Another turning point

To start our day, I usually bring my wife her first cup of coffee in the morning, and then read to her from the Bible. We’ve been on a read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year plan, and recently, we’ve been in The Psalms. When we got to Ps. 133, I said to her, “I can hear Miss Smith reading that Psalm to me right now.” So, who was Miss Smith?

She was my kindergarten teacher at Roosevelt Elementary School in Pennsauken, N.J. in 1948. Every school morning, she would read a Psalm to us, and we would recite the Lord’s Prayer and we’d stand to attention and recite: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America…” And here I am, 72 years later, telling you about it. It must have left an indelible impression, eh? I suspect that many of you readers, depending on your age, had similar experiences when you started school because “in 1949, Bible reading was a part of routine in the public schools of at least 37 states.”

Are public school teachers still reading the Bible to their students to start their school days off? I don’t think so! So, when was the “Turning Point?”

Based on what I remember, it was in the early 60s that things began to change, after the Supreme Court decided to remove the Bible from our public schools and, ever since, from most of our public life.

The media and popular culture often erroneously credit atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair with removing school prayer from U.S. public schools, when the Supreme Court decided the case against recitation of The Lord’s Prayer in Baltimore schools in 1962. Nevertheless, Madalyn Murray O’Hair did bring suit, was successful, and then became the face and voice of the atheist movement in America. Some say she relished the role of being “America’s most hated woman!”

I was just entering college around that time and naively took the position that America was a pluralistic nation and that we probably should move toward being more “religiously neutral.” If I knew then what I know now, I sure wouldn’t have taken that position.

In doing some research for this column, I came across the story of what actually happened to Madalyn Murray O’Hair; it is a gruesome, grotesque story if there ever was one. I’ll give you a link to the details in a minute. But one bright spot in the story is that her son, Bill Murray, rejected his mother’s agenda and became an outspoken Christian. In one of his books he wrote:

“In the three decades since this landmark case, the nation has lost its moral center. Violent crime has increased from 16.1 to 75.8 incidents per 10,000 population. Juvenile violent crime arrest rates have increased from 13.7 to 40 per 10,000 population. Teen pregnancy has almost tripled from 15.3 to 43.5 per 1,000 teenage girls. Almost half of these pregnancies end in abortion. For a startling 28 percent of all live births in America today, the mothers are unwed. The teenage suicide rate has increased 400 percent since 1963.” (This is a quote from a Wikipedia piece; I have not tried to independently authenticate these statistics).

Wouldn’t it be great if we could have “Another Turning Point” in the USA so that our grandkids could have their kindergarten and later teachers start their school day off with a short Bible reading again? Pray it might be so.

FYI: If you want to know the full story of what became of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, go to : http://crimemagazine.com/murder-madalyn-murray-ohair-americas-most-hated-woman-1.

Thanks for reading All About Seniors … see you next week.

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