The New Gospel

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">… we must require that the men of your Fair City shall never neglect geometry, for even the by-products of such study are not slight … its uses in war, and also we are aware that for the better reception of all studies there will be an immeasurable difference between the student who has been imbued with geometry and the one who has not.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">So each seventh day there stand wide open in every city thousands of schools of good sense, temperance, courage, justice and the other virtues in which scholars sit in order quietly with ears alert and with full attention, so much do they thirst for the draught which the teacher’s words supply … But among the vast number of particular truths and principles there studied, there stand out practically high above the others two main heads:&nbsp; one of duty to God as shewn by piety and holiness, one of duty to men as shewn by humanity and justice ...</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Their [Christians’] injunctions are like this.&nbsp; “Let no one educated, no one wise, no one sensible draw near.&nbsp; For these abilities are thought by us to be evils.&nbsp; But as for anyone ignorant, anyone stupid, anyone uneducated, anyone who is a child, let him come boldly.”&nbsp; By the fact that they themselves admit that these people are worthy of their God, they show they want and are able to convince only the foolish, dishonorable and stupid, and only slaves, women, and little children.&nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">The day my father caught me with a chaw [of tobacco] in my cheek, I got a thrashing to remember … In the strictures of my upbringing there was no hint of child abuse.&nbsp; While my parents were swift to punish when punishment was deserved, they did not overload me with arbitrary regulations that were impossible to respect.&nbsp; I learned to obey without questioning.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Parents should initiate their children at an early age into the mysteries of the faith of which they are the “first heralds” for their children.&nbsp; They should associate them from their tenderest years with the life of the Church … As far as possible parents have the duty of choosing schools that will best help them in their task as Christian educators.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial but it is indelible.&nbsp; You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">There are several reasons to try to avoid physical punishment, I feel.&nbsp; It teaches children that the larger, stronger person has the power to get his way, whether or not he is right, and they may resent this in their parent — for life.&nbsp; Some spanked children feel quite justified in beating up on smaller ones.&nbsp; The American tradition of spanking may be one cause of the fact that there is much more violence in our country than in any other comparable nation — murder, armed robbery, wife abuse, child abuse.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">These [black] infant appellants are asserting the most important secular claims that can be put forward by children, the claim to their full measure of the chance to learn and grow, and the inseparably connected but even more important claim to be treated as entire citizens of the society into which they have been born.&nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea</em></p><p><em>And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called honah lee.</em></p><p><em>Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff,</em></p><p><em>And brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff.</em></p><p><em>Together they would travel on a boat with billowed sail,</em></p><p><em>Jackie kept a lookout perched on Puff’s gigantic tail.</em></p><p><em>Noble kings and princes would bow wheneer they came,</em></p><p><em>Pirate ships would lower their flag when Puff roared out his name.</em></p><p><em>A dragon lives forever but not so little boys,</em></p><p><em>Painted wings and giant rings make way for other toys.</em></p><p><em>One gray night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more,</em></p><p><em>And Puff that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar.</em></p><p><em>His head bent in sorrow, green scales fell like rain,</em></p><p><em>Puff no longer went to play along the cherry lane.</em></p><p><em>Without his life-long friend, puff could not be brave,</em></p><p><em>So Puff that mighty dragon sadly slipped into his cave.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">The great end of religious [Unitarian Universalist] instruction, is not to stamp our minds upon the young, but to stir up their own; not to make them see with our eyes, but to look inquiringly and steadily with their own; not to give them a definite amount of knowledge, but to inspire a fervent love of truth.</em></p>