Paul wrote 2,000 years ago, inspired by the Holy Spirit, telling mankind that freedom, true freedom - eternal freedom from sin and judgment come through the person and power of Jesus Christ: "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free." (Gal. 5:1) God has, in his sovereign choice, established America, as pilgrim John Winthrop prophesied, as "a city upon a hill," the light of which would illuminate the nations and serve as a witness of the power of Christ to a watching world.
Lincoln described her as "the last, best hope of earth," and so she remains. The world still looks to the shining torch held by lady liberty - her burning flame of freedom still is extended to all those who yearn to breathe free. It is the goal of this class to learn of her history through the lives, words, ideals, and deeds of those who have given us such an heritage.
Those heroes have ever been with us - in fact, they stand shoulder to shoulder, in a continuous line from our time all the way back to the gangplank of the Mayflower. As we look at them, through eyes of gratitude and a veil of thankful tears, my prayer is that you will stand in awe and give thanks to God for the blessings that are ours. We must never forget them.
I believe we stand at a crossroad of our history and it will fall upon Godly citizens like you to fulfill your duty and responsibility as Americans to stand as watchmen upon the wall. It has been said that "freedom requires eternal vigilance." It is now your turn to stand guard - are you ready?
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States, where men WERE free." Ronald Reagan
Homework - Week One
1. Read Chapter 1 of "A Christian Manifesto" in preparation for class discussion on Sept 21 Take notes in the margins, highlight main points, or take notes on separate sheet to use for study and class discussion. Read twice if needed to fully understand. Think through the concepts - it's very important!
2. Read the three articles below and write a brief summary of the articles with your opinion of the issue/topic/worldview discussed.
ARTICLE 1 - Homeschooler ordered to attend public school
A New Hampshire court ordered a home-schooled Christian girl to attend a public school this week after a judge criticized the "rigidity" of her mother's religious views and said the 10-year-old needed to consider other worldviews as she matures.
Ever since the judge's ruling came out in July, the case has aroused the interest of home-schooling groups nationwide, whohave asked why a court has the power to decide whether someone's religious views are too extreme.
The girl's mother, Brenda Voydatch, has engaged the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group based in Scottsdale, Ariz., to contest the ruling, in which the judge granted a request by the girl's father, Martin Kurowski, that the girl go to a public school.
On Tuesday, the girl, Amanda Kurowski, started fifth grade at an elementary school in Meredith, N.H., under court order. Amanda's "vigorous defense of her religious beliefs ... suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view," District Court Judge Lucinda V. Sadler said.
The case is the latest in a series of disputes this summer which have tested the limits of parents' right to raise their children in line with their religious beliefs.
• Two court cases saw parents who relied on prayer being tried for the deaths of their children. In Wisconsin, Dale and Leilani Neumann were found guilty of second-degree reckless homicide in the death of their 11-year-old diabetic daughter, Kara. In Oregon, Carl and Raylene Worthington were acquitted of manslaughter in the pneumonia death of their 15-month-old daughter, though the father was found guilty of a lesser count, criminal mistreatment.
• The case of Daniel Hauser, a 13-year-old Minnesota boy with Hodgkin's lymphoma, precipitated a national manhunt that dominated the news in May. Mother Colleen Hauser defied legal authorities that ordered the boy to be treated by oncologists and fled with her son, citing family beliefs in traditional American Indian medicine.
But those cases all involved physical danger and the state attempting to prove that parents were acting recklessly. In the New Hampshire case, the court ruled that extreme religiosity by itself constitutes grounds on which to rule against a parent's wishes.
According to court documents filed in Laconia, a small city in the central New Hampshire's Belknap County, Amanda is a well-adjusted childwhose parents were divorced in 1999.
The mother has primary physical custody of Amanda, whom she has home-schooled for several years in math, English, social studies, science, handwriting, spelling and the Bible.
The course load, except for the Bible study, is similar to what public students get and the mother's home schooling has "more than kept up with the academic requirements of the [local] school system," the judge's statement said. The child also takes supplemental public school classes in art, Spanish, theater and physical education and is involved in extracurricular sports such as gymnastics, horseback riding, softball and basketball.
Her parents have been feuding for years over how she should be educated. The father tried to get Amanda removed from the mother's tutelage in 2006, but another judge ruled against him. However, the court did appoint Janice McLaughlin as a guardian of the child's legal interests.
The father continued to push for some changes in the way his daughter was educated.
"[Mr. Kurowski] believes that exposure to other points of view will decrease Amanda's rigid adherence to her mother's religious beliefs and increase her ability to get along with others and to function in a world which requires some element of independent thinking and tolerance for different points of view," Judge Sadler's ruling said.
The ruling quoted Mrs. McLaughlin as saying the child "appeared to reflect the mother's rigidity on questions of faith." The child would "be best served by exposure to different points of view at a time in her life when she must begin to critically evaluate multiple systems of belief and behavior," it added.
The ruling also said Amanda told a counselor she was distressed by her father's refusal to accept her religious beliefs and that "his choice to spend eternity away from her proves that he does not love her as much as he says he does."
According to the brief filed by the child's mother, Mrs. McLaughlin dismissed critical evidence and key witnesses in the case because they were "connected to Christianity."
When the mother tried to give the guardian material on home-schooling, Mrs. McLaughlin reportedly said: "I don't want to hear it. It's all Christian-based
What if this were Muslims who don't want their children exposed to infidel thoughts?" he asked. "Can a judge come into my home -- even if my wife and I agree to home-school our children -- and say it's to their best interest to put them in government schools?"
He added: "Does anybody seriously believe a public school will broaden this girl's views on comparative religious thought? The schools are the number-one censors of religious thought."
New Hampshire state law mandates the judge must find some evidence of harm to a child before removing her from a home-school environment, Mr. Napier said.
"The judge seems to have some allergic reactions to the fact this talented 10-year-old girl has made some decisions on her faith," he said. "The judge didn't consider and weigh the constitutional rights of the mother to raise the child in the way she sees fit."
Elizabeth Donovan, attorney for the child's father, said the father is basically objecting to the type of home-schooling Amanda is receiving.
"She is a beautiful, brilliant 10-year-old girl," Ms. Donovan said. "Her classroom was the corner of her mother's bedroom and a computer screen. She was not having interaction with other children, no group dynamic, no opportunity to share with other students in a day-to-day school setting.
"If she was excelling in a home setting, what might she do in a broader, more challenging public school setting?"
Ms. Donovan also denied that the court was anti-religious or illegitimately intruding into a family issue, noting that it was a custody dispute in which the parents had asked the court to intervene.
"It has been conveyed [that] the court is reaching into this family's life and plucking the child out of her home," the attorney said, adding the mother had earlier agreed to allow the court to decide the child's educational future. "There have been three counselors for this child and all have recommended public school."
Mike Donnelly, an attorney with the Home School Legal Defense Association in Purcellville, Va., called the judge's ruling "unreasonable and inappropriate."
"The fact that the court talks about the religion of the child and says it thinks the child ought to be in public school because she needs to be socialized shows they have overstepped their authority, which is troubling," he said. "The court cannot just on its own pull opinions out of the air.
"A lot of single moms are concerned about this case because their ex-husbands could use the home-schooling issue to get back at them as has happened in this case," he added. "And now 10-year-olds can't have firm religious convictions?"
ARTICLE 2 - American by the Grace of God
Every once in a while I come across something that reminds me what a gift of God it is to be an American, and to have the privilege of living in this country. Such is the powerful story of one Peter W. Schramm, born in Hungary, who came to the United States as a young boy with his parents and sister in 1956, refugees from the vicious Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprising.
I well remember those young Hungarian Freedom Fighters, and their futile but heroic fight against the overwhelming military force of a brutal Soviet invasion. As Schramm tells it, "on October 23, 1956, students gathered at the foot of Sandor Petofi's statue in Budapest and read his poem "Rise Magyar!", made famous in the democratic revolution of 1848. Workers, and even soldiers, soon joined the students. The demonstrators took over the state-run radio station and the Communist Party offices and toppled a huge statue of Stalin, dragging it through the streets. Rebellion soon spread throughout the country. The demonstrators-now Freedom Fighters-held Soviet occupation forces at bay for several days.
"On November 1, the Hungarian Prime Minister announced that Hungary would withdraw from the Warsaw Pact [the Soviet military organization for all their satellite and occupied countries, Ed.]. At dawn on November 4, the Soviets launched a major invasion of Hungary, in an offensive involving tens of thousands of additional troops, air and artillery assaults, and 6,000 tanks."
I vividly remember what Schramm was writing about, for though I was only 16 years old in 1956, I understood clearly what was happening. I listened to the TV and radio news stories of these young Hungarians (many of them no older than I was), armed only with Molotov cocktails (homemade gasoline bombs in bottles), rifles, pistols, hand grenades, and whatever weapons they could steal from dead Russian soldiers, fighting bravely in the streets against tanks and artillery and aircraft. The West, and particularly the United States, stood by, watched, and did nothing but lodge protests with the Soviets, while daily the Freedom Fighters broadcast urgent pleas for help. I recollect clearly my anger and frustration with the Eisenhower Administration for not going to their aid. Of course, that quite possibly would have meant war with the Soviet Union, which we weren't willing to risk in order to rescue Hungary.
The resistance was crushed in less than a week. "The last free Hungarian radio broadcast spent its final hours repeating the Gettysburg Address in seven languages," wrote Schramm, "followed by an S.O.S."
Stop reading this, and think for a moment of what that last sentence means.
These young people in a foreign country-who undoubtedly had never been to America and knew little of our history-so valued the timeless principles expressed by our greatest President in his brief but eloquent remarks at Gettysburg that they chose them for their last words. How can anyone begrudge Abraham Lincoln a prominent place in the pantheon of men who have made a godly impact on the course of human history? When the Civil War threatened America's future, Lincoln was raised up by God to save the nation by summoning our people to return to the Biblically-based moral and spiritual ideals annunciated in the Declaration of Independence.
Yet, in recent years, he has been falsely accused by some would-be historians as a racist, and is still tragically misunderstood as a tyrant, destroyer of constitutional liberties, and perpetrator of big government (none of which are true) by many Southerners. In the Civil War book of our adult history series, which I am now working on, I shall do my best to set that record straight. Meanwhile, back to Schramm's story:
"Over 20,000 Hungarians were tried and sentenced for participation in the uprising, hundreds receiving the death sentence. An estimated 200,000 Hungarians-of a population of nine million-became refugees. 47,000 came to the United States." One of those young Freedom Fighters somehow escaped the Soviets, and late that fall ended up at Mt. Hermon Prep School, in Massachusetts, where I was a one-year Senior. We were honored to have him with us.
Peter Schramm and his family also came to America in that fall of 1956, when he was not quite ten years old. He, his parents, and his four-year-old sister shared a small apartment with his father's parents and his brother near the eastern railroad station in Budapest. But his story actually begins some years before then.
When the Communists took control of Hungary in 1949, they "expropriated" his parents' little textile shop-he wrote that it was about half the size of his current living room-and everything in it. That same year, they sentenced his father's father to ten years of hard labor. What was his crime? He had in his possession a small American flag. When asked at his "trial" (these were nothing but "show" trials, in an attempt to deceive the Western press) why he had it, he replied that it "represented freedom better than any other symbol he knew." At that time, Peter's father, William, tried to persuade his wife Rose to leave the country, but she couldn't bear to break the ties to family and friends. Soon, William was sentenced to a year of prison. Someone had turned him in for calling a Communist a tyrant (which he had!). When he was released, he washed windows and made illegal whiskey to try and feed his family.
The grandfather got an early release from the labor camp in 1956, and returned to the family "looking like a victim of the Holocaust," Schramm writes. But his spirit had not been broken. The first thing he wanted to know was whether the family still had the American flag. They didn't, of course; it had been confiscated by the police. But incredibly, Peter's father William had managed to find another one, and had carefully hid it away. When they took it from its hiding place Peter says that just "seeing that flag somehow erased much of the pain and torment of my grandfather's years of imprisonment; it seemed to give him hope."
Now, because the Freedom Fighters had taken over the railroad station, Soviet tanks were positioned in their neighborhood. The fighting was fierce. Bodies lay everywhere; one lay just outside their window for days. As it became clear that the revolution would fail, everyone knew that the Soviet oppression would come down on them harder than ever. If they were going to get out, it had to be now, while there was still a chance.
The deciding event happened one day when William went out to get bread. A hand grenade landed next to him, but miraculously failed to go off. When he came back to the apartment-but let Peter tell it: "He came home and announced to my mother that he was going to leave the country whether she would come or not. Mom said, "O.K., William. We will come if Peter agrees. Ask Peter."
"But where are we going?" I asked.
"We are going to America," he said.
"Why America?" I prodded.
"Because, son. We were born Americans, but in the wrong place."
"He said that as naturally as if I had asked him what was the color of the sky. It was so obvious to him why we should head for America that he never entertained any other option. Of course, he hadn't studied American history or politics, but he had come to know deep in his heart the meaning of tyranny. He hungered for its opposite and knew where to find it. America represented to my father, as Lincoln put it, 'the last, best hope of earth.' "
These sentiments about America were not unusual among Hungarians at the time, Schramm notes. "Among the Hungarians I knew-aside from those who were true believers in the Communists-this was the common sense of the subject. It was self-evident to them."
They could not tell anyone that they were leaving, not even Peter's grandparents and uncle. In that way, the relatives could answer truthfully to the police that they knew nothing about it. So, the little family had to leave with next to nothing-a small bag of clothes and a doll for each child and one small bag for both parents. And William also had 17 one dollar bills, "which he had been hoarding for years; good as gold, he always said" [Alas, that was then, Ed.].
Boarding a train headed toward the Austrian border, they discovered that many of their fellow passengers had the same idea. The Russians were stopping the trains and searching them, but the Schramms kept their heads down and said nothing to anyone.
When they left the train with hundreds of others, it was dark, and the border lay many miles away, across fields and farms. In spite of trying to keep separated and take different paths, they soon began drifting together, since they were all headed in the same direction. Haystacks had to be avoided, because Russian soldiers often hid in them, and they were told never to respond to a crying child, since that was a favorite Russian trick. Soon they came across a boy whose father had been shot, and took him into their group.
Finally, the moment came. "We crossed a little bridge in the dark before morning. Someone heard the sound of German on the other side of the bridge. It was the Austrian border post!"
They were free, at last.
At first they were led to a big barn in Nickelsdorf, Austria, where they slept, then moved to an Army camp near Innsbruck, where they were housed and fed. Peter's father got a job while they were waiting to be interviewed for refugee placement by the embassies of different countries. When the representative from the American embassy came, he asked William if he had any relatives in America. There were none. "Don't you know anyone in America?" was the next question. As it so happened, they did.
Back in 1946, before Peter had been born, his father had managed to build a car out of spare parts, which was a rare thing in ravaged post-war Hungary. He would scour the countryside in it, looking for junk to trade or sell. On one such trip he had come across a broken-down Volkswagen, driven by a de-commissioned U.S. officer who had been born in Hungary and was touring the country preparatory to returning to America. After Peter's father helped him get the car running, he refused payment, but did take the grateful driver's card. It read: "Joseph Moser, DDS, Hermosa Beach, California." "If you ever need anything," Moser told him, "don't hesitate to call." William had given the card to Peter's mother for safekeeping, and by the grace of God, she had brought it in her satchel! They showed the card to the American, and he promised to check it out.
He followed through, and surprisingly (or maybe not, if you know the ways of the Lord!), Dr. Moser was still in Hermosa Beach. Within a week the Schramms were sent to Munich, and then took a plane to New York City. On Christmas morning, they were taken to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, for processing, and a few weeks later took a train to Los Angeles, where they were met by Dr. Moser and his family.
Peter continues the story: "Sponsorship meant that they had to guarantee that we would not become a burden to the American people. (Moser) had to house and feed us for awhile. Mom and Dad both got jobs right away, Dad at the local newspaper lifting heavy things, and Mom cleaning houses. Soon we had a little beach shack to live in, and my parents were able to purchase their first restaurant with their savings and a bank-financed loan. The whole family went to work. We had to tear the place apart before we could open it. After it was opened, my sister and I washed dishes as Mom and Dad cooked and waited on tables."
About the time Peter went to high school the family moved to Studio City and bought a bigger restaurant. Schramm's Hungarian Restaurant was located across the street from some of the movie studios. After graduating from Hollywood High in 1964, he enrolled at San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University, Northridge) while continuing to work for his parents. By this time, Peter had become an avid reader, and was beginning to build his own library.
But he had not yet learned what he would later come to understand about American history and politics. Sadly, he notes, "even in the early '60s, (before 'political correctness' had been heard of), it was already common for teachers and professors to teach that America was an amazingly hypocritical place. All I needed to know about Abraham Lincoln, one teacher said, was that he was a racist."
Thankfully, he did not imbibe this poison, and through becoming involved in California Republican politics was eventually led to a doctoral program in government at Claremont Graduate School in 1971. There, he "came to understand what Lincoln meant when he said that the ideas of the Declaration of Independence were the 'electric cord' that linked all Americans together, as though we were 'blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration.' This was what it meant to be an American."
It still is.
Schramm writes: "America became home to me, and these days I continue my life as a student of America. The difference is that now a university pays me to study, rather than my paying for the privilege. Here at a liberal arts college in central Ohio, I'm in the ironic position of teaching . . . Americans . . . how to think about their country. . ."
"When I teach them about American politics and American history, I start with a simple thing about their country and themselves. I tell them that they are the fortunate of the earth, among the blessed of all times and places. I tell them this is a thing that should be as obvious to them as it was to my father. And their blessing, their great good fortune, lies in the nation into which they were born. I tell them that their country, the United States of America, is not only the most powerful and the most prosperous country on earth, but the most free and the most just. Then I do my best to tell them how and why this is so. And I teach them about the principles from which those blessings of liberty flow. I invite them to consider whether they can have any greater honor than to pass undiminished to their children and grandchildren this great inheritance of freedom."
Amen, and amen.
ARTICLE 3 - From a Secular Humanism Website - Humanism is the foundation for the vast majority of curriculum in public schools today...
What Is Secular Humanism?
Secular Humanism is a term which has come into use in the last thirty years to describe a world view with the following elements and principles:
- A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith.
- Commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence, and scientific methods of inquiry, rather than faith and mysticism, in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions.
- A primary concern with fulfillment, growth, and creativity for both the individual and humankind in general.
- A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.
- A concern for this life and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.
- A search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.
- A conviction that with reason, an open marketplace of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.
How Do Secular Humanists View Religious and Supernatural Claims?
Secular humanists accept a world view or philosophy called naturalism, in which the physical laws of the universe are not superseded by non-material or supernatural entities such as demons, gods, or other "spiritual" beings outside the realm of the natural universe. Supernatural events such as miracles (in which physical laws are defied) and psi phenomena, such as ESP, telekinesis, etc., are not dismissed out of hand, but are viewed with a high degree of skepticism.
Are Secular Humanists Atheists?
Secular humanists are generally nontheists. They typically describe themselves as nonreligious. They hail from widely divergent philosophical and religious backgrounds.
Thus, secular humanists do not rely upon gods or other supernatural forces to solve their problems or provide guidance for their conduct. They rely instead upon the application of reason, the lessons of history, and personal experience to form an ethical/moral foundation and to create meaning in life. Secular humanists look to the methodology of science as the most reliable source of information about what is factual or true about the universe we all share, acknowledging that new discoveries will always alter and expand our understanding of it and perhaps change our approach to ethical issues as well. In any case their cosmic outlook draws primarily from human experiences and scientific knowledge.
What Is The Origin of Secular Humanism?
Secular humanism as an organized philosophical system is relatively new, but its foundations can be found in the ideas of classical Greek philosophers such as the Stoics and Epicureans as well as in Chinese Confucianism. These philosophical views looked to human beings rather than gods to solve human problems.
During the Dark Ages of Western Europe, humanist philosophies were suppressed by the political power of the church. Those who dared to express views in opposition to the prevailing religious dogmas were banished, tortured or executed. Not until the Renaissance of the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, with the flourishing of art, music, literature, philosophy and exploration, would consideration of the humanist alternative to a god-centered existence be permitted. During the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, with the development of science, philosophers finally began to openly criticize the authority of the church and engage in what became known as "free thought."
The nineteenth century Freethought movement of America and Western Europe finally made it possible for the common citizen to reject blind faith and superstition without the risk of persecution. The influence of science and technology, together with the challenges to religious orthodoxy by such celebrity freethinkers as Mark Twain and Robert G. Ingersoll brought elements of humanist philosophy even to mainline Christian churches, which became more concerned with this world, less with the next.
In the twentieth century scientists, philosophers, and progressive theologians began to organize in an effort to promote the humanist alternative to traditional faith-based world views. These early organizers classified humanism as a non-theistic religion which would fulfill the human need for an ordered ethical/philosophical system to guide one's life, a "spirituality" without the supernatural. In the last thirty years, those who reject supernaturalism as a viable philosophical outlook have adopted the term "secular humanism" to describe their non-religious life stance.
Critics often try to classify secular humanism as a religion. Yet secular humanism lacks essential characteristics of a religion, including belief in a deity and an accompanying transcendent order. Secular humanists contend that issues concerning ethics, appropriate social and legal conduct, and the methodologies of science are philosophical and are not part of the domain of religion, which deals with the supernatural, mystical and transcendent.
Secular humanism, then, is a philosophy and world view which centers upon human concerns and employs rational and scientific methods to address the wide range of issues important to us all. While secular humanism is at odds with faith-based religious systems on many issues, it is dedicated to the fulfillment of the individual and humankind in general. To accomplish this end, secular humanism encourages a commitment to a set of principles which promote the development of tolerance and compassion and an understanding of the methods of science, critical analysis, and philosophical reflection.
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