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TH E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
July, 1941
"You speak to' soldiers tinder arms facing, the might of worldly power and spiritual evil. . ■. By word _nd example you must show forth the living Christ.. . . Worthy soldiers of Christ are valiant defenders of . home and country.” With a realization of the vastness of the opportunity that is offered, the in ternational organization of Gideons has undertaken to supply “thé armed forces of the United States with copies of the New Testament and Psalms.” Leaders of the forty-second annual convention of Gideons, which is to be held in Grand Rapids, Michigan, July 23 to 27, have announced that the slogan for the con vention is to be “Arm Them with the Gospel, Too.” Led by their president, R. ;G. LeTourneau, the Gideons are in creasing their prayer and effort toward the achievement of this aim. The Uni ted States Army and Navy, with the authority of President Roosevelt, «have called upon the Gideons to furnish over five million New Testaments (with Psalms) for the men in uniform, within the next four years. The Army and Navy departments have requested the delivery of 1,300,000 Testaments this year, and the Gideons have placed ap proximately 10,000 of these Testaments to date. Endeavoring to enlist, in the .next several months, 100,000 men in the day- by-day study of the Word o f God, Milo F. Jamison, Director of the Bible Fel lowship, points out that “there are, without doubt, two or three hundred thousand men in the service” who are either Christians themselves or “who have some Christian parent or friend who . . . will recommend the Bible Fel lowship plan to them.” Today, with camps closed to miscellaneous religious meetings and evangelistic effort, help by mall is one of the most effective ways, Mr. Jamison feels, for the reach ing of men in service. He makes plain that “the first essential in building a strong spiritual defense against temp tation and sin is by thé establishment of certain vitally important habits of daily Bible study, prayer, and a stabi lized consistent Christian life. . . . It is an axiomatic truth that a strong at tack is the best defense, and this is true in the spiritual realm; therefore, the Fellowship’s emphasis is upon evan gelistic effort in the winning of others to Christ, as the best means of sus taining a man’s own morale." The significant slogan, “Bombing United States Training Camps,” has been used by Carleton E. Null in ad vancing a plan whereby specially selected gospel tracts, wrapped in bright cellophane, “making irresistible and ac ceptable rolls called ‘Gospel Bombs’,” . can be distributed among the men in training. The rolls contain also busi ness reply cards which, when properly
filled out, entitle a man to other litera ture and a Bible. Writes Mr. Null: “If you could see the cards in one mail from soldiers designating that they accepted Christ as Saviour be cause they had been reached through the Gospel Bomb3, you would join in praising the Lord. , . One chap lain told me this method would permit him to effectively evangelize
both the officers and enlisted men of his regiment.” As the Word of God, in one form or another, is being distributed among more than a million men, how reassuring it is to know that the promise of God (Isa. 55:11) may have a fresh fulfill ment: “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not re turn unto me void, but it shall accom plish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto»! sent it” !
Significance of the News By DAN GILBERT Washington, D. C , and San Diego, California
GODLESS EDUCATION NOT THE AMERICAN SYSTEM: • Secular — or Bibleless, Christless — education is not the American system. It was imported from abroad. In the beginning, American education was of ficially and thoroughly religious. The secularizing of American education was an alien process. After the evolutionary philosophy swept the schools of Ger many, it became a popular procedure for American educators to go to German universities for “advanced work,” The greatest asset a teacher might possess, before the first World War, was a degree from a German university. Most of the American scholars who went abroad came back creedless end godless, committed to the philosophy of materialism. They came back as disease- bearers and spreaders of the contagious isms of foreign agitators against God and democracy. They shifted American education from a Bible basis to an anti- Bible basis. So effective has their propa ganda against Christianity been, that to day many deluded people actually, believe that the Bible has no place in our schools, that the “separation of Church and State” necessarily means the separ ation of religion from education. This is historically and practically untrue. The Christian church was the tap root, the vital source, out of which early American education grew. The signers of the Declaration of Independence and the framers of the Constitution were men who, almost without exception, had been trained in schools controlled and carried on by the church. Religious readers, Bible stories, Scripture memo rizing—these formed the core of early American education. Officially, the gov-
emment itself put the stamp and seal of its approval upon Christian education. In the celebrated Article of the North west Ordinance, enacted in 1787, it was declared: “Religion, morality, and knowl edge being necessary to good gov ernment and the happiness of man kind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encour aged.” In every one of the original colonies, schools were founded for a religious objective. Practical Christianity ex pressed itself in. the founding of schools; and schools functioned for the purpose of spreading Christian truth. • While the so-called “liberals” con tinue to wield great power in education, it is becoming evident that there is à growing and spreading “return to funda mental principles in education.” Many of our leading educators are confessing the failure of the so-called “progressive” system, 'which leaves out God and treats the Individual as though he were a highly nervous and wellrdeveloped ani mal. Over the din of the propaganda for Sovietized education, there is being sounded a clear call for a return to the “essentials”—to reading, writing, arith metic, and religion..Educators who be lieve in stressing "essentials” in educa tion are being classified as “essential- ists” or “conservatives.” To be fruitful, however, the return to conservative principles in education must be all-embracing and complete. It cant not compromise. It cannot go just half way. What is the purpose of education? This great question cannot be answered until another question is taken care-of: What is the purpose of the lives which are subjected to a process of education ? Education is supposed to prepare the [Continued w té ft 258] THE RETURN TO CONSERVATISM IN EDUCATION:
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