on this later.

As the service began to unfold the sentimental twaddle began to pile up. I have seen this many times before and all I can observe here is that Americans have managed to turn the funeral into a advertisement for Hallmark’s precious moments. There is no longer any sense of gravitas in the average funeral. There is no longer any sense that at the funeral all in attendance are together standing in the portal between life and death and heaven and hell. There is no longer any sense in the Funeral service that men have come before a God who is not only kind and benevolent but also we have come before a God who is Holy and who is a consuming fire. Funerals no longer elicit the sense of awe associated with the the most important realities of existence but rather they elicit the sense of “playtime” that is associated with Kindergarten finger painting time.

Once we got into the “Christian Message” of the service I got to the “I think I’m going to have a stroke” part of the service. His “message” started w/ quoting part of Malachi 2:10, which says, have we not all one Father Did not one God create us?

From there he said, “This scripture obviously teaches that God is the Father of us all.”

Oh really? Did our Charles “Frickin” Spurgeon ever consider that the pronouns in Malachi 2:10 make a difference? The “We” and “Us” of Mal. 2:10 is significant because the statement here is referring to God’s covenant people. The “We” and “Us” in Malachi 2:10 in context are referring to God as the Father of the covenant people. They are not referring to God being the Father of people regardless of their relation to the covenant.

God is only the Father of people who have Jesus Christ for their elder Brother. God is only the Father of those who trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins. All other people are alienated from God and have need to be reconciled. All other people have God as their judge and not their Father.

Our minister then went on to quote part of Gen. 12:3 saying, “all peoples on earth
will be blessed through Jesus.”

From here he implied that obviously everyone here has God as their Father (Mal. 2:10) and is blessed by Jesus (Gen. 12:3). The clear implication is that even though people aren’t religious and don’t have any love for the community of the saints we know that they have God as their father and are Blessed by Jesus. After this statement he talked about how when we all die we all go to heaven.

There was a fleeting comment about God’s righteousness but there was absolutely no connection between God’s righteousness and the need for people to repent and trust Christ. Indeed, I’m not even sure why the fleeting comment regarding Christ’s righteousness was mentioned.

Afterward I caught up with him for a 30 second conversation. I couldn’t handle any longer. I asked him if here were a Christian or Universalist minister. He laughed and said he wasn’t a Universalist. I said, “Oh, I’m sorry, perhaps you are a Buddhist, I’m sorry for asking if you were a Universalist.” He said, “Oh no, I am a Christian minister but I am part of a denomination that doesn’t emphasize religion”, and he added that “as the deceased wasn’t religious I was trying to avoid religion.”

Sigh.

I knew that the conversation wasn’t going to go anywhere so I smiled and walked away. I wanted to say to him, “So, you concluded that since the deceased wasn’t religious those listening to you shouldn’t be exposed to the Christian religion either.”

It was clear during the service that this guy was embarrassed by what many people refer to as the “cringe factor” of Christianity. Those things he avoided and which he considered “religious” are the very truths that the Christian “wizards of smart” consider as Christianity’s “Cringe Factor.” He avoided the truths that make people uncomfortable with the Christian faith and then said he was only avoiding religion. He avoided topics like sin, God’s just wrath against sin, God’s Holiness, a bloody cross, propitiation and expiation, and the need for repentance and in my estimation he did all that fully believing that by avoiding all that “religious stuff” it would make it easier for people to accept Christianity.

Pass the sedatives please!

And to finish this piece off allow me to briefly explain why funerals like this drive me insane. A death is one of those few events that has the ability to really unsettle people and to breakup their worldview belief system. At a funeral people are brought face to face with the several realities that many of them spend their whole lives running from. At a funeral people are forced to consider their own mortality. This is especially so for those who are themselves aged. They are sitting there realizing that there death isn’t far off. A funeral forces them to ask once again a question that isn’t merely a exercise in the conundrum, “what will happen to be when I die.” A funeral is the opportunity to answer that question for them in such a way that they might quit running from the obvious answer and embrace Christ. At a funeral there is the potential urgency present in people to actually consider the character of God both as to his Holiness and as to His love.

And at this place … at this event, which has so much potential all we get from clergy today is obscene banalities and gross sentimentalities.

A Blizzard Of Government Schooling Quotes

You would never be able to convince most Christian families to send their children 6-9 hours a day to place that explicitly taught Hinduism or Islam or Buddhism. Yet, Christian families will send their children today to places where it is explicitly or implicitly taught that parents are stupid, that Christianity is oppressive, that alternate sexuality is a positive good, that diversity is ideal, that man is the measure of all truth, that redistribution of wealth is only fair, that a theory of science which takes more faith than believing in some animistic tale where some god was split in half to form the heavens and earth is true, that man is essentially good, and truth is arrived at by counting noses.

Try and convince people today that Government schools are the equivalent of the houses of the National Deity and even otherwise solid Christians will scoff at you and mock you. Go to a family reunion and mention the wickedness of government schooling and just watch the claws and fangs come out of people who supposedly love you.

People will typically respond that there are many “Christians serving in our Government schools.” While that may be true I refuse to concede that those Christians serving in our Government schools are Christians who are pursuing the life of the mind. No Christian who understands what it means to have a muscular Christian worldview could work in the Government school systems w/o working as a double agent trying to sabotage the system they were working in. We must keep in mind that great preponderance of Christians working in Government schools were educated in Christ Hating colleges and teacher colleges. As such they have imbibed a pagan worldview and have given it a coat of Christianity to sooth themselves.

Christians do you desire Reformation and awakening? Then you must educate yourselves and educate your children. You must begin to teach yourselves the basics of a Christian world and life view. Molech must be cut off at the knees.

Here are a flurry of quotes on government schooling. Hat Tip to Mark Chambers of putting these all in one place.

“Give me your 4 years olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state.”

Vladimir Lenin

“He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future.”

Adolf Hitler

“I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being… The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing the classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level – preschool day care or large state universities.”

John Dunphy on the purpose of humanist education.

“Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school’s meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?”

Charles F. Potter, “Humanism: A New Religion” 1930

“Every child entering school at the age of five is insane because he comes to school with certain allegiances to our founding fathers, toward our elected officials, toward his parents, toward a belief in a supernatural being, and toward the sovereignty of this nation as a separate entity. It’s up to you as teachers to make all these sick children well–by creating the international child of the future.”

Psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce, Addressing 1973 Childhood International Education Seminar

“The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues, and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else… Their purpose, in brief, is to make docile and patriotic citizens, to pile up majorities, and to make John Doe and Richard Doe as nearly alike, in their everyday reactions and ways of thinking, as possible.”

H. L. Mencken Raconteur & 20th Century Libertarian Man Of Letters

“Schooling is a form of adoption. You give your child away at his or her most plastic years to a group of strangers. You accept a promise, sometimes stated, but more often implied, that the state, through its agents, know better how to raise your children and educate them than you, your neighbors, your parents, your community, your local traditions and that your child will be better off so adopted. By the time the child returns to the family or has the option of doing that very few want to. Their parents are some form of friendly stranger to them. And why not – in the key hours of growing up strangers have raised the child.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ogCc8ObiwQ&feature=related

“Faith in the wonder working powers of education has proved to be one of the most durable components of liberal ideology … Yet the democratization of education has accomplished little to justify this faith. It has neither improved popular understanding of modern society, raised the quality of popular culture, nor reduced the gap between wealth and poverty, which remains as wide as ever. On the other hand, it has contributed to the decline of critical thought and the erosion of intellectual standards, forcing us to consider the possibility that mass education, as conservatives have argued all along, is intrinsically incompatible with the maintenance of educational quality….

Universal public education, instead of creating a community of self-governing citizens has contributed to the spread of intellectual torpor and political passivity.”

Christopher Lasch The Culture Of Narcissism – pg. 125, 130

“Contrary to what many Christians have been led to believe, there is no such thing as a ‘neutral’ education. All education is religious and conveys a worldview, and there is no more important decision that we make as parents than how we educate our children. Unfortunately, Christian parents allow an aggressively anti-Christian institution to form the minds of their children, and the fruit of that choice is bitter. The overwhelming majority of children from evangelical families leave the church within two years after they graduate from high school; only 9 percent of evangelical teens believe that there is any such thing as absolute moral truth; and, our children are being forcibly indoctrinated to believe that homosexual behavior is acceptable.”

Bruce Shortt The Harsh Truth About Public Schools

“…where the Holy Scriptures do not rule, there I advise no one to send his son. Everyone not unceasingly busy with the Word of God must become corrupt; that is why t…he people who are in the universities and who are trained there are the kind of people they are. For this no one is to blame with the training of the youth. For the universities ought to turn out only men who are experts in the Holy Scriptures, who can become bishops and priests, leaders in the fight against heretics, the devil and all the world. But where do you find this true? I greatly fear that the universities are wide gates of hell, if they do not diligently teach the Holy Scriptures and impress them on the youth.”

— Martin Luther

“The public school is a substitute institution for the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church of the middle ages and is a thoroughly medieval concept. A single culture is demanded, and the public school must create it. Hence, every group believing in and seeking to control that new leviathan and grand monolith seeks control of the public school.”

R. J. Rushdoony Intellectual Schizophrenia – pg. 50

“The major offensive against Biblical faith began with the statist take-over of education and its conversion from a Biblical to a humanistic orientation. Modern statist education is intensely religious, but its religion is humanism, and its goal is the conversion of youth to the faith of the state and faith in the humanistic state.

The power of the state has been greatly enhanced by the take-over of education. The child was re-shaped in terms of statist premises and statist loyalties and expected to be a ready martyr for the state and its warfare. Nothing has contributed more to the rise of the state and its power than the statist school, and nothing is now more destructive to it. Whether in the Soviet Union or the Western world, the product of the state school is increasingly a lawless moral and political anarchist who is as hostile to his country as to God.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Chalcedon Report No. #92
April, 1973

“The hatred of excellence is very real. Everything that points to the world of the mind and to the discipline of an ultimate moral law is despised and hated. If good and evil are valid and basic categories of thought, then the idea of an elite is inescapable. The idea can be abused, a wrong kind elite fostered; but, despite this, the concept of excellence remains.

John Dewey, however, objected strongly to orthodox Christianity because of its commitment to the ideas of right and wrong, heaven and hell, the saved and the lost, and he objected to it on the grounds that it fostered the idea of a ’spiritual aristocracy.’ ‘I cannot understand,’ said Dewey, ‘how any realization of the democratic ideal as a vital moral and spiritual ideal in human affairs is possible without surrender of the conception of the basic division to which supernatural Christianity is committed.’ More than one generation has been reared on Dewey’s philosophy. Having denied the validity of standards above man, it looks for vitality from within and below man.”

R. J. Rushdoony Noble Savages – pg. 130

“Christianity must be a present element of all the training at all times, or else it is not a true and valuable education. The human spirit is a monad, a single unit, spiritual substance, having facilities and susceptibilities for different modifications, but no parts. Hence, when it is educated, it is educated as a unit. The moral judgments and acts of the soul all involve an exercise of reason; so that it is impossible to separate the ethical and intellectual functions. The nature of responsibility is such that there can be no neutrality… between duty and sin. It follows that any training which attempts to be non-Christian is therefore anti-Christian. God is the rightful, supreme master and owner of all reasonable creatures, and their nearest and highest duties are to him. Hence to train a soul away from him is robbery of God. He has not, indeed, committed to the State the duty of leading souls to him as its appropriate task. This is committed to the family and to His church. To educate the mind without purifying the heart is but `to place a sharp sword in the hand of a madman.’ Practically few do recognize and obey conscience except those who recognize the authority of the Bible. There can be, therefore, no true education without moral culture, and no true moral culture without Christianity.”

Robert L.Dabney Discussions Vol. IV (1870)

Public education is anti-Christ. It is the catechetical arm of godless government. It is an idolatrous institution, aggressively hostile to your faith. Its intention is to purge the knowledge of Christ and Christianity from the minds of your children and own them for the god called State. In lectures given prior to 1890 A. A. Hodge made the following predictions.

“A comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, individual, social and political, which the sin-rent world has ever seen.”

That is exactly what has happened. With the exception of a few men like Hodge the pulpits of America have been filled with men who have repeatedly proven themselves to be incredibly ignorant and agonizingly dull. Obviously ignorant of the religious nature of all education and steeped in the godless idea of neutrality Minsters have failed to open the eyes of Christian parents to the dangers and has even defended the right to sacrifice their children on the educational altar of state. And after having sent their little ones to the enemy to be educated they are puzzled over why they are leaving the church. Such appalling stupidity. God help us.

Mark Chambers
Homeschooling Father of Three