Bring God back to schools — before it’s too late

The abrupt assassination of a young husband and father — who joyfully invited strangers from all walks of life to debate him in public forums — was a barbaric assault on all Americans and our shared foundational values, free speech, and religious liberty.

I was deeply disturbed by the deranged sickness of morally bankrupt Americans rejoicing at Charlie Kirk’s reprehensible murder. I’ve unceasingly prayed and wept for his family and friends as though they were my own.

It's time to get the Bible back into schools to revitalize the true meaning of liberty and respect for your neighbor.

Yet as a mom and a Christian, I know I must not despair. The Bible likens despair to a refusal of hope, justice, and goodness.

At Kirk’s historic memorial, President Donald Trump mentioned a renewed urgency to including the holy Bible in public life. Erika Kirk modeled positive, convicted fortitude through motherhood — with grit, grace, and gospel — that I have never before witnessed in a publicly broadcasted forum. “Be an Erika Kirk in a Kardashian world” commentaries flood my social media feeds.

But an exasperating and lingering question remains: “How did America get here?” Guns? Social media? Absent parenting? Ignorant education? A desensitizing news cycle?

A root cause is expelling God from public schools.

Foundation shattered

Charlie Kirk was wrongly labeled as a “hateful extremist” because millions of students have been brainwashed, for decades, to dissociate America’s foundation from God.

Young people have been conditioned to be offended by truth and context and now automatically treat neighbors like garbage and claim that “words are violence” when they disagree.

Historically, educators partnered with parents to reinforce our shared American values as they were rooted in the Bible. Through the 1800s, schools and colleges often included the Bible as a textbook. Our founding fathers stressed the importance of morals and religious knowledge for a functioning republic.

In a 1798 statement, John Adams himself wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

But here’s where we are now:

• Most fifth-graders don’t learn that the 13 colonies required a declaration of faith to hold a public office.
• Very few eighth-graders are taught that our Declaration of Independence mentions God four times — a majority of the 56 signers were Bible-believing Christians.
• A majority of high-school students have zero knowledge that our Liberty Bell, as well as countless government landmarks, including our Capitol, Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and more, are inscribed with biblical verses.
• Non-denominational prayer, Bible stories, the Ten Commandments, and the mere words “one nation under God” are disputed, degraded, and often prohibited from public gatherings at elementary schools through universities.
• Schools used to teach biblical principles like the Golden Rule to promote good character and conduct, but now secular-driven “restorative discipline” dictates that right, wrong, good, evil, truth, and lies are relative.

Moral education begins at home, but what happens if that falls short?

Chaos reigns

Without reinforcement in schools, we evidently get a generation of morally ignorant citizens unable to function in a republic. Kirk himself once explained that the way our government was set up is no longer compatible with our current, faith-rejecting citizenry and public institutions. I agree.

Absent parents and the exclusion of 3,000-year-old wisdom from our school systems bear the blame.

Now, students are actively taught that God is not and never was part of our nation’s founding, that there is no safety alongside someone who thinks differently from you, and that words are violence. Smartphone worship, disrespect for parents and teachers without consequence, and the abandonment of rules and order have infected our nation.

Notwithstanding our rightful religious differences as Americans, it’s time to get the Bible back into schools — as a historical work that helped establish our nation and laws — to revitalize the true meaning of liberty and respect for your neighbor.

Teaching students to understand our U.S. Constitution gets much easier if students are knowledgeable about the biblical ideals that shaped it. The Bible also provides practical order, like the Golden Rule, that chaotic classrooms can certainly benefit from today.

Myth exposed

But what about Thomas Jefferson’s “separation of church and state”? It’s a stretched fabrication that I’m ashamed to admit I once believed.

Five years ago, I supported keeping biblical mentions out of public schools and forums. As a baptized, lifelong Christian — active in church as a child and now a Sunday School teacher as an adult — even I was brainwashed and miseducated.

RELATED: Why Trump's religious liberty agenda terrifies the left — but tells the truth

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In 1947, the Supreme Court case of Everson v. Board of Education ruled that neither a state nor the federal government could "pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another." For the first time in American history, the First Amendment was now not only about the prohibition of establishing a national religion; it was also about not giving any encouragement to any religion. The modern “strict separation” view was born.

The five justices drafted their decision not based on the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution, but on a brief letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802, citing his personal conviction that religious belief should include “building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

In 1962, the Supreme Court further ruled in Engel v. Vitale that a generic school prayer violated the Court’s new definition of the First Amendment. “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country."

The prayer was not specific to Christianity or any religion and was reminiscent of the language of the Declaration of Independence. Yet it was still deemed unconstitutional.

Since then, the "separation of church and state" language has been used to remove God and appreciation for our foundational morality from public life and, most tragically, from our schools.

Do we have happier or better-educated student citizens because of this?

Dismal test scores, school shootings, record numbers of mentally ill teens, campus violence, increasingly anti-American curriculum, and depraved TikToks celebrating the public execution of an innocent man exercising peaceful free speech in a public forum prove otherwise.

Bring God back

Is it possible that those Supreme Court decisions were misguided and wrong for our society?

This sickness is destroying each of us — and our country — in real time. This is why we do what we do at PragerU Kids.

Parents and teachers, now is the time to bravely support and include:

• the Bible in academic historical discussions.
• non-denominational prayer at school events.
• the Ten Commandments as they relate to America’s founding values for freedom.
• saying God’s name at your child’s school … no matter who may be irrationally triggered.

Don’t let anyone trick you into thinking these things are hateful. The life, liberty, and happiness of our republic literally depend on it.

I'm grateful for the White House’s nationwide “America Prays” initiative, as well as state leaders in Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and more who are taking action to get Bibles and/or the Ten Commandments included in public school classrooms again.

I’m not suggesting a mandated belief in the theology of the Bible, but rather a general and practical K-12 education and inclusion of how the Bible’s rules, order, and tenets were foundational to our nation.

Just as kids should learn that slavery is abhorrent (as the Bible teaches), it's imperative that young Americans learn how our founders’ vision of limited government, through faith-based values of blind justice and truthful morality, only works when citizens have a mutually respected moral compass. Countless historical writings, works, and landmarks prove that America’s hard-fought liberty is contingent on ethical citizens.

Get God — and the goodness, hope, virtue, and equality taught in the Bible — back into our schools and communities now, because what we’ve been doing for the last 75 years isn’t working. And time’s running out.