Did We Make a Mistake in Removing Christianity From the Classroom?

Once upon a time, December was filled with Christmas pageants and programs, many of which took place in the local school auditorium. At the very least, such programs were filled with Christmas carols spelling out the story of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem; many of them – like the one depicted in the 1941 film, “Penny Serenade” – even acted out that story, complete with Mary, Joseph, and the angels.

School Christmas programs still take place today … but often only under the generic title of “Holiday Concerts.” Gone are the renditions of “Silent Night” and “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” In their place stand songs mentioning Rudolph, Frosty, and the Grinch. Unless one counts the school pageant a decade ago which included a Muslim song featuring the words “Allahu Akbar” (“God is great”), it seems clear that religion in schools – even on one of the most religious holidays of the year – is definitely a thing of the past.

Many would say that’s a good thing. After all, we must have separation of church and state! Thus, public schools should never contain an ounce of religion!

That attitude, however, has resulted in a completely different form of religion which permeates our schools today: secularism.

Cultural commentator Bernard Bell observed this even back in the 1950s, noting in his book, “Crowd Culture,” that such a development has a very severe unintended consequence:

The religion of the public schools is a nontheistic and merely patriotic Secularism. The public schools, without its being generally perceived by those who direct the schools, have become, because of this monopoly advocacy, the most dangerous opponents of religious liberty visible on the American horizon. [Emphasis added.]

“Too bad, but that’s just the way it is,” many may reply. “We can still have religious liberty in other places besides the schools.”

But that isn’t quite Bell’s point. “Religion cannot be taught merely as ‘another subject,’” he writes. “To be effective, religion must permeate education in every subject; the school itself must be religious.” And since secularism has already permeated every aspect of today’s public school classrooms, for better or for worse, that is the type of religion which will be instilled in our students.

Furthermore, since secularism is basically the absence of any religion, we can expect our students to walk away from their education with just that: nothingness. No moral grounding, no behavioral rules or manners to promote decency, no belief system, no life purpose.

Bell explains the consequences of this development:

A nation which does not give knowledge of religion to its children and encourage their commitment to religion in some form, is in grave moral danger. Its children, and later its adults, find no sanctions for ethical behavior except habit and expediency, and these are weak reeds on which to lean.

The secular holiday concerts featured at today’s public schools are only one visible feature of this development, but others lurk beneath the surface. One example of this is seen in a thread I saw on X this fall, which observed that the lack of religious training in schools even affects understanding of basic academic subjects such as English, simply because the whole Western tradition is intricately connected to biblical references.

The religion of America’s public schools may be secularism today, but once upon a time, Christianity was the religion of the classroom. This is evidenced not only in the movie mentioned earlier, but in the standard textbooks used in America for years after its founding documents were composed and Thomas Jefferson wrote his famous “wall of separation” phrase. The alphabet alone in the “New England Primer,” for example, contains over 10 biblical references. Noah Webster’s “Blue Back Speller” contains a moral catechism, instructing children to follow the Bible as it “has furnished all necessary rules to direct our conduct.” And the famous McGuffey Readers used by millions of American children were also infused with biblical passages and principles.

If all these early generations of American children received religious – Christian – instruction in the classroom, then why can’t our children today? Sure, we’ve had various court cases saying that such is now taboo … but we’re in an era where we’re questioning and overturning many of these same laws and decisions that have led our nation down a moral blackhole. Shouldn’t we begin asking if we’ve made a mistake in removing Christianity from the classroom?

At the very least, individual parents with children in the public schools should seriously consider what this lack of religious instruction is doing to their children, both morally and academically. If, as Bell indicates above, an education not infused with religious instruction is a very dangerous thing both to children and the nation as a whole, then perhaps more parents – both Christian and secular –need to seriously consider if it’s time to leave the public schools behind for good.

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This article is republished with permission from The Fred and Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal.

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