BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 61, 5 December 1929, Page 13

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS

Sir, —I have just read that steps are being taken in Arkansas to get a Statewide vote taken on Bible in schools. Arkansas has a population of nearly two millions, with over six thousand elementary schools against our 2000 schools in New Zealand. As the Hutt by-election contest is on now, I trust that electors in the Hutt Valley will put their children’s moral instruction first, and vote for the candidate •who favours Bible reading in schools being decided by the vote of the whole people. It is amusing to me to read in the various Labour journals about the rights of the people, and that the people should rule, and the people should be educated, etc., yet in New Zealand, after nearly fifty years of representative government, and fifty years of free education, this socallcjl Labour Party, which is bitterly opposed to Bible in schools, is scared to allow the people a national vote on the Question of Bible in schools. Therefore, if parents vote for Labour in Parliamentary elections, it means a vote against allowing their children to learn, in school time, some of the great Bible truths. Why does the Labour Party not kick out Bible reading from our secondary schools and colleges? It would not dare to suggest that. Yet Labour candidates are against the labourer’s child being taught in school (as is done in England), the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, the Psalms and Proverbs, etc. Electors should remember that a vote for Labour lg a vote against the Bible for the child. Nearly nil the members of the Reform Party' voted for the Bible in the school “ Parliament.-! am. |% LONIAL> Wellington, November 30.