10 Truths About America's Christian Heritage

Coral Ridge Ministries
Dr. D. James Kennedy, Founder

From the 10 Truths Series
TRUTH # 7 - America's Schools Were Formed To Advance The Christian Faith

“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.”

So said Noah Webster, who has been called the “schoolmaster to America.” He published the nation’s first dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language, and in the preface, Webster declared, “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.”

From its earliest establishment, education in America was sustained and supported by the Christian religion. In fact, gaining a proper understanding of the Bible was seen as the primary purpose of education. The first law governing education was passed in 1647 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Its purpose—to ensure that children would be able to read and write the Scriptures. The law, famously known as the “Old Deluder Satan Act,” declared:
It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures … Every township … shall forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write and read.

Eight years later, the New Haven Code of 1655 imposed literacy requirements so that “all their children, and apprentices as they grow capable, may through God’s blessing, attain at least so much, as to be able duly to read the Scriptures, and … to understand the main grounds and principles of Christian Religion necessary to salvation.”

Textbooks Encouraged Devotion to Jesus Christ
The most popular textbooks of the founding era demonstrate that Christianity was considered vital to the education of America’s youth. The New England Primer, first published in 1690, remained America’s most popular textbook for more than one hundred years—selling roughly five million copies in a time when America’s population barely reached four million. Lessons contained inside the Primerwere saturated with the Scriptures and encouraged devotion to Jesus Christ.

McGuffey’s Reader eventually replaced The New England Primer as the country’s most popular textbook. First published in 1836, this book was filled with biblical principles and religious instruction. It ultimately sold more than 120 million copies and was officially recognized as a public school textbook in 37 states. In the foreword to his Reader, William McGuffey stated:
The Christian religion is the religion of our country. From it are derived our prevalent notions of the character of God, the great moral governor of the universe. On its doctrines are founded the peculiarities of our free institutions.

“Permanent Foundations of Freedom”
The Founders knew that Christian education is essential to the preservation of liberty. One year after the U.S. Constitution was ratified, Samuel Adams, the “Father of the American Revolution,” explained how America could “establish the permanent foundations of freedom and happiness.” He wrote,
Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity.

Even those considered to be the least religious among the Founders supported the use of the Bible in schools. While serving as president of the Washington, D.C., school board, Thomas Jefferson authored the District’s first plan for public education. He did not propose a new curriculum filled with secular textbooks. Rather, he included both the Bible and the Watts Hymnal as the primary books for students. Benjamin Franklin once argued that schools should “afford frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of a public religion … and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others.”

This view was nearly universal. In a unanimous 1844 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court contended that educational institutions should incorporate the Bible into their curriculum:
Why may not the Bible, and especially the New Testament, without note or comment, be read and taught as a divine revelation … its general precepts expounded, its evidences explained, and its glorious principles of morality inculcated? Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?

Harvard Started for Christian Purposes
From the smallest grammar school to the greatest university, knowledge of Jesus Christ was the ultimate objective of all education in early America. In his book, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born, Dr. D. James Kennedy explains, “Almost every one of the first 123 colleges and universities in the United States has Christian origins. They were started by Christians for Christian purposes.”
• Harvard University, founded in 1636, stated in its rules: “Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of life and studies to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.”
• The College of William & Mary, founded in 1693, proclaimed that it was founded so that “the Christian faith may be propagated … to the glory of God.”
• Yale University, founded in 1701, issued this charge to its students: “Above all, have an eye to the great end of all your studies, which is to obtain the clearest conceptions of Divine things and to lead you to a saving knowledge of God in his Son Jesus Christ.”
• Princeton, founded by Presbyterians in 1746, still declares on its crest, “Dei sub numine viget,” (Latin: “Under God she flourishes”). Jonathan Dickinson, the first president of Princeton, once declared, “Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the Cross of Christ.”
• Dartmouth College, in its original 1769 charter, stated that it was founded “for the education and instruction of youths … in reading, writing, and all parts of learning which shall appear necessary and expedient for civilizing and Christianizing the children.”

Rush: Only Foundation Is in Religion
These beliefs did not suddenly change during or even after the Founding era. In 1787, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance proclaiming, “Religion, morality, and knowledge—being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools, and the means of education—shall forever be encouraged.”

Gouverneur Morris, the most active member of the Constitutional Convention, once stated, “Religion is the only solid basis of good morals; therefore, education should teach the precepts of religion, and the duties of man towards God.”

Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, who helped found five colleges, echoed these sentiments:
The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.