Comparing God to a unicorn and scrubbing the "Hallelujah Chorus"

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Kim Jong-Un, the supreme leaders of the Democratic People’s Public of Korea, seems to be a trigger-happy egomaniac with a chaotic temperament who simply loves to goad the United States and the rest of the world with his ballistic missile tests. His most recent missile test traveled 2,300 miles and was his most successful to date. However, Mr. Kim doesn’t concern me as much as the erosion of our moral and spiritual foundations within the nation. Some believe America is on suicide watch and could self-destruct in the very near future. Although Walter Stern comes to some different conclusions than I would have, his book Will America Self-Destruct? is interesting, to say the least. He comments, “Through a series of missteps, we are fraying the fabric woven by our Founding Fathers.” In the early 1800s Alex de Toqueville, the French historian and journalist, made a careful study of life in America, stating, “In the United States the influence of religion is not confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people – Christianity therefore reigns without any obstacle – by universal consent. “The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other.” Perhaps the primary reason Christianity and liberty were married together in early America is because the Bible was taught in the public schools. In fact, the Bible was the reason schools were founded in our nation. Tim Hoy, superintendent of Upland Christian Academy in Rancho Cucamonga, CA, has written about The Bible’s Influence on American Education in which he reports that one of the earliest education laws in our country was passed in 1647. The purpose of the law was to make sure that the Bible was taught, because they believed that the persecution of Christians in Europe were allowed to take place because of the populace’s biblical illiteracy. The Founding Fathers passed a federal law that “required all existing and incoming states to establish schools that will teach ‘religion, morality, and knowledge.’ Many of those founders advocated that the Bible be the primary text in these schools.” Hoy added, “As our country continued to grow, so did our schools. The American school system was the best in the world, and the Bible was central to its curriculum. In the early 1840’s, an attempt was made in Philadelphia to establish a school that would be free of the Bible and any Christian influence. A legal battle ensued that would reach the highest court in the land. In a unanimous decision, the US Supreme Court upheld the centrality of the Bible in US schools.” The Bible was central to our country’s educational program even as late as the 1950s. The Bible, prayer, and the teaching of Christian morality were removed from the public schools in the early 1960s. But times are a-changing, and not for the better. On August 30 students at a Cedartown middle school were studying Greek mythology and introduced to a poem, which declared that God, like a unicorn, was a mythical creature. Take a gander at the poem, "Unicorn," for yourself:

God is like a Mythical creature - a unicorn with silver blood. If you drink the blood you will live forever. It makes a good story in a book like Harry Potter.

The idea of God makes young children laugh and feel safe at night. But when you grow older and see the evil in the world and the face of death like a shadow behind the eyes of every living thing, Then where is God? Then God is revealed in all his foolishness, a naked lie, a childish dream, a mythical creature like the unicorn.

Oh, yes, the parents did the right thing. They protested. The school did the right thing. They apologized. And perhaps the teacher did not introduce the poem with any malicious intent, but it does show how far we have fallen from the ideals of our Founding Fathers – and that right here in what was once the Bible Belt. While a middle school in Cedartown is trying to regain its educational and spiritual equilibrium after the introduction of the “God is like a unicorn” faux pas, an elementary school teacher in Oak Ridge, TN has been confronted by a “gaggle of disgruntled atheists” for playing a 20-second excerpt from George Frederic Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. One week ago the Freedom From Religion Foundation asked a Louisiana school district to discontinue what they chose to call “prayer rituals” at staff training events. The FFRF called the prayers unconstitutional, rude, and insensitive.   Seeking to purge our public schools from all evidences of Christianity, the Freedom From Religion Foundation was successful in getting Spiller Elementary School in Wytheville, VA to remove a plaque in its cafeteria with a Christian prayer: “Our Father, we thank Thee for this food. Bless it to the nourishment of our bodies and our lives to Thy service. Amen.” The FFRF was also successful in getting Comanche Elementary School in Comanche, OK to remove a Bible verse on display above the front desk. It read, “Welcome, The Lord bless you and keep you” (Numbers 6:24). In Mendenhall MS, the principle of Mendenhall Junior High School, Kirby Craft, used a recorded phone message a few days before school started to invite district families to join him at the school for a “prayer walk” to pray for the coming school year. FFRF requested an investigation and response by the school district outlining the steps it will take to protect the right of conscience of the district’s minority religious and nonreligious students and families. The enemy is no dummy. Lucifer knows if he can keep Christianity out of our schools and control the thinking processes of our children, he can ultimately win the battle for the soul of the nation. As the moral and spiritual fabric of the nation frays, the United States will self-destruct. That is why Georgia Baptists must stand strong for religious liberty and that is why we must buy into the initiative to reach the next generation for Christ. Go to www.reachingnextgen.com for additional information.
America, Cedartown, children, culture, education, religious liberty, students