Public Schools and Religious Instruction
By Editor
The San Francisco Examiner reports Rev. J. Q. A. Henry as saying:— Of all institutions, the school should be most zealously kept out of politics. On its integrity depends the future of the nation. Corrupt it and the stream of national life begins to be turbid, and to flow sluggishly. Take from the school its pure, non-sectarian character, and put into it teachers whose responsibility is first to the priest, and soon dwarfed intelligence, narrowed mentality, bigoted intolerance, and all the train of evils attendant upon the teachings of the parochial schools, must appear. All of which is good, and we wish it were true. But too often our school boards, and hence schoolteachers and schools, are very much in politics. And frequently, also, we find our "Protestant" schoolteachers arrogating to themselves the teaching of religious dogmas, saying what our children shall read outside of school hours, and teaching our little ones to sing prayers. It was in this way that Rome began. We are a friend to the public schools. Let them fulfill their legitimate functions. Protestant religion by law is but little better than Catholic. The places for teaching all religion is the home and the church, and such other places as people may go not of necessity, but voluntarily.