The Bible, should it be in the School Room?

_Fifteen Reasons Why the Bible Should Not Be in the School Room_

I. _The Question of Religion Involved._ Those who want the Bible read in the public schools declare it to be the word of God. Now it either is such or it is not. If taught as the word of God, such teaching would be religious and therefore, as the courts maintain, unconstitutional. If taught as a human production, would the advocates of its use in the schools be so enthusiastic to place it there? As we have previously observed, the subject of religion cannot be eliminated from any study of the Bible. The result would be the dragging of it into the public school, where of all places it should not be. It would cause dissension, disagreement, and bad feeling and bring about the very thing we do not want to happen, the dividing of the children into religious groups or sects. The object of our schools above all things is to make the forthcoming citizens Americans, not to divide them into religious or national coteries. Let religion be taught in the churches and Sunday schools. If it is of any value its worth will be communicated from these places in the lives of those who attend them. If the churches, as many of them as we have, as great effort as they make to spread their teachings, and as much wealth as they possess, to say nothing of the power of God behind them, cannot make their good influence felt without encroaching upon the public secular school, we have a right to assume that they are valueless. The Rev. Joseph Parker, the eminent English clergyman, who was opposed to thrusting the Bible into the schools, said that to do so was a reflection upon the ministry. It implied that ministers are unable to do their own work and must call upon the schoolmaster to help them.