CHAPLAIN'S CORNER

Revolution and Religion
Al Benson Jr.

Since all things are inescapably religious, it stands to reason, then, that revolution is also religious. By the term "religious" I don't necessarily mean Christian.

Revolution is the complete overturning of an old order and the replacing of it with something supposedly, entirely different. Hence the anti-Christian revolutionary will seek to overthrow the Christian faith and its revealed truth and replace these with the tenets of his own religion, whatever that might be.

Adam Zamoyski, in his interesting book Holy Madness has given some interesting insights into the mindset of revolutionaries. In describing some of what happened during the French Revolution, Zamoyski noted: "The nation had replaced the king as the sovereign and therefore as the validating element in the state. The dead king's God had been superseded by 'Our Lord Mankind' to use the words of one prominent revolutionary." He would seem to be telling us, in rather straightforward fashion, that the concept of nationhood as we have it today, is a product of the French Revolution. And, if that be the truth, it is fraught with problems we have hardly begun to deal with in our day.

Zamoyski observed that: "The element of Christian teaching that aroused the particular ire of the eighteenth-century clerisy was the doctrine of original sin--that all men are born with the taint of Adam and need to redeem themselves...What man needed, in their view, was not salvation but education, which would liberate him form all the superstitions born of ignorance. They heaped ridicule on the Christian belief in an afterlife and attacked the concept of abnegation and sacrifice leading to sanctity." He noted Rousseau's writings, which argued that man was born essentially good, but that civilization had corrupted him. Try explaining that one to a headhunter in the Amazon and see how far you get!

If we follow this criteria, then we must, in all honesty, conclude that the Unitarian and socialist founders of government schools in this country were, indeed, revolutionaries, cut from the same mold as those in France who marched countless scores off the guillotine in their feeble efforts to rid the world of "sin" as they saw it.

The founders of our government (public) school system, like Rousseau and some of the French revolutionaries, viewed man and his nature as essentially good. Since they mostly viewed orthodox Christian teaching as anathema, (they had a problem admitting they were sinners like the rest of us) they felt that man could be perfected by changing the environment around him. And they began trying to get men to recognize their own "goodness" by reaching out to re-educated their children. If they could just get rid of the influence of those narrow, bigoted Calvinist church schools and get the children into the "proper" (lacking in Christian doctrine) educational environment then they could change the course of humanity. Children could be taught (minus any Christian influence) to develop their own potential, to express their own feelings, to subtly repudiate what their parents had taught them at home, and hence, eventually, to pledge their troth to the new secular messiah--the state--"Our Lord Mankind" as it were. Why these anti-Christian visionaries were going to wipe out crime and poverty in a generation with their government-sponsored education! Well, its been around now for over 150 years and look how well they have done! When that little point is brought up to them their standard reply is that if they just had a little more of our hard-earned money they could do it better. And so they continue to try to wheedle more out of us with promises they never have and never will keep.

And, because Christian parents and preachers in the 1830s in this country (notice I did not call us a "nation") lacked the vision to see what was going on, it worked, first in the North, and later in the South as a vitally important part of "reconstruction" after the War of Northern Aggression.

And so, for the last century and a half and more, most churches in this country have been in the forefront of supporting the revolutionaries--the government school secular messiah, which has helped to promote the concept of nationhood ala the French Revolution and the tenets of collectivism.

Last year some truly visionary men in the Southern Baptist denomination saw where we were headed with government-sponsored education and they sponsored a resolution to have Southern Baptists remove their children from government schools. Unfortunately their resolution failed because many Southern Baptists fail to see the true cultural problems in America and government education as one of the main sources of those problems. But these men have not quit and they plan to attempt more in this area. All I can say is "good for them." I would encourage them to persevere in this endeavor.

This year the Presbyterian Church in America, at its recent general convention, also saw a similar resolution introduced.  It, too, failed, but at least it got a hearing. God willing, those who introduced it will also be back to continue the fight.

Until the churches in this country begin to wake up to the fact that government schools do, indeed, sponsor a competing anti-Christian religion, our culture will continue to spin its wheels and to look for "political" solutions when we should be looking for spiritual ones. If "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom" then those who teach our young people otherwise are not giving them wisdom, but folly. When Christians, as a whole, begin to wake up to this fact, we may, just may, begin to make progress, but until then---.

Comments are always welcome. Please send them to Cpprhd10@aol.com.

Al Benson Jr. columns are to found on many online journals such as The Sierra Times and The Patriotist. Additionally, Mr. Benson is editor of the Copperhead Chronicle and author of the Homeschool History Project a study of the war of Southern Independence.