BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 29, 29 October 1928, Page 13

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

Sir, —Will you kindly permit a citizen of the United States to reply to what seems to me certain fundamental misconceptions, as I consider them, of Mr. Hugh Mackenzie in his letter in your paper of August 20, on the Bible i” the schools? He fears to decide the matter by referendum. He seems to fear the people. In my reading of English and American history, I have never found cause to distrust the ability of the people to .settle question aright. Was it not the people who .wrested Magna Charta from King John? If I read English history aright, every step in the progress of English democracy for a thousand years has come from the struggle of the common people for a right to govern themselves, and nobody but an absolutist can say but that they have always chosen wisely. Exactly the same thing is true in my country. At first, ouf leaders distrusted the ability of the people to decide aright. But more and more questions of all kinds are being settled by referenda. At times, as in the Barabbas case, referred to by Mr. Mackenzie, when swept off their feet by their leaders, the people have voted wrong, no doubt. But in every case where the people have had the opportunity to think the thing through, they have voted right, as per.the verdict of subsequent history. Politicians keep their ear to the ground to find what the people want, and then often guess wrong, because they hear only those who talk the most. Give all the people a chance, and you will get a wise decision, even in matters religous. He fears that the Bible in the schools would be a connection between Church and State, setting up a State religion, and he is totally wrong. The words church and religion mean absolutely different things, and he seems to think they mean the same, for he uses the one where he means the other. In my country those who oppose religion in the schools loudly denounce it as a union of Church and State. In fact, that is their principal cry against it. But strange to say, they never raise that question in the courts, where judicial answer can expose their fallacy. That cry was never but once brought up in an American Court in the eighteen cases that have reached our higher judicial tribunals, and in that case the Court instantly threw it out as of no application. We believe in separation of Church and State. We want no State Church. But that does not make a secular State. No law of God or man ever gave the Church a monopoly on religion or the Bible. It is just as much the right of the State to promote religion and to use the Bible as it is the right of the Church. “Religion, morality, and knowledge are necessary to good government,” said a great American document more than a hundred years ago, and it is as true in New Zealand as in the United States, and it is true in both. Being true, the State has a right, probably a duty to promote ' religion in the interest of good government. And if the State does not promote religion, she is failing in at least one way to promote good government. How ean the State better promote religion -than by putting it into the schools? Mr. Mackenzie advocates the ■ Nelson system as the solution of the problem. In your country, as in mine, that system has not solved, and cannot solve, the •problem, good and desirable as it is. That scheme readies in the main only those who now receive some religious training in the churches and homes, but scarcely touches that great throng who never darken church. That has been the experience of many years in America. It is so in New Zealand. The Bible in the schools is the State’s method of giving a little of the message of religion not only to the favoured ones who now get some of it at home and in church, but specially to the vast throngs who never darken church doors. The purpose of putting religion into the schools is not to help the churches, but to promote good citizenship and good character, without which the State cannot exist. Mr. Mackenzie’s objection to the referendum and his plea for the Nelson system lose much of their force because of his opposition to the Bible in the schools. . The chances are that instead of seeking a constructive alternative in either case, he simply seeks to kill the Bible Bill. He quotes a 20-year-old statement of William Robertson Nicoll to the effect that the drift is towards secular education. The drift, if such it may be called, is directly opposite to-day. Three years ago President Calles put a Bible into every schoolroom in Mexico. About the same time Japan permitted the study of the Christian Scriptures in her schools. Mussolini put religion into the schools of Italy a couple of years ago. Within 15 years fen States of the American Union have by law put the Bible into daily use in nil the schools of their State. Twenty years ago the Bible was very largely out of our public schools, and to-day it is used every day by requirement of law in all the schools of 33 million (almost a third of our people). There is a tremendous tendency to nut the religious element back into our higher institutions of learning to-day. Last February 200 college presidents and professors spent three days discussing the question of religion in our higher institutions of and there was a very pronounced sentiment that courses in religion ijmst be put into our schools and tn.ught by first-mte scholars, who are keenly religious. *We are face to face with the fact that pagan schools make a pngan civilisation, and a Christian civilisation is learning to refuse to permit it. —I am. etc.. W. S. FLEMING, „ Representative National Reform Assotion. Chicago, HL, U.S., September 19.