SECULAR HUMANISM SCHOOL

Charles Francis Potter, signer of the Humanist Manifesto and author of Humanism: A New Religion, wrote, “So Humanism is not simply another denomination of Protestant Christianity; it is not a creed; nor is it a cult. It is a new type of religion altogether.” Potter also directed attention to the battleground where the humanist religion dominates – the public school system.

Potter said, “Education is the most powerful ally of Humanism, and every American public school is a school of Humanism. What can the theistic Sunday Schools, meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?”

"FAITH IN MAN, that is my creed, in three words. And that, my friends, is the very core of the new religion called Humanism." (Potter, June 25, 1933)

Look At History - how we got to where we are...

200 years ago no self-respecting Christian parent would even consider putting his or her young child under another person’s spiritual direction.

The beginning of the Industrial Age in England, however, found even small children working in the factories, and Sunday School was created for spiritual orphans who had no other chance at education. Sunday School began as part of the missionary movement.

150 years ago The Bible was likely the only book that a frontier family owned. Children were taught by firelight with The Bible as their only text. Prayer and Scripture were part of every meal and every nightly ritual.

100 years ago Sunday Schools started taking hold in America. Many churches even saw their role as evangelizing children whose parents were not Christians, or who only claimed to be in name.

50 years ago the "baby boom" was going full throttle and filled the Sunday Schools. Christian education wings were being added to all the churches, mostly modeled after modern school buildings. And then, about that time, somewhere in the culture’s collective makeup, parents’ attitudes subtly shifted. Parents began to believe it was preferable to trust the church itself to do their parenting for them, rather than tracking many of their duties themselves.

It doesn’t matter who we should blame for this (there are many places it can be put), but society began to question parents’ abilities to raise their own children. Sad, but true. And very few parents demanded that they be allowed to stay active in their parenting role.

So Now Where? We’ve come a long way since Sunday School was invented to help children who didn’t know God. The problem today is a system once designed to aid spiritual orphans is now creating them by the millions. We are now enabling a dysfunctional system that takes faith nurturing responsibilities away from parents and puts them in the hands of someone else. By perpetuating this system and letting parents off the hook, the church has essentially become its own worst enemy.

In a day when family devotions, mealtime prayer and faith-talk are virtually non-existent in our homes, does segregating parents from their own children on Sunday morning make sense? Shouldn’t the church be guilty instead of using its Sunday morning prime time for the prime purpose of helping parents to fulfill their spiritual duties and keep their promises to God with their children.

Parents not only have been their children’s main faith teachers, they still are and always will be. The question is not, "Will they be faith teachers?" The question is, "What faith are they teaching?" Parents always will be the most effective faith teachers and no amount of effort put into a Sunday School or anything else is going to change that.

(unknown source)

Good to know the history of how things got started and came to be the way they are. Many of us have been raised in and indoctrinated by that secular humanist educational system and can't see it for what it truly is. For one thing, it tries and manages to suppress all spiritual discernment.

Potter said, “Education is the most powerful ally of Humanism, and every American public school is a school of Humanism. [b]What can the theistic Sunday Schools[/b], meeting for an hour once a week, and teaching only a fraction of the children, [b]do to stem the tide of a five-day program of humanistic teaching?[/b]”

I would add "and private schools, and universities and colleges," not just the public school system.

200 years ago no self-respecting Christian parent would even [b]consider[/b] putting his or her young child under another person’s spiritual direction.

Amen. I would ask then: Why should a Christian parent consider it TODAY? Isn't this called "transfer of responsiblity"?

Parents began to believe it was preferable to trust the church itself [b]to do their parenting for them[/b], rather than tracking many of their duties themselves.

Brother Voddie Baucham said it well: "If we send our children to be taught by Caesar, we should not be surprised when they come back as Romans."

The problem today is [b]a system once designed to aid spiritual orphans is now creating them by the millions[/b]. We are now enabling a dysfunctional system that takes faith nurturing responsibilities away from parents and puts them in the hands of someone else. [b]By perpetuating this system and letting parents off the hook, the church has essentially become its own worst enemy.[/b]

If the public school system were the only hook, getting off would be relatively easy. But humanism--faith in man--, which is idolatry, has pervaded every sphere of life: from employment to eating, the health system, education, city life, etc. The church has deified the Government, giving all of its burdens and cares to it, transferring to others its God-given responsibilities. A house built on such a foundation cannot stand. So the sooner it is destroyed or forsaken and built anew the better.

Also a question to consider: Are those parents different from and not [i]the[/i] church? In this quote the two are treated as different entities.

In fact, getting off the hooks IS easy and POSSIBLE with the Lord. But it will cost us EVERYTHING:

Luke 9:23 Then He said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, [u]let him deny himself[/u], and [u]take up his cross daily[/u], and follow Me."

Philippians 3:8 Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom [u]I have suffered the loss of all things[/u], and [u]count them as rubbish[/u], [b]that I may gain Christ[/b]