Originally Posted by Boreas
I'm guessing that David Barton is the leader of a church group of some kind and not a tour guide for the US Park Service. For that reason, I suppose it's understandable that he got the history of that bible wrong.
The bible in question is known as the Aitken Bible. It's called that because it was published by a man named Robert Aitken, a printer and bookseller in Philadelphia.
During the Revolutionary War the supply of bibles for the Colonies, printed in England, ceased so the Continental Congress considered purchasing 20,000 bibles from other countries. They even passed a motion to buy them but they never reached the point of passing a resolution so nothing ever actually happened.
Enter Robert Aitken. He had been printing New Testaments in the Colonies since 1777. In 1781 he petitioned the Continental Congress to certify his bible as textually accurate. Congress agreed to do so, believing that their certification might be a boost to the printing industry in America. Aitken also asked the Continental Congress to grant that his bible be published under the "Authority of Congress" and that he be appointed as the official publisher of sacred texts. Both these requests were denied.
Aitken began publishing his bible in 1782 but despite the official certification and despite the fact that bibles had been unavailable in the colonies for 7 years, the Aitken Bible was a commercial failure. Unable to sell enough of them to avoid a financial loss, Aitken asked Congress to buy his bibles and give them to returning veterans of the Continental Army. They declined.
So, there never was an official bible here and Congress never printed any bibles. In fact, the Continental Congress refused to do these things when asked. It's also worth noting that all this took place during the Revolutionary War, before there was a United States so the speaker's statement that "this bible was printed by the US Congress in 1782" the only thing he got right was the year.
Now for the paintings. The first shows Columbus landing in the new world and giving thanks to God. That's certainly a plausible occurence but it can in no way be construed as having any significance for a country established in a different place 300 years later. This is especially true because Columbus was claiming the New World in the name of the Spanish king and queen.
Okay, so Pocahontas being baptized. This happened in the Virginia Colony, a part of the British Empire. There is an official religion in Britain so the baptism of a "heathen princess" had political significance. Having had experience with living under the rule of a government in which the church had the power of the state behind it, and vice versa, the Founding Fathers created here a government free of the shackles of an official State religion.
Now the Pilgrims leaving for the New World. The Pilgrims were a religious sect fleeing persecution in England. Being a religious sect, I don't see anything particularly surprising about depicting them at prayer.
I'm frankly having a little trouble squaring the holding of services in the Capitol with the Separation of Church and State. My reading suggests that Jefferson and Madison felt that this was acceptable because the services were voluntary and non-denominational.
And that brings us to religious instruction in public schools. It might be non-denominational but it certainly isn't voluntary and it's most definitely Christian. As such, it subjects people of other faiths or people of no religious belief to compulsory instruction in the Christian faith. That's unconstitutional.
Hillbilly, how would you feel if suddenly your daughter found that her school was offering compulsory classes in religious instruction but that the religion being taught was Islam? Would you be okay with that? Now perhaps you can relate to what compulsory Christian instruction would mean for Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or atheist students.
It's admirable that you want your daugher to be educated in her faith but it's wrong to want to require it of other children, especially those of other faiths. It should be voluntary and shouldn't be restricted to one religion.
Finally, you have an option. I suspect that you belong to a church and I suspect that your church has a bible school. That's where your kid should be getting their religious instruction, not in taxpayer-funded public schools. When you come right down to it, you're really not being denied the right to religious instruction. It's just that you need to look for it where it belongs, in church.
John
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