Indeed, Mr. Webster, Tell Us About It

Twelve days ago, in Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada, 59 people lay dead and over 500 were wounded in a shocking mass shooting. Depending on how "mass shooting" is defined, some sources say there are hundreds of cases per year in the US, while other sources say it's closer to dozens. Whether it's dozens or hundreds, it's a problem. People of all political persuasions agree this problem needs to be "fixed." But I have yet to hear a single mass media pundit even remotely suggest this problem might be linked to a gag order imposed on Bible reading in US elementary and secondary schools in the 60s, and the total absence of instruction in basic Christianity which used to be commonplace in our state-run schools. (Shocking, isn't it?) Could there be a connection here? It's time for a refresher course from one of our Founding Fathers, Noah Webster, who was once considered the "Schoolmaster of the Nation."

(Photo by Pobrien301, Public Domain)

Founding Father Noah Webster wrote that education was "useless without the Bible." His American Dictionary of 1828 included more biblical citations than any other reference volume of his day, and probably since.

In his Preface to that Dictionary (which shaped the way Americans spell, and influenced the way Americans thought), Webster wrote: "In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed...No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people."

Our problem now is, we want “freedom” without Christianity. 

How's that working out?   

Webster wrote: "...the education of youth should be watched with the most scrupulous attention. Education, in a great measure, forms the moral characters of men, and morals are the basis of government."

He went on: "...it is much easier to introduce and establish an effectual system for preserving morals, than to correct, by penal statutes, the ill effects of a bad system."

Indeed, Mr. Webster, tell us about it.

Webster referred to the Bible as "that book which the benevolent Creator has furnished for the express purpose of guiding human reason in the path of safety, and the only book which can remedy, or essentially mitigate, the evils of a licentious world."  

In a letter to David McClure, written on October 25, 1836, Webster wrote: "Any system of education...which limits instruction to the arts and sciences, and rejects the aids of religion in forming the character of citizens, is essentially defective."

Dear reader, I submit that we are seeing an increase of lawlessness in this nation because we have been feeding our elementary and secondary students a steady diet of defective education since the 1960s, when the 10 Commandments were taken off the schoolroom walls, and Bible reading and prayer were declared unconstitutional. 

Tell that to those who wrote the Constitution. Webster would have a few choice words for us today. Thankfully, his words were written down. They are part of the historic record. This includes the record at the University of Washington, where I confirmed all of the above quotes, and documented them in Assumptions That Affect Our Lives.

Please read that book. And give a copy to a friend.