If you’re going to go on and on about “250 years of freedom,” then say the whole thing: RELIGIOUS freedom. 👏🏻
Because the “schools used to read the Bible” crowd loves telling the first half of the story, then disappearing before the lesson gets learned. 👀
Yes, early American public schools often read the Bible. And no, it was not all doodle-dandy and neutral. 🙄 It was one version of Christianity being treated as the default, while other families were expected to shut up and accept it.
But they didn’t.
Catholic families and other religious minorities objected, because the question was obvious then and it is just as obvious now: Whose Bible? Whose prayers? Whose doctrine? Whose children?
In Philadelphia in 1844, disputes over religion in public schools helped fuel deadly riots. BIBLE riots.
So when they say, “Public schools used to read the Bible,” or “We need to put the Bible back in schools”…Exactly. And how did that work out?
America learned the hard way that public schools cannot treat one faith tradition as neutral just because the majority likes it.
That is not a return to tradition, that is repeating the mistake.
That is not anti-religion. That is religious freedom. 🇺🇸 And it is exactly why public schools cannot become a tug-of-war over whose beliefs get centered, whose kids get pressured, and whose families get treated like outsiders.
🚫No child should have to navigate that during the school day.
🚫No parent should have to wonder if their kid is being singled out because their family believes differently.
Public schools are for all of our children.
250 years later, that should be the bare minimum.
What people are saying:
- Secular Education Association: For anyone who wants the historical rabbit hole: look up the Philadelphia Bible Riots of 1844. The conflict was not “religion vs. no religion.” It was what always happens when public schools treat one religious tradition as the default and expect everyone else’s children to absorb it. Whose Bible? Whose prayers? Whose kids? That question is not new.
- Facebook User: We now have religious private schools for that very purpose of teaching a specific religion to kids in school. Let them do that and leave public schools out of it.
- Facebook User: Facebook User except now religious private schools are being funded with taxpayer dollars through voucher and ESA programs
- Facebook User: Facebook User Yes, I disagree with private k-12 schools getting public funding.
- Facebook User: It’s extremely annoying that rodeos now make a speach about the USA and freedom and how God was removed from schools. So untrue and ignorant. But I still love rodeos.
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