Shall the Bible Be Read in the Public Schools?
We see by telegrams that Rev. Frank M. Ellis, formerly the Baptist minister in Denver, but now stationed at Baltimore, Md., is creating quite a sensation in advocating the “Bible in the public schools.” In the course of his remarks he said: “I am also in favor of the Bible in the public schools because Rome is opposed to it. The recent Lenten lecture of Cardinal Gibbons publicly advised and urged upon his people to read the Bible. Now I do not say that Cardinal Gibbons was not honest in that advice, but if he did mean what he said he was not a good Catholic, and if he did not mean it he was not honest. The aim of Catholics is to make Romanists; our aim is to make character. Rome controls all her people, and therefore a Romanist cannot be a good citizen of this republic. If the pope had his way, our republic with its public schools and open Bible would soon go. Rome has already declared her intention of not only driving the Bible from the public schools, but of also dividing the public-school funds to her own advantage. Rome openly antagonizes one of the leading institutions of the country.”—Rocky Mountain Herald. While we are a zealous defender of the public-school system, we are not insisting on the reading of the Bible in the schools. We might assign many reasons for this. One is that as the public schools are supported by a public tax levied on all alike, it is hardly fair to insist on presenting to the children any system of religious instruction. The Jews object to the New Testament; the Catholics object to the Protestant Bible, and the Protestants object to the Catholic Bible, while the Buddhists, Mohammedans, the Theosophists, and many others, do not wish any sacred books teaching religion read to their children unless accompanied by such comments and explanations as they might deem appropriate. The “Bible in the Common Schools” is already causing considerable friction and dissatisfaction, and if insisted on will cause more trouble, and may even endanger the common-school system itself. We believe the wiser and better plan would be to keep the schools free from all religious and sectarian influences. Let theology be taught in the churches, the Sabbath-schools, and the family, and literature, mathematics, science, and secular studies only be presented to the children of the common schools. This is a free country, in which every person has a right to worship according to the dictates of his own conscience. The public schools are the bulwark of our free institutions. We have gotten along over a hundred years pretty well without any laws enforcing any particular religion on children or adults. It would seem that it would be better to let well enough alone, and not to get up a squabble over a theological bone that might ultimate in the total destruction of the grand common-school system of America.—Denver Eye, July 12, 1889.