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Prayer in Public School - Our
Country's Legacy
It wasn't until the early 1960's that prayer
in public school was "outlawed" by a new interpretation of the U.S.
Constitution. In fact, the history of the U.S. includes prayer and Bible
readings in all sorts of public places, including schools. In 1782, the United
States Congress passed the following resolution: "The Congress of the United
States recommends and approves the Holy Bible for use in all schools."
William Holmes McGuffey is the author of the McGuffey Reader, which was used for
over 100 years in U.S. public schools with over 125 million copies sold until it
was stopped in 1963. President Lincoln called him the "Schoolmaster of the
Nation." McGuffey declared: "The Christian religion is the religion of our
country. From it are derived our notions on the character of God, on the great
moral Governor of the universe. On its doctrines are founded the peculiarities
of our free institutions. From no source has the author drawn more conspicuously
than from the sacred Scriptures. From all these extracts from the Bible I make
no apology."
Of the first 108 universities founded in America, 106 were distinctly Christian,
including the first, Harvard University, chartered in 1636. In the original
Harvard Student Handbook, rule number 1 was that students seeking entrance must
know Latin and Greek so that they could study the Scriptures: "Let every student
be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of
his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life,
(John 17:3); and therefore to lay Jesus Christ as the only foundation of all
sound knowledge and learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, let every
one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him (Proverbs 2:3)."
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