Political Correctness and the Doctrine of Hell

Education of the heart is confessedly too much neglected in all our schools. It has often been remarked that 'knowledge is power,’ and as truly that ‘knowledge without principle to regulate it may make a man a powerful villain.’ It is all- important that our youth should early receive such moral training as shall make it safe to give them knowledge. - David P. Page

Congressman Vic Fazio used his National Press Club appearance to popularize the sport of“Christian Bashing.” While Vic has not yet called for the return of the lions, a T-shirt worn at a recent Capitol rally bore the inscription, “I hope I shall live to see the last Christian.”

We are engaged in a battle for the “heart and soul” of America, and it is time that our side understood this as well as our enemies. Do you think for a moment that Mr. Fazio held his press conference to attack the “Religious Right” because he cares about the well-being of the Republican Party? He is the fourth most powerful Democrat in Washington D.C. and is in charge of the Congressional Campaign Committee whose job it is to defeat as many Republicans as possible.

Congressman Fazio is concerned because he recognizes seeds of an actual full-blown political movement, a movement that could challenge the hold liberal humanists have had on Washington D.C. for almost forty years. Mr. Fazio said he has no problem with “religious people” or “Christians.” His only concern is for those who are “intolerant” ! Mr. Fazio, and the rest of the liberal humanists, want you to believe that they are open-minded and tolerant of other people’s beliefs, while those who follow our Biblical heritage are narrow-minded bigots who are intolerant of other people’s views. “We live in a pluralistic society and must learn to respect the views of others,” is the liberal battle cry. It sounds so good that fellow Christians often accept this premise and then wonder why they have trouble reaching the unconverted.

Pluralism is Transitional

We must understand that pluralism is nothing more than a transitional phase a society goes through as it shifts its moral foundations from one world view to another. We were once a Christian nation, governed on the principles of God’s Word. Now we have a pagan culture, governed by principles of evolutionary humanism. As a result, we have the breakdown of the family, rampant violence, fiscal chaos and moral degeneracy that is beginning to rival that of the Greeks and Romans. If we are really concerned, we cannot treat only the symptoms, but must be willing to engage in the battle to restore a proper foundation for American culture. “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Ps. 11:31).

Our founders believed that a loving, all-powerful God sent his Son to save sinners and that those who reject him are cast into hell. Vic would think that pretty intolerant! He would never want to live in a nation controlled by such narrow-minded people. Just imagine what the schools would be like!

Even Public Education Was Once Christian

While home-schooling our children, my wife, Linda, found an 1847 training manual for public school teachers by David P. Page. Page’s Theory and Practice of Teaching became the standard textbook for training public school teachers. In the 1899 reprint, E.C. Branson said, “Although more than half a century old, there is hardly a judgment in this book that needs to be revised. It is a wise book — a book for all time. It comes nearer being a classic than any other book on teaching ever written in America. A teacher who has not mastered his Page will some day be as ridiculous as a lawyer who has not thoroughly thumbed his Blackstone.”

It will help one to understand how far we have strayed in a few short decades by quoting from the section in Page’s book that discusses a teacher’s responsible for the religious training. Please remember, this is from a teacher’s training manual for those preparing to teach in the PUBLIC SCHOOLS! “We live in a Christian land. It is our glory, if not our boast, that we have descended from an ancestry that feared God and Reverenced His word. Very justly we attribute our superiority as a people over those who dwell in the darker portions of the world, to our purer faith derived from that precious fountain of truth—the Bible. Very justly, too does the true patriot and philanthropist rely upon our faith and practice as a Christian people for the permanence of our free institutions and our unequaled social privileges.

“If we are so much indebted, then, to the Christian religion for what we are, and so much dependent upon its life-giving truths for what we may hope to be, — how important is it that all our youth should be nurtured under its influences!

“When I say religious training, I do not mean sectarianism. In our public schools, supported at the public expense, and in which the children of all denominations meet for instruction, I do not think that any man has a right to crowd his own peculiar notions of theology upon all, whether they are acceptable or not. Yet there is common ground which he can occupy and to which no reasonable man can object. He can teach a reverence for the Supreme Being, a reverence for His Holy Word, for the influences of His Spirit, for the character and teachings of the Savior, and for the evil of sin in the sight of God, and the awful consequences of it upon the individual. He can teach the duty of repentance and the privilege of forgiveness. He can teach our duty to worship God, to obey His laws, to seek the guidance of His Spirit and the salvation by His Son. He can illustrate the blessedness of the divine life, the beauty of holiness, and the joyful hope of heaven, —and to all this no reasonable man will be found to object, so long as it is done in a truly Christian spirit.”

America, even at the turn of the century, not only taught its youth the importance of God’s Word, but the principles of Scripture were practiced by the adults. We understood the importance of self-government, the family and the church. We had minimum government and maximum liberty. Property rights were respected and people did not even have to lock their doors. We had our problems, especially when it came to the compassionate use of accumulated wealth and the proper respect of other races, but these could have been addressed without changing the entire foundation upon which our nation was founded.

The Humanists Fear Applied Christianity

However, over the next forty years our Christian foundation was treacherously dismantled and replaced with evolutionary humanism: a foundation where there is no God, and all concepts of right and wrong are relative.

Today we have the survival of the fittest, with the need for an ever more powerful government to try to bring some kind of order to the growing chaos and violence. Today’s teachers must prevent any type of praying in schools and are forbidden even to post a copy of the Ten Commandments, let alone discuss them.

What politicians like Vic Fazio are really afraid of is people like me, and a growing cast of thousands, who are convinced that America has taken a wrong turn and are willing to work long and hard, with much prayer and sweat, to restore the Biblical foundations we have cast aside.

And what about tolerance? Let me close with one more refreshing quote from Mr. Page,“7T»e school [and I would add political office] is no place for a man without principle, I repeat, THE SCHOOL IS NO PLACE FORA MAN WITHOUT PRINCIPLE [emphasis is in the original]. Let such a man seek a livelihood anywhere else; or, failing to gain it by other means, let starvation seize the body and send the soul back to its Maker as it is, rather than he should incur the fearful guilt of poisoning youthful minds and dragging them down to his own pitiable level. If there can be one sin greater than another, on which Heaven frowns with more awful displeasure, it is that of leading the young into principles of error and the debasing practices of vice.”

In 1847 it was politically correct to discuss going to hell in a public school textbook. Now those are some basics worth getting back to!