Thus wrote the famous atheist Richard Dawkins a year ago in The Guardian, responding to recent efforts by British and American educators to mandate the Bible as necessary for a basic knowledge of Western culture.
Without Scripture, he argues, it is impossible to understand Shakespeare. European history becomes senseless. Expressions such as “filthy lucre,” “go the extra mile,” and “salt of the earth” are meaningless.
Dawkins hates Christianity. He thinks God is one of the nastiest characters around. But he thinks that the Bible is as fundamental to a secular understanding of Western civilization as to a religious one. He’s right.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1963 that “the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities.” Consider these other words from 1963: “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low.” That’s Martin Luther King Jr., with an assist from the King James translation of Isaiah.
Imagine trying to understand those words, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Rosa Parks while censoring the Articles of Confederation. The same thing happens if you teach American or European culture sans Scripture. You can reject John C. Calhoun and the cruel God of the Old Testament, but you can’t ignore them. The year 2013 can dismiss the Bible when it also dismisses the preceding 20 centuries.
You can’t force a faith on students in public schools. But if “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Catcher in the Rye” are important enough for every American high schooler to read, the Bible has to be close behind. Hamlet, Isaac Newton, and Thomas Jefferson never quoted Atticus Finch.
No comments:
Post a Comment