COMPARATIVE STUDY OF MAJOR RELIGIONS

BECAUSE historical documents show that the founding fathers saw religion as a common denominator of moral teachings NOT as a form of political pressure of some national church hierarchy, and

BECAUSE Thomas Jefferson wrote a Bill for Establishing Elementary Schools in Virginia stating, “ No religious reading, instruction or exercise shall be prescribed or practiced inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denomination,” meaning that the only religious tenets to be taught in public schools would have to be those which were universally accepted by all faiths and completely fundamental in their premises, and

BECAUSE De Tocqueville, a noted French jurist and whose prolific writings of the time compare European and American cultures wrote, “In New England every citizen receives the elementary notions of human knowledge; he is taught, moreover, the doctrines and the evidences of his religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of its Constitution. In the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts, it is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon.” and

BECAUSE James Madison wrote that “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea,” and

BECAUSE Ben Franklin wrote, “that general virtue is more probably to be expected and obtained from the education of youth, than from the exhortations of adult persons,” and

BECAUSE Ben Franklin provided five “Fundamental Points” to be taught in school all of which included an understanding of the importance of a Creator in the lives of mankind,

THEREFORE each state and local district be required to write curriculum which conforms to requirements established by our founding fathers and include a comparative, analytical study of the major religions practiced in their community and which requires that the religious writings are of each is studied as a book of laws, a book of philosophy, and a book of history,

THEREFORE curriculums providing the comparative analysis of religions include the identification and discussion of common themes using methods of critical thinking.