Educational Issues:

"Faith in the prayer-hearing God is an unproved and outmoded faith. There is no God and there is no soul. Hence, there are no needs for the props of traditional religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is dead and buried. There is no room for fixed, natural law or moral absolutes." (John Dewey. 1859-1952)

"I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith…The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new – the rotting corpse of Christianity together with all its adjacent evils and misery and the new faith of humanism resplendent in its promise of a work in which the never-realized Christian ideal of 'love thy neighbor' will finally be achieved." (John Dunphy. The Humanist . Jan.-Feb. 1983.)

"It is now quite obvious that the humanists are using public education as the battering ram with which to destroy Christianity in the United States." (p. 256. NEA: Trojan Horse in American Education. Samuel Blumenfeld. 1984.)

"This notion of public-school doors being barred to God would have confounded not only the founding fathers but also those who attended American public schools as recently as the early 1960s." (p. 153. Murchison. Ibid.)

"How is it then, that Scripture, prayer and Christian values, which were all so prevalent in America's foremost textbooks and dictionaries, have been in recent years expunged from all of Webster's original works – and 'banned' from the public school domain?" (p. 161. Catherine Millard. Ibid.)

"Paul Vitz has demonstrated the fact that school textbooks have almost completely excised any reference to America's true religious heritage." (Paul C. Vitz. Censorship: Evidence of Bias in Our Children's Textbooks.)

"The present educational establishment, to cite just one group, has been obscuring the past so that our children have no way of comparing the facts of history with the distorted version promoted by biased secular historians." (Vitz. Ibid. p. 24)

"In grades 1 through 4 these books introduce the child to U.S. society – to family life, community activities, ordinary economic transactions, and some history. None of the books covering grades 1 through 4 contain one word referring to any religious activity in contemporary American life." (Paul C. Vitz. Professor of psychology at New York University. Censorship: Evidence of Bias in Our Children's Textbooks . 1986.)

"For God to be kept out of the classroom or out of America's public debate by nervous school administrators or overcautious politicians serves no one's interests. That restriction prevents people from drawing on this country's rich and diverse religious heritage for guidance, and it degrades the nation's moral discourse by placing a whole realm of theological reasoning out of bounds. The price of that sort of quarantine, at a time of moral dislocation, is – and has been – far too high." (Nancy Gibbs. Times magazine. "America's Holy War." p. 68. Dec. 9, 1991.)

"There really is a kind of keen-jerk reaction on the part of most public high school administrators whenever students wish to engage in any sort of Christian expression." (Larry Crain. Anti-Christian Bias in the Law. p. 5)

"Are public school textbooks biased? Are they censored? The answer to both is yes, and the nature of the bias is clear: Religion, traditional family values, and many conservative positions have been reliably excluded from children's textbooks." (Paul C. Vitz. Religion and Traditional Values in Public School Textbooks. p. 14)

"There is not one story or article in all these books in which the central motivation or major content is connected to Judeo-Christian religion." (Paul Vitz. Ibid. p. 16)

"The Williamsburg Charter Survey on Religion and Public Life, published in 1988, found that 'nearly one out of three academics (34%) said that Evangelicals are 'a threat to democracy.'" ( H. Wayne House. Anti-Christian Bias in Higher Education. p. 19)

"Alarm bells should be going off in our heads when we hear that over 30% of those in academia see evangelical religion as dangerous!" (H. Wayne House. Ibid. p. 19)

"If we continue to exorcise all religious expression from public life, especially our public schools, we will be removing the very force that can help turn our country around." (Legislating Morality. Ibid. p. 211)

"Modern public school textbooks either demean religion, or worse, pretend as though history was not shaped by religion. This vacuum in our public school textbooks teaches a silent message that religion is irrelevant, that it is best confined to the sanctum of the inner mind." (Matthew Staver. Faith and Freedom. p. 113)

"I think the most important factor moving us toward a secular society has been the educational factor. Our schools may not teach Johnny to read properly, but the fact that Johnny is in school until he is sixteen tends toward the elimination of religious superstition." (Paul Blanshard. The Humanist. Three Cheers for Our Secular State. March-April 1976. P. 17)

"The bias against Christianity is evidenced by the clear distortion of early and contemporary American history. The textbooks have censored out important historical religious events, distorted religious history, and placed emphasis upon ideologies that are hostile to religious beliefs." (Matthew Staver. Faith and Freedom. pp. 121-122)

Many school administrators are so cautious that they have erroneously erased all traces of religion. Some have run roughshod over teachers. Others have attempted to squelch all discussion of religion." (Staver. Ibid. p. 127)

"Schools that remove religious material simply because the content is religious violate the First Amendment because such decisions are based on the content of the literature." (Staver. Ibid. p. 175)

"The founding fathers started a number of colleges and universities between 1636 and 1796, and all but one were distinctly Christian." (Rick Scarborough. Enough is Enough. p. 54)

"In the second precept of Rules and Precepts of Harvard University, published in 1642, the second precept stated: 'Let every student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ…the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning." (Rick Scarborough. Enough is Enough. p. 112)

"In a span of 18 years, 200 years of America culture and commitment was declared illegal in America through three of these rulings, and our public schools became 'gospel-free.'" (Rick Scarborough. Enough is Enough. p. 176)

"Those who are anti-God and anti-Christian in America have infiltrated the highest levels of the educational establishment. They have a philosophical commitment to eliminating any vestige of biblical Christianity from American thought and life. They are well-positioned, well-funded and well-connected. They are a very small minority in America, yet their level of commitment is rarely matched among Christians." (Rick Scarborough. Enough is Enough. p. 194)

"(Concerning) the educational establishment, American history is routinely ignored or rewritten to accommodate the humanist, atheistic world view. The role of Christianity is being systematically denied or ignored in today's classroom." (Scarborough. Ibid. p. 195)

"Judge Samuel B. Kent of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas ruled (May 5, 1995) that any student mentioning the name of Jesus in a graduation prayer would be sentenced to a six-month jail term!" (The New Tolerance. Ibid. p. 53)

"The local chapter of InterVaristy Christian Fellowship on the Carleton (Ottawa) University campus was expelled from the school's student union, making it ineligible for funding, access to facilities, etc. The reason? IVCF's requirement that club members sign the InterVarsity statement of faith…In other words, it is discrimination for a Christian club to expect its members to assent to a Christian creed." (The New Tolerance. Ibid. p. 76)

"The sentiment in my classroom is that they (the students) don't like Christians and they don't like white people because they saw what has been done in the name of Christianity and what the white people did to the Indians and the Africans. (Richard Bernstein. 1994.)

"Parents have no right to impose their religion on their children…A Fundamentalist Protestant…parent has no right to expect the state to support his own narrow conception of education." (Paul Kurtz. Professor of philosophy at State University of New York. 1994. Toward A New Enlightenment.) p. 129

"Parents have no right to tailor public school programs to meet their individual religious or moral preferences." (Chief Justice Paul Liacos of Massachusetts. The Boston Globe. July 18, 1995.)

"Where do we find the most persecuted Christians in the world?…in the classrooms of our government schools, where the assault is not upon the body, but the soul." (Alan Keyes. Sept. 13, 1997. Christian Coalition Conference.)

"…Perhaps every third or fourth week, I would make a comment or two based on my knowledge of Bible, theology, or Christian ethics…But again and again I would get the same kind of response. No one (among the students) agreed with me, no one disagreed. To put it rather crudely, but very accurately, it was as if I had farted. And when someone farts in public, no one applauds, no one boos. They simply act as if it hadn't happened. Someone violated a social taboo, and the best way to deal with the embarrassment is to go on to the next item of business as quickly and unobtrusively as possible." (Richard Baer. Professor in Cornell University's Department of Natural Resources. Cornell as a Sectarian University. Sage Chapel. Feb. 26, 1984.)

"The pattern in these books (public school) is the omission of religious aspects to significant American events. The religious influence…is given almost no play." (Timothy of John Hopkins University's History Department. American Education on Trial: Is Secular Humanism a Religion? 1987.)

"(Concerning the ACLU), they see the separation of church and state as so absolute that not a single religious word must be allowed to pass a schoolhouse door." (Nat Hentoff, former ACLU board member and atheist)

"Given the current intellectual climate, it is hard to imagine a public school teacher or college professor stressing to students how our liberties have come from God and that we must not remove Him from the minds of our people." (Pat Swindall. A House Divided. p. 35)

"Too many of today's judges are almost trying to sanitize public schools from any religious influence – which conceivably promotes atheism." (J. Warren Kniskern. Courting Disaster. p. 82)

"(Concerning social scientists), their cause was no longer freedom FOR religion – a classic American liberty – but freedom FROM religion. The attitudes of the educated classes percolated through to popular consciousness in the 1960s." (Chuck Colson. Dance of Deception. p. 190)

"As Christians feel the changing winds of political climate, the blasts against their values in the media, and the exclusion of the Christian faith from educational institutions, they begin to sense the dangers of complacency and of pietistical world flight." (Edmund P. Clowney. The Christian and American Law . p. 266)

"In the name of church-state separation, religion's profound role in the formation of the American character has been excised from many textbooks." (Robert H. Knight. The Age of Consent . p. 19)

What is clear to me is that by removing religious references from the classroom, an anti-Judeo-Christian religion has taken its place." (Rabbi Daniel Lapin. America's Real War . p. 34)

"The educational bureaucracy expects the state to accommodate every possible bizarre cultural mutation and lifestyle, but finds prayer at graduation an intolerable and fatal compromise of state neutrality toward religion." (Lapin. Ibid. p. 160)

"For 217 years – from 1620, when the Pilgrims landed, until 1837 – virtually all education in America was private and Christian. (The public educational system is only 150 years old.)" (Dr. D. James Kennedy. What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? p. 49)

"The earlier editions of the McGuffey (Eclectic) readers were distinctly Christian. The later ones were moralistic, with a Christian morality at base…For many decades, these provided the backbone of grammar school education for this country." (Kennedy. Ibid. p. 49)

"All universities in the world go back to three prototypes: Oxford, Paris, and Bologna… At Oxford and Paris, Christian theology, and to a lesser degree Aristotelian thought, were the chief subjects. At Bologna, the chief study was canonical (translate 'Church') and civil law." (Kennedy. Ibid. p. 51)

"Almost every one of the first 123 colleges and universities in the United States has Christian origins. They were started by Christians for Christian purposes, to train ministers." (Kennedy. Ibid. p. 52)

"Every collegiate institution founded in the colonies prior to the Revolutionary War – except University of Pennsylvania – was established by some branch of the Christian church. Even at the University of Pennsylvania, the evangelist George Whitefield played a prominent part." (Paul Lee Tan. Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations. 1984.)

"I am as sure as I am of Christ's reign that 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 is sin-rent world has ever seen." (Dr. A. A. Hodge. Popular Lectures on Theological Themes. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publications. 1887. p. 283.)

"Today there are those who gnash their teeth at the very mention of the fact that America was founded as a Christian nation. But the facts of history are not easily dismissed, though they are certainly ignored in our schools and in many of our modern, revisionist history books." (Dr. D. James Kennedy. What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? p. 59)

"The religious foundations of America have been completely expurgated form our history textbooks." (Kennedy. Ibid. p. 74)

"In 1983, the President's Commission on Education reported that education in America 'began to disintegrate 20 years ago.' But no reference was made to the 1963 Supreme Court ruling." (Bill Bright. Kingdoms at War. p. 14)

"The expenses of the paperwork and court fees involved in pursuing the appeal through the courts were not too high. In fact, as I recall, removing prayer from U.S. public schools cost less than $20,000…no Christian organization filed a brief in support of our opponents (Baltimore Board of Education)." (Bill Murray. Son of Madalyn Murray O'Hair. My Life Without God . 1982.)

"The fact that the whole legal machinery and administrative machinery of the school system rallied around a perspective, which denies students their own free-speech rights because they happened to want to talk about religion, is illustrative of the terrible force of this kind of extreme imagery of the separation of church and state." (Land & Moore. Citizen Christian. pp. 42-43)