Watching the World Go By
Shall We Have Government-Mandated Prayer and Bible Study?
By Ralph Lynn
[Dr. Ralph Lynn is a retired professor of history at Baylor University.]
Contradictory as it may seem, passions run so high in matters of religion that religious people of all faiths, preaching love and brotherhood, have always needed some governmental power to protect them from each other.
For the early Christians that power was the Roman Emperor, Constantine, who called the representatives of Christendom to meet at Nicaea in 325 A.D. to settle the question of whether God is One or Three-in-One.
To Constantine the question was of "trifling" importance; he merely wished to maintain public order.
When the church people reached a decision (in favor of the Trinity), Constantine "dismissed the 318 bishops with the (vain) request that they not tear one another to pieces."
For us now, the question is not the nature of God (about which we all, as human beings, are irremediably ignorant) but whether we shall have government-mandated prayer and Bible study in our public schools.
According to the New York Times of February 17, 1998, this question may be hottest at the moment in Lee County, Florida, where Pat Robertson and Christian Coalition types have a majority on the Riverdale Board of Education. They are having the Bible taught as "secular" history in their high schools. These Fundamentalists say that 53 school districts in 22 states are following their lead.
Florida Judge Elizabeth Kovachevich approved the program with two restrictions: the curriculum must omit the Genesis creation story and must omit, also, the entire New Testament. In practice it has proved impossible to honor these restrictions.
Entirely aside from the question of constitutionality, the judge`s decision capsules some of the chief problems of the program. The judge said that it is "difficult to conceive how the account of the Resurrection or of miracles could be taught as secular history."
One of the problems is the fact that the entire Bible is full of miracles. Indeed, many Christian theologians insist that the Bible is meaningless without the miracles. Certainly, the Resurrection of Jesus is the one miracle without which few Christians think we could have either the gospel or the church.
A problem which might not occur to many is the fact that the ancients, including the ancient Hebrews, lacked any critical view of history. The Greek historian, Herodotus, for instance, working in the fifth century B.C., would relate fanciful stories deadpan and then observe that "this is what they say but you are not obliged to believe it."
Another problem is that most professional historians would probably agree that miracles may occur but that historians have no way of discovering their validity. Only sacred "history" has a place for miracles.
To give the directors of the Riverdale program due credit, it must be noted that they are aware that the "secular" history they wish to teach calls for questioning the Biblical accounts.
But the teachers are so restricted in their questioning and discussions that one must doubt their ability to do secular history. Teachers and students are distracted by the ever-present video taping equipment at the back of the classroom.
A quotation from the teacher of one class illustrates the dilemma. "We want to talk about the story of Noah and the flood. Is it true or not true? That`s not for me to say. That`s not for us to say. We`re just going to look at it and see what we can verify and can`t verify."
The same teacher had a similar problem when a student raised the question of where Cain and Abel got their wives. The embarrassed teacher replied, "For whatever reason, we`re not supposed to talk about that. You just read it on your own. I don`t know why. Please don`t ask me why."
In one class, students were shown a "documentary" called "Jerusalem" in which the narrator says, "The memory of Jesus and the miracle of his Resurrection live in Jerusalem every day."
The most serious problem connected with this program is that it will surely be self-defeating among the brighter, the more intellectually curious, and the more independent-minded of the students. They will apply the habit of the critical examination of the Bible in ways that will shock their elders.
All this is taking place in a "largely Republican county" where the Christian Coalition recently gained a majority on the Riverdale school board. Pat Robertson`s American Center for Law and Justice is supporting their program.
Faced with these developments, it is clear that to maintain our traditional freedom of religion from governmental controls, we must certainly elect friends of freedom to local and state boards of education.
Ultimately, however, we must do what we can to see that the judges appointed to the Supreme Court understand the significance of the First Amendment and are dedicated to keeping it intact. It is our governmental protection.
