The Waterloo Region District School Board voted to let Gideons International in Canada distribute Bibles to Grade 5 students.
Predictably, amongst the first to protest this distribution of Bibles in schools was Rev. Rick Pryce, a pastor for the uber-liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. As he points out:
“In this country we are supposed to protect the vulnerable and impressionable from abuse from pressure. And the Gideon’s Bible is clearly designed to turn the kids who read it into Christians.”
Obviously the last thing the pastor of an ersatz Christian church wants is to convince impressionable children to become Christians by encouraging them to read a Bible. That would be exploiting the vulnerable; perish the thought.
The “mission statement” of the particular parish that Pryce pastors carefully avoids anything crass like bringing people to Christ or making disciples; instead we have the insipid:
St Philip’s strives to be a caring and friendly church, for all people. Through our worshipping, learning and serving others, we believe that God will show his love to the world.
No doubt this is supposed to be a model of bland inoffensiveness: it is an offence to the Gospel, though.
…we believe that God will show his love to the world.
I’m surprised they refer to God in the masculine. Many “progressive” churches now would use the completely awkward, “…God will show God’s love to the world.”
You’re making this story up, obviously, aren’t you? Must be, surely? … no, probably not, unfortunately … wish you were …
Just purchased a King James Version at coles for $7.99 plus tax.
Considering that here in Ontario the only publically funded schools that any religion classes are the Roman Catholic Seperate Schools. In the last election public funding of other religous schools was an issue, and the party that supported the idea lost. Not being Roman Catholic my kids are not getting religion in the school they attend. I would love it for the Holy Bible to be present in the public schools.
AMPisAnglican, our kids spent a year and a half at a Catholic high school in the Barrie area several years ago. We definitely aren’t Catholic – and we didn’t tell any lies. Religion classes aside, I don’t think the moral atmosphere was any better than in the public high schools. In fact, this school had a reputation for having the worst drug problem in the area.
I’ve long thought that it isn’t fair that RC kids get a free religious education – but from what I’ve heard, it’s not really that much of a Christian education, anyway. We have decided to send the kids to a Christian high school. It means we won’t be able to help all that much with their university educations, but I am hoping that it will help keep their faith solid.
Hello everyone,
May you all have a joyous Advent.
Just to clarify, the point that I was trying to make earlier is that being a family that cannot afford to pay the tuition of a “private” school, we are left with few options. Those being the so called “public” schools (most of which are opposed to anything Christian) or the Roman Catholic Seperate Schools (which as Warren has pointed out are not much better than the “public” schools, and as Kate has pointed out really don’t have “that much of a Christian education, anyway”).
With King James Version Holy Bibles being available for less than $10.00 (and that is after tax) why can’t we stir things up a bit and offer a truckload of these to our local “public” schools. When the anti-christians complain we can point out to them that the government has refused to fund Christain schools, and so the Christians are imposing ourselves upon the “public” schools. One way or another we must insist that we have our God present in the schools our children attend.