Posted on 07/05/2009 7:36:02 AM PDT by wintertime
A slew of research shows that America is losing the conservative Christian youth in massive droves. These studies show a generation being increasingly won over to a socialistic/secular-humanistic worldview in spite of the American church increasing their apologetic courses, children's programs, youth rallies and books and sermon series on child training.
What is happening? Could it be that we are doing something wrong? I would make the case that we are blatantly sinning in sending our kids to places that are, in fact, causing them to fall away. Let me lay out the case in three simple points.
( SNIP)
2. Is there any convincing evidence that a secular-humanistic public education is causing kids to stumble and fall away from the church?
* 88 percent of the children raised in evangelical homes leave church at the age of 18;
* 83 percent of children from committed Christian families attending public schools adopt a Marxist-socialist worldview;
* Mounting evidence that the public schools are successfully converting covenant children to secular humanism;
* Nehemiah Institute's graph showing the shocking result of a 20-year study on approximately 60,000 youth in 50 states from churchgoing families.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Yes, it is dangerous to have preschool mandatory. THAT is an age where kids NEED their Moms in particular. This is why they CRY and FIGHT when being dropped off. From their innocent perspective they are being abandoned and they are. You are right on - it BREAKS the family bond in negative ways.
“Absolute values are being constantly attacked if you go outside the home, Christians especially. The attack is as ruthless as it has been on Palin but is more covert and couched by “nice” language. Tolerance, multiculturalism, pro-choice, equal rights, etc., etc. Progressives have painted moral people as bigots and haters and have control over all media but a few outlets. It is extremely hard to buck the system—Palin is a good example. Children are NOT strong enough to fight the progressive system in place (emotionally or intellectually) and most adults have trouble identifying it even if they are against it. Putting children in public schools is like throwing them to the wolves. Like I say, it was covert for years and now, with O, it is seeing the light but most people still can't understand what is happening. To think children will be immune to the intense indoctrination is ignorant.”
Yes, with no parental intervention, relative values replace absolute from that tender age. The younger they are the more they are damaged.
This is where GOOD parents continue to make sure their kids reflect THEIR values and beliefs and they LIVE what they believe. Many parents are compromised so they don't see it. Then they wonder - what happened? I don't know my child. GEESH:
YOU didn't RAISE them - the LIBERALS and HUMANISTS raised them.
YOU had no time for them.
You threw MONEY and THINGS at them.
YOU did teach them that materialism at the expense of them is wonderful.
YOU didn't even “preach” at them because YOU were too busy being a narcissistic parent.
YOU showed the example of how to be narcissistic, self centered and haughty.
YOU made everything else but them YOUR priority.
YOU made your child precocious by pretending they could deal with everything that came their way WITHOUT YOUR involvement.
YOU rejected your own children.
(None of this rant is directed to you personally - it's you in the plural)
We don't do that here. We are hands on parents - yes one of each gender in a traditional family. We LIVE traditional values and openly REJECT liberalism and liberal family values without apology and use them as examples of what NOT to be. We are Christians. We are SELECTIVE on friends. We discipline and punish for wrong behavior. We are NOT materialistic. We SHOW how we sacrifice. We patiently explain why some behavior is not acceptable and what is acceptable. Britney type garb is NOT acceptable nor is much of the music, TV and video games out there. Even Harry Potter is off limits for us.
Speaking of books we read GOOD books. Ones that highlight the values nad beliefs we have. We love true stories of missionaries. We love character building books as well as books like Animal Farm. We feed their heads with GOOD and inspirng information. We see it working! So whether she remains in a private school or goes to a public school, we will continue this. How a child fairs in public OR a private Christian school is still up to the PARENTS and them being INVOLVED.
Is only half the story the truth? Is truth taken away from its context still truth?
Personally, if it isn’t truth, then it is a lie.
This is the fundamental conflict that, I believe, is impossible for a Christian teacher to resolve.
Agree to disagree.
Isn’t that terrible? Good for your son. And good for you.
A few years ago, I had a volunteer program at a local high school, inviting speakers in at lunch. Got a well-known church musician to come sing for the kids, to share how he got where he was. He asked me ahead of time — ‘Can I speak of the Lord?’ I said, “Sure, I am a volunteer, they cannot fire me. What will they do, put the both of us in the Christian wing down at the jail?”
He gave his testimony, right there in the public school. Then he played a few worship songs. THEN he prayed for the kids. We must have had 60 there that day — friends of friends from the Christian club, etc. It was so beautiful. Never heard a word of repercussion.
A lot of our speakers were Christians; their testimony was part of their paths, and they shared of the Lord. This was NOT the Christian club, mind you — just people sharing about their jobs/ educations.
There are always ways. And there are many, many Christians actively working in those schools. As I said, we homeschooled and I would not have put my son in there for a million dollars. But folks do. And some come out better for it, toughened for battle.
Speaking the Truth is always compelling, whether it is a light in the darkness or one light among many.
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Regarding children in the government schools:
There is no evidence that Christ used children as missionaries. Missionary work is a hard enough job for an adult to do!
Regarding Christian teachers:
Teaching only half the truth is a lie. Trying to sneak in a few Christian principles is being sneaky. And...If a Christian were a true Christian and boldly taught the whole truth they would be fired.
I concluded that Christian teachers who manage to keep their jobs aren’t teaching the whole truth. That means they are lying. Lying is spreading darkness, not light.
What are you going to say when the Mormon missionaries show a DVD at the school?
Are you going to be thrilled when the Islamists and Scientologist start having recruitment programs. How about the newly forming atheist groups?
You are so right.....it is imperative that parents parent and love their children. It is possible to raise intelligent, loving, God-fearing children BUT it is just so much harder now with God being thrown out of the public square and education becoming a social immoral warehouse. There are pockets of excellence, though, and the homeschooling books that I have used are absolutely awesome.
Popular culture has become so vulgar and demeaning to people, though, that it is hard to avoid such negative experiences at vulnerable innocent ages. I do think it essential to preserve the innocence of young childhood, but society is not allowing anymore.
Ummm that’s the best you can do?
Absolutely correct! There is always bias, always a moral or immoral twist to everything. The public schools teaches atheism, nihilism and satanism whether the teachers know it or not. It is how the curricula is designed over the last century by progressives:
Tolerance means tolerance of immorality.
Diversity means tolerance of everything other than Christians and Jews and white heterosexual men.
Multiculturalism means that the American culture is not exceptional, it is, in fact, oppressive and evil, and is not equivalent to all those other cultures--even ones where polygamy, cannibalism, rampant homosexuality, and child burnings occur.
Feminism means that women are no different than men ( biology and science facts ignored)--lies don't matter when marxist ideas are promoted).
Homosexual marriage is no different than Heterosexual marriage (more lies taught to children to create little promiscuous hedonists)etc., etc., etc.,
Schools are NEVER morally neutral and, in fact, teach immorality.
Great story — but I know you know it is nothing short of miraculous when the gospel “sneaks in” and is shared in public schools in a personal way.
My public school-teaching mother tells of many opportunities she had over the years to “sneak it in” at unexpected moments. One of her last years of teaching presented one, when a little 1st grade girl got up at “share time” (topic — what I did over the weekend) on a Monday morning, saying “I accepted Jesus in my heart”. Mother asked her to explain it to the class, which she did, very eloquently. Another little boy shared one other “share time” that he got baptized over the weekend, “to tell everyone that I love Jesus”. My mother asked him to explain — asked if anyone else had been baptized — leading to some interesting discussion among a classroom of six year olds about what they knew about Christ.
Yes it happens — but it usually requires a “Red Sea” miracle....
As to specific programs of the Progressive Movement, Workers' Compensation was not an enemy of Christian or Western Civilization any more than was the life insurance program established back then by the Knights of Columbus for the families deprived of their breadwinners. Public sanitation is not an enemy. Various programs aimed at stiffening up professionalism were not enemies. I am as uncomfortable as the next guy and then some with the faux "moral superiority" of upper middle class and upper class pecksniffs who infested progressivism from the outset. OTOH, Teddy Roosevelt had a LOT of high points as POTUS (encouraging large families, building the White Fleet, gunboat diplomacy, setting a manly standard in his personal life, encouraging gun sports, etc.). Where Teddy failed was in appointing Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. to SCOTUS, and having a far too supportive attitude toward overtaxation.
1909 was late in the game for the Progressive Movement of the pre-Wilson variety.
Your Catholic school experience and mine may have been contemporary (?) but apparently verrrrry different. I would worry as much and a lot more about the influence of eighteenth century philosophes (whose notions led to the barbarism of the French Revolution) as I would about the notions of the more benign Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt. I attended a Jesuit Prep School in the early 1960s where the Jesuits pointedly turned their backs to Robert Drinan, SJ, when he debated Bill Buckley there and wildly applauded Buckley. Such books as you describe may have been used somewhere but not commonly in Catholic schools and certainly not at that prep school.
The Weimar Republic was dominated by Socialists who were often atheists. Mussolini was a communist before he was a fascist. Lenin was, well, Lenin. These are NOT Progressives but far worse.
If you review the Notre Shame threads here, you will find that I am in no danger of supporting the slime that misrule that once Catholic (more than 50 years ago) school. Personally, I think Fr. Jenkins has earned a purgative burning at the stake. I agree with my bishop, Thomas Doran of Rockford, that the school's name should be changed to Northwestern Indiana Humanist University for the sake of truth in advertising, that it should stop dragging Our Lady's good name through the mud and that Fr. Jenkins is in a state of public mortal sin. The elderly priest who was arrested there carrying a cross onto the campus (Fr. Weslin) has been a legal client of mine in pro-life activity decades ago. He was the single finest client I ever had.
As a Catholic, I am not at all sure that there ought to be an unmitigated connection of God and State. I worship God. I shall never worship the state nor assume that it is an arm of God's authority. The evidence of history is overwhelming against such a proposition.
Our founders were not infallible but their tendencies on Church and state were not bad. Catholics have flourished and grown here in a nation founded by a few Catholics and very many who were not Catholic.
I was apparently wrong in assuming that you are not Catholic.
But this is the exact liberal argument in the first place is it not? Everyone has rights in this country soooo, since there's no establishment of religion, this is why we see Jews, muslims and hindus and yes mormons "treated equally" and given equal time.
Of course, in reality everyone's given equal time except the Christians.
We ARE paying for progressive worldview with includes ATHEISM, HEDONISM, PAGANISM, etc. To think the schools can be neutral on God is ridiculous. Up until the Progressive era ALL our public schools were immersed in books which acknowledged God as the creator and validated the moral absolutes of the Bible. That is what this countries' ideas were founded on--that our rights came from GOD.
By teaching our citizens about the beliefs of our Founders is not contradicting the Freedom of Religion (we did it for over a hundred years with Washington's prayers) for they were not endorsing any particular religion. All the Founders acknowledged that morality was necessary for Democracy to work. They were ONLY talking about the Judeo-Christian worldview since that view proved throughout history to produce societies who could function with a high amount of trust and cooperation, freedom, creativity and brilliance.
They were not endorsing Hinduism, Islam, Paganism, etc. Those in their eyes were religions not conducive to civil productive societies.
Besides, the Dept. of Education is unconstitutional. It is what Hitler did....Federal control over all education. We should have LOCAL control like in the early days of this country. Since we have had Federal interference, education has deteriorated. Remember Lincoln went to school less than one year his entire life and he got a law degree and was brilliant. BTW, the Bible was the main book that most youngsters read in the 1800's. Kids did not begin school before the age of six and by the time they were out of eighth grade in the 1800's they knew way more than our college graduates when it comes to math, writing, English and History--esp. of this greatest country ever on the face of the Earth.
Since it is impossible for any school to be religiously, politically, or culturally neutral, government schools must be abolished!
The minute any government school opens its doors it will be establishing the religious worldview of one group while, at the same time, crushing the belief of others.
The **only** possible solution is to begin the process of privatizing universal K-12 education. ( Ditto for college and universities).
We should have LOCAL control like in the early days of this country.
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On this I disagree with you. There should be NO government interference in education whatsoever, no matter how local.
Even if government school districts were as small as a suburban subdivision it is immoral for the government to force ( under the threat of police action) one neighbor to subsidize the religious, political, and cultural indoctrination of another neighborhood’s child. Even within one neighborhood there are great differences between neighbors in their culturally, political, and religious worldviews.
And...Please remember. NO school is ever religiously, culturally, or politically neutral. It is impossible.
“Regarding children in the government schools:
“There is no evidence that Christ used children as missionaries. Missionary work is a hard enough job for an adult to do!
“Regarding Christian teachers:
“Teaching only half the truth is a lie. Trying to sneak in a few Christian principles is being sneaky. And...If a Christian were a true Christian and boldly taught the whole truth they would be fired.
“I concluded that Christian teachers who manage to keep their jobs aren’t teaching the whole truth. That means they are lying. Lying is spreading darkness, not light.”
Agrred!!
Ummmm...considering that you haven't, won't, can't refute it, yeah.
Wow. Do you do this often? It was your assertion, it’s your burden to back it up.
Not government control but control by the parents, who sit on boards, select the curriculum, help in the classrooms,set the rules, hire the teacher, etc. who can always homeschool with very little govt. intervention. I haven't really thought out how this could be done.....there are those would lock kids in the closet for years and abuse children....but then that has happened under the present school system with supposedly all the oversight...
Not government control but control by the parents,
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I would agree, if this means that a group of parents voluntarily get together to hire a teacher ( with their **own** money), rent space, and open a school.
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