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The Supreme Court’s Abington decision banning Bible reading and prayer from America’s schools was a turning point, but it need not be the final word: With the Bible as its roadmap, America can repent and return to God, who sustained it for centuries.
In 1963, the United States Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in Abington School District v. Schempp. By an 8-1 vote, the Court ruled that mandatory Bible reading and prayer in public schools violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.
In retrospect, this was more than a legal shift — it was a rupture in the spiritual foundation of the country. The Bible, once revered as the cornerstone of American public life, was relegated to the margins.
To understand the gravity of this moment, we must first look back at nearly two centuries of history when Scripture was the heartbeat of the American political and moral project.
From its earliest days, America was a nation shaped by the Bible. The Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth in 1620 carried with them a vision of a “city upon a hill,” a phrase borrowed from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:14). The colonists saw their experiment as a covenant with God, modeled after the Israelites of the Old Testament. This biblical worldview permeated the founding of the United States. When the Founding Fathers crafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, they did so with an understanding that liberty and governance rested on moral principles derived from Scripture.
John Adams, the second president, was unequivocal about this connection, writing,
“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 Utopia—what a Paradise would this region be!”
Adams believed that the Bible’s teachings were essential for a free and virtuous society.
Similarly, George Washington, in his Farewell Address, warned that national morality could not prevail without religion, stating, “Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” For Washington, the Bible was the source of that principle.
Benjamin Franklin, though less orthodox in his personal faith, also recognized Scripture’s value. During the Constitutional Convention, when debates grew heated, he called for prayer, citing Psalm 127:1: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”
Even Thomas Jefferson, the skeptic, compiled The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth — a collection of Jesus’s teachings — because he saw value in the moral framework of the Gospels. These men, diverse in their beliefs, shared a conviction that the Bible was indispensable to the American experiment.
Beyond the Founders, other American luminaries echoed this sentiment. Abraham Lincoln called the Bible “the best gift God has given to man” and leaned on its wisdom during the Civil War. He once said,
“In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best book which God has given to man. All things desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found in it.”
Noah Webster, whose dictionary standardized American English, declared, “The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws.”
For nearly 200 years, the Bible was not just a religious text — it was the bedrock of American identity, education, and governance.
The Abington decision shattered this legacy. Overnight, the Bible was banished from public schools, where it had once been read daily to instill moral character in students. This was not a neutral act — it was a deliberate step toward secularization.
Justice Potter Stewart, the lone dissenter in the case, warned that the ruling did not protect religious freedom but instead established “a religion of secularism.” He was right. What followed was a rapid unraveling of the biblical moorings that had anchored American public life.
Since 1963, America has witnessed a steady erosion of moral clarity. Crime rates spiked in the decades that followed, with violent crime nearly doubling between 1960 and 1980. Divorce rates soared, climbing from 2.2 per 1,000 people in 1960 to 5.2 by 1980. The sexual revolution, fueled by a rejection of biblical ethics, brought abortion on demand, pornography, and a breakdown of the family unit. By 2025, the nation faces crises of drug addiction, mental health, and cultural division — all symptoms of a society obviously adrift from its moral and spiritual roots.
Public education, once a place where children learned the Ten Commandments alongside arithmetic, is now a battleground of secular ideologies. Evolution replaced creation as the origin story taught to students. Prayer was silenced, and any mention of God was scrubbed from textbooks.
The Bible, which had shaped the minds of generations, was reduced to a relic, irrelevant to modern life. This shift reflected a broader cultural trend: America was no longer a nation under God, but a nation untethered from Him.
The consequences extend beyond schools. In politics, leaders who once quoted Scripture as a moral compass now shy away from it, fearing backlash. The judiciary, tasked with interpreting laws rooted in biblical justice, increasingly leans on humanistic reasoning. Society has traded “thus saith the Lord” for “do what feels right,” and the results are plain to see: confusion, division, and despair.
If America is to recover — morally, spiritually, and nationally — it must return to the Bible. Scripture is not just a historical artifact; it is God’s living Word, timeless in its wisdom and unmatched in its power to transform. The principles found in its pages — justice, mercy, humility (Micah 6:8), love for neighbor (Mark 12:31), and obedience to God (John 14:15) — are the antidote to our current malaise.
The Bible offers a moral framework that transcends human opinion. Proverbs 14:34 declares, “Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” A nation that honors God’s law will prosper; one that rejects it will crumble. History bears this out. When America clung to Scripture, it thrived as a beacon of liberty and virtue. When it abandoned it, decay set in.
Recovery begins with the Church. Christians must boldly proclaim the Bible’s truth, not just in pews but in the public square. Parents must teach their children Scripture, countering the secular tide of public education. Leaders must govern with biblical conviction, unafraid to call the nation back to God. This is not about forcing faith but about restoring a foundation that works. As Psalm 33:12 says, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”
The Abington decision of 1963 was a turning point, but it need not be the final word. America can repent and return to the God who sustained it for centuries. The Bible is not a relic — it is a roadmap. Its wisdom built this nation once, and it can rebuild it again.
The choice is ours: cling to the Word of Life or continue down the path of ruin. For Christians, the answer is clear. Let us lead the way, with Scripture in hand and faith in heart, to reclaim America for God.
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