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HEN
Donna Schempp
was in public high
chool in Pennsylvania
in the early 1960s, she was forced
at the beginning of each school
day to listen to a classmate read
any 1O verses from the Bible he
chose. Her parents, who were
Unitarians, didn't like it one bit.
The religious doctrines found in
any random sampling of Bible
verses usually contradicted their
own religious beliefs. Donna
could have been excused from the
classroom, of course, but her par–
ents thought that it would only
mark her as an oddball in front of
her classmates.
Donna's parents were angry.
In factJ they took her case all the
way to the Supreme Court. The
U.S. Constitution, they pointed
out, absolutely forbids the g0v–
ernment to "establish" an official
state religion. And when public
schools require students to listen
to a given set of religious ideas, it
is doing precisely that-estab–
lishing an
official
religion.
The U.S. Supreme Court
10
agreed and Donna's parents won.
The Court made it clear that to
read, even without comment, 1O
verses from the Bible as a class–
room exercise breached the walls
between church and state.
The Supreme Court made the
legally correct decision for a
nation whose Constitution guar–
antees separation of church and
state. As long as people have
human government, there can be
no true freedom if any official
religion is taught in the public
schools. Would you want your
child taught a ditferent religion
in public schools (and using your
tax dollars to do it)? In sorne
countries, of course, there is no
choice. Many nations have state
religions. People who don't be–
lieve in those religions are taxed
to support them. But in the
United States of America, people
profess to believe that the govern–
ment should be neutral, favoring
no one's religion.
Except for one thing. While
the courts have kicked the reli–
gion of the Bible out of the public
classroom, they allow another
religion to be taught--dogmati–
cally taught-every day to mil–
lions of public schools students.
That religion is the doctrine of
evolution.
In many science classes in the
United States, both elementary
and high school teachers present
evolution as a fact. The leading
textbooks in biology, for exam–
ple, are put out by The Biolog–
ical Science Currículum Study
(BSCS). More than half of
American high school students
who study biology use BSCS
textbooks. T hese books present
evolution as an accomplished
fact. lndeed, they go so far as to
use evolution as a unifying idea
throughout the entire subject of
biology, not just the part that
deals with the origin of man.
What Do You Mean - Evolution?
First, lest we get hopelessly con–
fused, we must define "evolu–
tion." Evolution is the idea that
"all the living forros in the world
have arisen from a single source
The
PLAIN TRUTH