# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1900_S18
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

18 Proceedings of the eighteenth convention

If matters stand in a school such that the Christian religion is excluded in principle from its timetable, that it rejects God's Word as a means of education, that it finally does not set itself the right goal either, then such a school lacks not merely something it should have, but this deficiency implies still more. That God's Word and the Savior are passed over in silence is a testimony against God's Word and against Christ. When a child for weeks and years hears from his teachers not a single word about Christ, the conviction must surely be raised in him: I have no need of Christ, if I only have what is taught here. And if this silence about the Christian faith is already dangerous to the spiritual life of our children, what is one to say when one considers that almost everywhere the instruction in the state schools is permeated by the spirit of the age, by modern unbelief? The pseudo-wisdom of Darwinism, pantheism and materialism is found in the textbooks and readers; for these are supposed to be at the height of science; it is presented at the teachers' meetings, the Institutes, and comes from there back into the school. Even the subjects which, when taught quite objectively, serve to glorify the Creator and Preserver of the world, such as geography, history and the like, enter the service of unbelief. Thus the religionless school becomes in many cases a fighter against the Christian religion.

When, therefore, a Christian father asks: May I use the state school and send my children there? the answer must be: Whoever puts his children there brings them into great danger of taking harm in their souls and being utterly ruined. The danger is so great that Christian fathers cannot be warned earnestly enough against it, lest they plunge their children into this danger lightheartedly and presumptuously. But if they must use these schools, they should by all means work against the dangers threatening their children in them with all earnestness, and with special devotion pray over them the last two petitions of the Lord's Prayer. They must not be content to say: I have warned my child, or: He has indeed learned what he should believe and how he should live. The childlike mind takes in anything new so easily. And the lie, especially when it is presented in an ensnaring form, finds in man, even in the Christian child, all too often only fruitful soil. But if we ask: Can the state school, as it is, offer the Christian home what it needs for the education of its children? the answer must be a decided No. It does not meet the need of the Christian home, but rather stands in direct opposition to it for the most part.

Our thesis speaks further of two institutions which proceed from the church, the Sunday school and confirmation instruction. Both have religion as the real subject of instruction and