I’m in favor of this, partly because the Bible was a text book in our schools until the 1960’s. It’s not a new idea.

Although weirdly - Allahpundit at Hot Air is repeating that “separation of church and state’ hooey that the ACLU and liberals repeat. It doesn’t appear anywhere in our founding documents, so I don’t know where that comes from on a site that is supposed to espouse conservative thought and principles.

If he were to object to teaching religion in schools, maybe he ought to talk about how some schools are teaching children about the Koran and how to wage a jihad.

Here are some of the founders on the Bible as a text book in schools from the National Council on Bible curriculum in Public Schools:

• The Bible is a book worth more than all the other books that were ever printed.”
  Patrick Henry
• “It is impossible to enslave mentally or socially a Bible reading people. The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom.”~Horace Greely
• “I have always said, and will always say, that studious perusal of the sacred volume will make us better citizens.”~Thomas Jefferson

But there is a longer list than that, that just touches the tip of the iceberg.

The Bible: Foundation of Liberty

If you want to live in a secular society, go to Russia where the words ’separation of church and state’ are actually written into their constitution and it’s illegal to teach anyone about religion until they’re over 18.

Religion is never a purely private affair. Those who tell you your religion should be “private” are attempting to make their religion the basis for public and political power over you.

There are compelling social reasons for making Christianity the foundation of everything that is taught in school, and the Framers of the Constitution understood these reasons.

• The Founding Fathers correctly believed that “religion, morality and knowledge” should be taught in public schools.
• They believed that morality could not be taught without religion, and that without morality, our nation would crumble.
• The U.S. Supreme Court (1844) declared that morality could not be taught in government-operated schools without the New Testament.
• Our entire system of government was based on religion and morality
• Or as the Founders often spoke of them, “piety and virtue.”

There is not a single Signer of the Constitution who would have agreed that the Constitution he was signing was intended to give the federal government the power to order municipal schools to remove The Ten Commandments and the Bible. The Founders’ opinion of the Bible, and of its use in schools, was clear:

The great enemy of the salvation of man, in my opinion, never invented a more effectual means of extirpating [extinguishing] Christianity from the world than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at schools.[54] [T]he Bible, when not read in schools, is seldom read in any subsequent period of life. . . . [It] should be read in our schools in preference to all other books from its containing the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge which is calculated to produce private and public temporal happiness.[55]
BENJAMIN RUSH, SIGNER OF THE DECLARATION

[Why] should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a school book? Its morals are pure, its examples captivating and noble. The reverence for the Sacred Book that is thus early impressed lasts long; and probably if not impressed in infancy, never takes firm hold of the mind.[56]
FISHER AMES, AUTHOR OF THE HOUSE LANGUAGE FOR THE FIRST AMENDMENT

Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited…. What a Eutopia, what a Paradise would this region be.[57] I have examined all [religions]… and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more of my little philosophy than all the libraries I have seen.[58]
JOHN ADAMS

[T]he Bible…. [is] a book containing the history of all men and of all nations and… [is] a necessary part of a polite education.[59]
HENRY LAURENS, PRESIDENT OF CONTINENTAL CONGRESS; U.S. DIPLOMAT; SELECTED AS DELEGATE TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION

The Bible itself [is] the common inheritance, not merely of Christendom, but of the world. [60]
JOSEPH STORY, U.S. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE; FATHER OF AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE

To a man of liberal education, the study of history is not only useful, and important, but altogether indispensable, and with regard to the history contained in the Bible . . . “it is not so much praiseworthy to be acquainted with as it is shameful to be ignorant of it.”[61]
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

The reflection and experience of many years have led me to consider the holy writings not only as the most authentic and instructive in themselves, but as the clue to all other history. They tell us what man is, and they alone tell us why he is what he is: a contradictory creature that seeing and approving of what is good, pursues and performs what is evil. All of private and of public life is there displayed…. From the same pure fountain of wisdom we learn that vice destroys freedom; that arbitrary power is founded on public immorality.[62]
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS, PENMAN AND SIGNER OF THE CONSTITUTION

[The Bible] is a book worth more than all the other books that were ever printed.[63]
PATRICK HENRY

[T]o the free and universal reading of the Bible in that age, men were much indebted for right views of civil liberty. The Bible is . . . a book which teaches man his own individual responsibility, his own dignity, and his equality with his fellow man.[64]
DANIEL WEBSTER

The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the word of God and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next Continue therefore to read it and to regulate your life by its precepts.[65]
JOHN JAY, ORIGINAL CHIEF-JUSTICE OF THE U S. SUPREME COURT

The Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good and the best corrector of all that is evil in human society; the best book for regulating the temporal [secular] concerns of men.[66]
NOAH WEBSTER

Bibles are strong entrenchments. Where they abound, men cannot pursue wicked courses.[67]
JAMES MCHENRY, SIGNER OF THE CONSTITUTION

I don’t think one is the same as the other. On the one hand, we’re fighting that ideology, on the other, we’re forcing people to learn revisionist history like ‘there was no holocaust’ the same line the Palestinian homocide bombing terrorists use.

They are not the same. The Ten Commandments were posted outside and inside of courthouses for a reason; because our laws were based on Mosaic law.

55. Benjamin Rush, Essays, pp. 94, 100, “A Defence of the Use of the Bible as a School Book.”

56. Fisher Ames, Works of Fisher Ames (Boston: T. B. Wait & Co, 1809), pp. 134-135.

57. John Adams, Works, Vol. II, pp. 6-7, diary entry for February 22, 1756.

58. John Adams, Works, Vol. X, p. 85, to Thomas Jefferson on December 25, 1813.

59. Henry Laurens, The Papers of Henry Laurens, George C. Rogers, Jr., and David R. Chesnutt, editors (Columbia, S. C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1980), Vol. VIII, pp. 426-427, to James Lawrenson on August 19, 1772.

60. Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1854), p. 259, §446.

61. John Quincy Adams, Letters of John Quincy Adams to His Son on the Bible and Its Teachings (Auburn: James M. Alden, 1850), p. 34.

62. Collections of the New York Historical Society for the Year 1821 (New York: E. Bliss and E. White, 1821), p. 30, from “An Inaugural Discourse Delivered Before the New York Historical Society by the Honorable Gouverneur Morris on September 4, 1816.”

63. William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (Philadelphia: James Webster, 1818), p. 402. See also George Morgan, Patrick Henry (Philadelphia & London: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1929), p. 403.

64. Daniel Webster, Address Delivered at Bunker Hill, June 17, 1843, on the Completion of the Monument (Boston: T. R. Marvin, 1843), p. 31. See also W. P. Strickland, History of the American Bible Society from its Organization to the Present Time (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1849), p. 18.

65. John Jay, John Jay: The Winning of the Peace. Unpublished Papers 1780-1784, Richard B. Morris, editor (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1980), Vol. II, p. 709, to Peter Augustus Jay on April 8, 1784.

66. Noah Webster, The Holy Bible . . . With Amendments of the Language (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1833), p. v.

67. Bernard C. Steiner, One Hundred and Ten Years of Bible Society Work in Maryland (Baltimore: Maryland Bible Society, 1921), p. 14.

More documentation on this subject can be found here.