The Lives of Your Children at Stake

Humanism, Religion of State Schools

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Education

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 2 of 5

Track: 67

Dictation Name: RR146A2

Date: 1960’s-1970’s

[Rushdoony] Our subject yesterday was humanism vs. Christianity. Today we shall deal with Humanism as the established religion of the state schools. Before beginning our study of that subject I’d like to comment on one fact with regard to evangelical Protestantism. Some years ago I began to realize that there was a certain aberration that had set in to Biblical believers and their faith. Since then I have found this very clearly expressed in the analysis of a brilliant Austrian Catholic political scientist, an Austrian count Dr. Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. Dr. Leddihn has commented on the strange fact that Protestantism is no longer what it was in origin, a world conquering faith. On the one hand it has become modernism, a surrender to the world; and the other hand he says Evangelical Protestantism has become more medieval than the Catholic church. He says it is now simply a form of medieval monasticism, a withdrawal from the world rather than a world conquering faith; and just as the monks and nuns withdrew into convents and into monasteries to devout themselves to private devotions and to prayer; not to go out to conquer, so evangelical Protestantism and Reformed Protestantism have withdrawn from the world. They’ve turned their churches into convents and monasteries and no longer deal with the world’s problems. But they were once world conquerors. Think of what the reformers did; think of the impact on England of the Wesleyan movement. John Wesley Bready a historian has depicted it in his book England before and After Wesley. It wasn’t the same because he together with all others had a world conquering faith, not a monastic faith.

Now we withdraw from the world. In fact I encounter as I travel some churches which actually issue calendars every month in October you can pick up as you leave the sanctuary they November calendar and it will list activities for every day of the month so you can never have to leave the church. The whole family every day can spend its time in the church and do nothing but sleep at home. Now the Christian school movement is a break with that monasticism; and I believe it’s the beginning of the world conquering aspect of our faith. That beginning with the Christian school movement we’re going to move out and occupy till He comes one area after another.

A French Scholar Jacques Ellul who, while very defective theologically nonetheless sometimes is telling in his analysis of our times, has written a book entitled The New Demons. I’m sorry an evangelical didn’t write that book because what he is talking about is humanism and the humanists. In his book The New Demons he says that humanism is the unquestioned faith of our time, that it has saturated the minds and perspectives of people. People see humanism as a kind of a natural truth and law. It has infiltrated in one area after another so that people without intending to be humanist spout humanism. This faith he says has six principles in essence, first that man is the measure of all things. Not the word of God but the word of man is law. What man says is authoritative, and it becomes imperative then for society, for the church, for the school to become the servants of man. Second man is autonomous, this means totally independent of God. When you have such a faith if you allow God some place in the universe you then say it is God who needs man, not man who needs God; and you have God pleading, not man pleading with the Lord. Third man, according to this faith, is a rational being. Ellul says this is the one aspect of the faith that is shaking now because Humanism through its own psychology is now shattering the idea of man as a rational being. Sigmund Freud as I point out in my book on Freud recognized that he represented the ultimate in Humanism, at the same time with his theory was destroying humanism because he was shattering the idea of man.

Then fourth Ellul says; Humanism holds that man is free to choose between good and evil. His being is not tainted with sin and therefore corrupted. We believe that it is necessary to speak not of the nature of man but of the fourfold estate of man. As Christians we believe that man had one kind of nature in the garden of Eden, good with a possibility of sinning. Then second, after the fall man as sinner is dead in sins and trespasses, there is no good thing in him. There is none righteous, no not one; and it is only sovereign grace that can redeem him. Then third man in the state of grace is now essentially good because of the grace of God in him, but he can still sin. However the sin that the Christian commits is, as John makes clear in his epistle, hamartia - that is falling short of the mark. It is no longer anomia, being anti-law or lawless. This is why John says, and it makes it difficult in the English text, “he who says he is without sin is a liar.” A hamartia, we all fall short of the mark, but he also says that we now being redeemed are no longer committing sin, anomia, we are no longer guilty of being anti-law, lawless, autonomous, trying to say there is no word of God binding upon us because every word of God is law, it is binding upon us. It’s wrong to say it’s just the words of Moses as given from the Mountain subsequently that are law. Every word of God is binding upon us and His law, and the Hebrew word Torah can be translated as: law, teaching, instruction, guidance, but all of it however you render it means something binding from God upon man. Now the fourth estate of man is the state of glory where man no longer is capable of sin, but by the grace of God is perfectly and eternally sanctified.

Now as against this the Biblical perspective on man; humanism says man has one constant nature through all of history, it’s neutral. He can choose between good and evil and baring error, ignorance, or passion, will choose the good. Error, ignorance, and passion; now of course the humanist as he goes ahead to define what error, ignorance, and passion constitute will say that it involves superstition and belief; and by that he really means Biblical faith. So if you purge from man a Biblical faith than he’s going to choose the good; so education must eliminate Biblical faith, it must eliminate the word of God in order to enable the children of humanism to choose the good.

Then fifth humanism says, Ellul tells us, that if evil exists it is not the fault of man but of institutions, of society, of education, of the economic system of capitalism, of the division of society and to classes, and so on; so that if you abolish these institutions, the church and the Christian school; and if you abolish capitalism and if you abolish any social distinctions and bring about total equality then evil will disappear. This makes clear, does it not, so much of our contemporary social legislation? Then Finally Humanism says whatever is normal is good; and the normal is what the majority of our group accepts. Everything thus says Ellul can be permitted. Of course this was precisely the thesis of Marquis De Sade, one of the most powerful influences in the modern world and perhaps the most thorough sexual degenerate in all of history. The Marquis De Sade’s principal was that it is Christianity which is not natural, that every kind of perversion, theft, murder, adultery, every kind that you can think of and some that you’ve never thought of, he lists as natural. So he says we must abolish all government, all religion, (Christianity is what he meant by it) and we will have then paradise on earth because man will do that which is natural. This of course was the faith of Alfred Kinsey the sex researcher at the University of Indiana. Kinsey held in his second volume that the trouble with child molesting was not the child molester, it was the parents and the Sunday school teachers and pastors who said molesting little girls was wrong. That it could be a very meaningful experience for the little girl and it was society that was destroying the children by making them afraid of such experiences. Why? Because he said it is natural, it occurs in nature, and therefore it is good. You see the evil in this perspective becomes Biblical faith; because it is supernatural. The world as is, is good, man as is, is good; and it is only as Biblical standards, Biblical requirements are imposed upon man that evil comes in.

Now do you see the drift of so much teaching in our state schools? Recently in California our Right to Life people cornered Senator Tunney nominally a Catholic, actually nothing, and demanded that he answer their questions on abortion. And he said he was in favor of abortion because it was the law, they asked him if he were in favor of stealing, “no” he said “it is against the law.” Well they said “What if the majority of people tomorrow pass legislation repealing any law against theft, would you then be against it?” “No because it would then be legal.” Now of course that is the logical conclusion from modern education, from humanism. Humanism as I said at the beginning is the established religion of our state schools.

Lawrence A. Cremin in his lectures published under the title of Public Education says that humanism in education is a millennial faith. You thought you had a monopoly on millennialism didn’t you? No they use that language, because they believe they’re going to create a glorious millennium through the application of humanism to education, this is what they’re working for. We cannot begin to understand what is happening in education today unless we grasp certain things. First all education is inescapably religious. Religion is ultimate concern, whatever a person believes is basic and ultimate that constitutes his religion. The trouble with us we define religion as belief in God. Well almost no religion outside of Biblical faith believes in God; now that may seem a startling statement. I saw almost, no I would be willing if I had the time to argue that no other religion really believes in God. You have beliefs in gods but they’re not really gods except we are used to thinking of them as such, they are powerful spirits.

For example Shintoism has no God. In translation as we translate some of the Shinto writings we use the term, but in Japanese it is Kami- powerful spirits governing a particular area. Everything has its governing spirits; so that when you go to the toilet for example you make a bow to the Benjo {?}kami, to the spirit of the bathroom. The Emperor is the spirit, the kami, of the political order. Then you have a kami for the home, a kami for the trees so you bow and apologize to the kami before you cut down one of his trees, and so on. Everything has its kami, there is no God. Buddhism has no God. The ultimate in Buddhism is nothingness. Hinduism has no God only untold millions of spirits. Jainism has no God, Animism has no God. Now some would say “how about Islam, Mohammedanism.” Well Mohammedanism was in part an imitation of Judaism and Christianity so it talks about Allah, the one God. But as it proceeds then to develop the doctrine of its God it becomes perilously close to fatalism; an impersonal natural force rather than a personal God. So it could be argued that there is no God in Islam. I know that many would contend with me on that, and it could be argued too that Mormonism has no God, just many gods; and every good Mormon is a potential God. Humanism is thus like other religions, a non-theistic religion. Biblical faith alone is theistic, truly believing in one sovereign God and governor of all creation.

So that we must disabuse ourselves of the idea that these non theistic faiths are not religions, they are. They are militant crusading religions and humanism is the most zealous and crusading religion perhaps of all history; today in varying degrees governing every nation on earth.

Now each religion has a different form of education, because it has different priorities. There is no possibility of a common educational philosophy. Islam has one kind of education, Shintoism another, Hinduism still another, Buddhism still another. What we have today all around us in the state schools is religious humanism, a militant ant-Christian faith. The only way you can compromise with it is the way a mouse compromises with the rattler, by being swallowed. Thus as we deal with education we must realize that all education is inescapably religious. Anthropologists understand the religion of a tribe or a culture they are studying look at its education and its laws. The law and the form of education – how the young are trained will reveal the faith of any culture; and on both counts we have to say that we are a humanistic society today.

Second, all schools therefore are religious establishments. We must therefore say that our federal government and our state governments are financing religion by financing the schools; and we miss the point of what the schools represent in our society if we don’t grasp that fact. The educators are very ready to embrace the fact that their schools are religious and they have as their purpose to remake society in terms of their face.

For example one contemporary educator, Asahel Woodruff (he must have had some Godly parent or grandparent to have gotten that first name) has written, and I quote “as have been said, creativity is often associated with rebellion, delinquency, and social destruction. Studies of creative people tend to support this notion by showing that creativity is associated with preference for change rather than stability, tendency to delay closer rather than to structure ideas, tendency to challenge old structures, tendency to let incoming perceptions dictate their own patterns rather than to force preconceived patterns (by that he means Christianity) on them, and so on. Opposed to these tendencies are the overwhelming dominate tendencies of most people to maintain structure and to find security in the maintenance of an unchanging environment. This tendency is deed seated in the facts of human adjustment; it is perfectly natural then for most people to resent those who are unstructured. (By that he means lawless, delinquent. He says so in the first sentence.) And who are responsive to freshness and differentness because they are threats to security. (In other words parents don’t get upset if your children are delinquent, that means they‘re creative) Dependence on external structure for security is a crippling condition. The democratic ideal, people thinking and making decisions, is its antithesis. It stands for a form of security which is not derived from external supports but from a sense of internal competence. I have seen beautiful examples of this kind of security in people who have lost all fear of change. The democratic ideal can never be attained unless we transfer our base of security from external circumstances to confidence in the self, (to faith in man, faith in yourself.) The first condition is a form of slavery, the second represents freedom.”

In other words if you believe in anything outside of yourself you’re a slave. Only if you believe in yourself, only are you a free man. This means therefore that you have no principles that involve anything outside of yourself. You are in total rebellion against anything external, such as the word of God, and this makes you if people call you delinquent really the creative person. Now this should not surprise us, this is what educators have been taught for some time; perhaps the greatest of all sociologists about the end of the last century was Emile Durkheim. Durkheim is still read in our universities. If I may digress for a moment to take a little time, I talked to oh two, three hundred evangelical students at a major southern university 2-3 years ago. And I asked them how many of them had read Durkheim, almost every hand was raised, it was required reading in some of their courses. Then I asked them how many of them had read a particular chapter in the Rules of Sociological Method by Durkheim, well no they’d skipped over that chapter. And I said alright now I’m going to tell you something, I know why that chapter was skipped over, because if you’d go home spouting that to your parents their really would be trouble here, this is a conservative university even though it’s a secular one because the nature of your state being what it is. I said, “now I’m going to tell you what that chapter says then I’m going to ask you to be honest, how many of you gotten that idea more or less from your classes.” I told them and then I said “how many of you picked up that idea? Had it infiltrate into your being?” Well it was interesting I get this kind of reaction more often than you would think, the girls raised their hands very promptly. The boys hated to admit they’d been suckers and so they didn’t really raise their hand they just put it up something like this, and very slowly; masculine pride being what it is.

Now what did that chapter say? That chapter was on the criminal as a social pioneer. The thesis of the book is of course evolutionary. Now, the criminal is the one who institutes social change, he breaks with the old pattern. That next step is the sexual revolution so that all these sexual perverts are really pioneers, and should be honored as such. In fact one Swedish Psychiatrist Lars Olarstam {?} has said that we should grant subsidies to every kind of sexual pervert to make up for the time when they suffered at our hands, acting as social pioneers. Now all schools, I said, are religious establishments. They are teaching an evolutionary faith, and what I’ve told you is not anything new. Durkheim’s ideas are older than I am and older than anyone in this room. They’re just beginning to bear fruit, and explains why we have so much lawlessness. We’ve educated for it. It is lawlessness directed at the remnants of Christian law and order in our society.

Bowman and Clapp, two other contemporary educators have said emphatically that the schools should be required to solve all our social problems; and they have said and I quote “the school operates within a social context, not in isolation.” Therefore the school must be the molder and framer of the world of tomorrow, not the church, not Christian faith. And therefore the school must strike precisely at those things that are an impediment to this radical kind of change required by this key stone in humanistic doctrine, evolution. Horace Mann of course in the beginning saw the schools as a religious function in society as the key religious institution, and he used religious words to describe the school. Let me quote a statement of his “Without money and without price it (the state school) throws open its doors and spreads the table of its bounty for all the children of the state.” Not your children, children of the state, they don’t belong to you. “Like the sun it shines not only upon the good but upon the evil, that they may become good, and like the rain it descends not only upon the just but upon the unjust that their injustice may depart from them and be known no more.” Well you recognize the language, it’s our Lord’s language borrowed by Horace Mann. I told you that Cremin talked about the millennium, Cremin is perhaps the leading representative of the progressive education school, John Dewey’s thinking today. These men are religious men, but they are not Christian.

Well first we’ve seen that all education is religious, and second that all schools are religious establishments. Third it follows therefore that the function of the state schools is thus a religious function to further humanistic faith. That’s why they were created, that’s why they’re so protective of their curriculum; that is why they are so upset when you give children anything else. Because they want a world made safe not for Christian faith, but for Humanism. It grieves them that any child should escape from the saving power of Humanism.

The Ohio state board of education, you’ve heard of it I think, in its statement of philosophy says plainly, and I quote “the basic purpose of education is to perpetuate and improve the culture in which it exists. In our democracy the dignity and worth of the individual is of paramount importance, (man, not God) and each individual is expected to participate to the best of his ability. The mission of education (again the religious terminology) in our country therefore is to provide for the fullest possible development of the talents and potentialities of our young people in order that they may participate effectively in the cultural, political, social and economic life of our democracy. To accomplish this mission an adequate program of education must be provided through our system of schools for all individuals, (that means your children) all regardless of race, creed, color, or the economic conditions of the area in which they live.” Now they say very flatly they have a mission, and that your child is no exception to it. And that mission is not to teach them to know and to glorify God, but to know and glorify man, themselves. I submit that is the establishment, the teaching, the propagation of religion.

Now what they then do in the minimum standards is to outline the liberal arts curriculum. Now that’s an interesting term. I have a book which I hope to complete one of these days on education in which I shall deal at some length with the philosophy of the curriculum. The key is the term “liberal arts” what does that literally mean? Well when you look at the word liberal the root is liber, liberty, liberal arts are the arts of being a free man. This is why you cannot take the curriculum of the secular schools and sprinkle holy water on it and call it Christian, because what the Public schools are teaching is that the art of a free man, of being a free man, is to be derived from humanism, and every subject in the curriculum is telling them how they are going to be a free man in terms of this religious faith. And for us the art of being a free man is to submit ourselves to the regenerating power of God through Jesus Christ, and that’s a radically different faith, it means a radically different school, it means a radically different curriculum. For us there is no merit in freedom as such, but only in freedom under God; and we believe that the idea of freedom as humanism propagates it is slavery, slavery to sin. And that man is only free when he is in bondage to Jesus Christ.

You know I’d like to take time to preach a sermon here on John 15:13, 14, following where our Lord says “Ye are my friends, if you do whatsoever I have commanded you.” He says “henceforth I call you not servants, but friends if you do whatsoever I have command you.” Now that’s a very interesting {?} thing if I may take just a minute or two to give you a capsule sermon. I’m a preacher and I’m like an old fire horse, I can’t avoid an opportunity to preach. Servant literally means slave, a slave is a member of a household. Biblical slavery is voluntary. That’s why the law says in the Old Testament a runaway slave is allowed to go, he’s forsaken his family. He’s adopted into the family, he becomes a member thereof, he can inherit; and if obeys then he becomes a friend. But the word for “friend”, (in the scripture philos) in the English is also in the Septuagint, the Greek of the Old Testament in Esther 2:18 translated as prince. That’s a startling thought isn’t it? “Ye are my friends, my princes if ye do whatsoever I command you.” What does that mean? Why in Biblical times they didn’t have hereditary nobility, a nobleman was a creature of grace, the nobleman of grace created by the king. If you are a friend of the king you were created a prince by the adoption of grace. So our Lord says “I take you in as my servants, and if you do whatsoever I command you then ye are my friends, princes, of my realm by the adoption of grace.” What a magnificent thing, that’s freedom. TO be in bondage to the every word of God and to find our freedom by the adoption of grace, to be princes, friends, of Jesus Christ who is King of kings and Lord of lords.

Well that was a sermon in brief, I’ll try to wind this up soon because I see my time is really up now, but to continue very briefly the minimum standards which I wanted to go into in some detail give us the humanistic idea of freedom, of the art of being a free man; and over and over again it emphasis self expression, self realization, freedom from norms and disciplines. I intended, but I took so long I can’t go into it, to analyze each of the statements of the minimum standards with regard to foreign languages, with regard to the social sciences, with regard to mathematics and so on, to give you their implication. I mentioned math and I’ll take a minute to do that.

Now, one of the problems that faces mathematicians today on the higher math level is this; is math merely human logic or is there a correlation between mathematics and the physical world? In other words is mathematics simply an idea I have in my mind, but no relationship to the world out there? Well of course we as Christians believe that there is a correlation that God made that world and He made our minds; that He is the maker of all things and therefore there is a correlation. We think God’s thoughts after Him when we think properly and scripturally, and therefore we are able to understand that world. But in terms of modern epistemology, that is the theory of knowledge (and if you want to know more about the subject I have a book on the subject The Word of Flux which is a technical area of philosophy) but in terms of that you can know nothing because there’s no order out there, God didn’t make it. Well not to long ago as a matter of fact to give you the exact date, in ’73 and it was published in June of 1973 there was a forum at Princeton university in which some of the key mathematicians and physicists who put the man on the moon, pinpointed him exactly where he was to go, gathered to discuss the matter. They couldn’t understand how they did it. Why? Because they said theoretically it is impossible for there to be a correlation between human logic and physical reality, brute factuality. You see to admit that their logic, their mathematics could pinpoint a man on the moon, because there was a correlation was to posit an order, a creator, the God of scripture.

At one point in this interview Dr. R.J. Ruffini, a physicist at Princeton University observed, and I quote “How a mathematical structure can correspond to nature is a mystery. (They were denying what they had done.) One way out is just to say that the language in which nature speaks is the language of mathematics, this begs the question. Often we are both shocked and surprised by the correspondence between mathematics and nature, especially when the experiments that our mathematical models ascribe nature perfectly. This surprise and shock automatically poses a different question, which some people choose to answer in a religious manner and others refuse even to ask. At this point the decision involves recognizing the presence of a god (and he spells God without a capital letter) who has arranged it all. To some people the question does not make sense.” Do you see the drift of that? They will not recognize that what they did was possible; it was some kind of miracle or accident. Because to say “it must be so, there is a correlation” is to admit that there is the God of scripture governing all. Now what kind of math are your children going to learn from teachers who are trained by such mathematicians? God may never be mentioned or criticized, but everything in their math will be anti-God in its implications.

Let me deal with one thing more with your patience, the philosophy of science. Let me quote what the minimum standards say. It says that the basic purpose of science teaching is, and I quote “to acquire basic science information, including some fundamental concepts and principles of science. To learn to use the processes of study, investigation, exploration and discovery used by scientists. To develop an appreciation of the attitude inherent in the scientific process, to apply the skills of inquiry to the solution of problems associated with daily experiences.” Now in reading that perhaps you missed one fact, never do they mention that you are to acquire any real knowledge about the natural world, never. It’s to acquire knowledge about science information, the processes of study, the scientific process, the skills of inquiry, and their implication on our daily experiences.” The natural world is nowhere mentioned, nor any real knowledge of it. Why? Because the natural world is not in focus at all, a real world out there of law, of order, with causality, no; this they will not admit. To talk that way would point to the creator God. So instead they give you knowledge about “scientists and their theories, scientific methods and processes, and all of it to have bearing on our daily experiences rather than our knowledge of the real world. Now that’s not science as you and I know it, it’s something radically different. It is, among other things, existential humanism to the core. Do you realize what a totally different world this is than you imagined it to be when you studied science? They mean something radically different, it’s hard for us to grasp this because we think as Christians; and this kind of thinking seems so radically insane to us.

The visual arts for example, “discovering and communicating mans own humanity” nothing about their function being God centered and art having as their purpose for beauty and for glory in terms of God’s purpose. We are told in the minimum standards, to bring this to a conclusion, that man is a product of his environment and his future depends on his adjustments and responses, not to God but to society. Because society is mans creator in the minimum standard. For the Bible it is God, for the minimum it is society and the state school. For the Bible the fall is from God and His word, for the minimum standards the fall is from the unity of the human community. For scripture salvation is thru the atoning work of Jesus Christ received by faith, for the minimum standard salvation is by humanistic education and social action. Thus the minimum standards (very briefly) first of all a religious test for all schools, humanism; second they represent clearly an establishment of religion, humanism. Third they refuse to recognize any distinction between state and non-state schools because they demand power over every child in terms of their crusading faith. The minimum standards give us an intelligent, consistent, missionary minded humanism, zealous to conquer. The problem we face is not the minimum standards, it is ourselves and other Christians who are not as consistent to the Lord and His word as these educators are to the word of man. Two often as Christians we halt between two opinions, and as a result we have the power of neither. But if God be God, then serve Him with all your heart, mind, and being; with your church, your family, your school, your vocation, with everything. But if Baal or Caesar be God, then call yourself no longer by the name of Christ. Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father we thank Thee that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that He has called us to be his servants, His friends, princes of His realm. Make us oh Lord obedient to Thine every word, that as Thy faithful friends and princes we may in Thy name occupy every realm till our king comes. We pray especially oh Lord that we may be empowered to occupy the realm of education. Bless these Thy friends, Thy princes, and make them ever faithful unto Thee as they teach the art of being a free man in Jesus Christ unto their pupils, and rear them up to be princes in Thy kingdom. Bless us all to this purpose in Jesus name, amen.