{"id":6202,"date":"2013-03-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/2013\/03\/01\/free-to-be\/"},"modified":"2013-03-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-01T00:00:00","slug":"free-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/2013\/03\/01\/free-to-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Free to Be"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe South in which I grew up was rather rebellious toward the actions of the federal government. The slowness of the school systems to heed the Supreme
\n\tCourt\u2019s school prayer ruling in Engel v. Vitale<\/em> (1962) demonstrated that pretty clearly. I can remember daily organized prayer in school as late
\n\tas 1973. I can also remember teachers who routinely made comments such as \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t lie because God said not to in the Bible.\u201d Those who would like to
\n\treinstitute organized prayer in schools often argue that moving away from such a foundation has harmed the moral fabric of our society. They point to the
\n\tgeneral decline in morality that can be seen in the turbulent 1960s and 1970s as evidence that \u201cexcluding God from the classroom\u201d has led to moral decline
\n\tin the nation. Separationists have often argued that this is not a logical conclusion. They note that many other factors (including such things as the
\n\tinfluence of TV and the movies, the impact of an extended and unpopular war, the easy availability of birth control and the growing tendency to challenge
\n\tauthority of any kind) contributed to changing social norms in America and conclude there is no evidence that directly ties moral decline to religious
\n\tpractices in school.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe separationists are certainly right that \u201ccorrelation does not prove causation.\u201d They are also right that other factors have contributed to changing
\n\tmoral attitudes. Yet, this argument still misses something important. Teachers have an impact on the thinking of children, especially in the early grades.
\n\tTheir authority is often as significant as that of parents. If those teachers are regularly talking to children about a God whose rules should be obeyed,
\n\ttheir teaching will certainly have an impact on how the students think as they grow up. Removing that influence from the life of students had to have an
\n\timpact on the moral choices made later in life.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tDoes that mean that we should go back to religious practices in the schools? No, it does not. There are two more critical problems with the idea of
\n\treligion in the schools. First, there really is no way to get around the fact that such practices get the state involved in prescribing religious
\n\tpractices. Even \u201cvoluntary prayer times\u201d still involve the state making a choice to favor religious practice over nonreligious practice. Second, and
\n\tpossibly more important from the perspective of an Evangelical Christian, it makes religion into something that is pragmatically useful without any concern
\n\tfor its truth. John Adams may have said, \u201cOur Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,\u201d but we should remember that his concern in that
\n\tstatement was for the state, not the church. Adams saw pragmatic value in religion for the state, but he was not interested in strengthening the church or
\n\tspreading the gospel.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe state might find Christianity useful, but that usefulness is dangerous to the church. It is entirely too easy for a \u201cuseful church\u201d to be captured by
\n\tthe culture. The emperor Constantine attempted to unite his empire by bringing the people together under one religion\u2014Christianity. Baptists have long
\n\targued that the Constantinian solution in Rome was dangerous to the church. The same danger can be found in the church of my youth. The most obvious
\n\tembarrassment was the racism that dominated the culture and infected the church. In fact, racism so infected the church that the culture has even done a
\n\tbetter job of fighting it than the church has. The church\u2019s purpose is not to create a better society in which we can live. It is to grow the kingdom of
\n\tGod. When the church gets too close to the state, it stops speaking prophetically about the dangers the state represents. Conservatives seem to recognize
\n\tthe dangers in a powerful state. Why, then, would we want to risk that voice by becoming a tool for the state to create a more stable society?\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe truth is that God has not been booted from the classroom (as if that were possible anyway). For that matter, prayer has not been removed either. Any
\n\tstudent can pray whenever he or she desires. It is only the state\u2019s power over prayer that has been eliminated. While that may not make our society safer,
\n\tit frees the church to be the separate voice it needs to be. God\u2019s solution to our problems was not a governmental system, but a Person. God gave the
\n\tchurch, not the state, the responsibility to proclaim that person to the world. Taking religious practice out of the classroom may or may not have been
\n\tgood for the state, but it was good for the church. It is time for Christians to move forward in the freedom to deliver a message without the danger of
\n\tinfection from the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The South in which I grew up was rather rebellious toward the actions of the federal government. The slowness of the school systems to heed the Supreme Court\u2019s school prayer ruling in Engel v. Vitale (1962) demonstrated that pretty clearly. I can remember daily organized prayer in school as late as 1973. I can also<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[197],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-6202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-march-april-2013","tag-march-april-2013"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6202\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.charming-bohr.160-238-31-172.plesk.page\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}