Is the study of history overwhelming your student? Chairman Michael Farris suggests using a particular conflict to help your child stay focused, on today's Home School Heartbeat.
Michael Farris:
Throughout the book Wide as the Waters by Benson Bobrick, which tells the story of the translation of the English Bible, the battle between censorship and freedom rages. Studying a conflict can help students organize their thoughts around its major players and arguments.
Church leaders, initially in an effort to maintain the purity of Scripture, claimed that the Pope alone could authorize the translation of the Bible. Eventually their efforts became a desperate attempt to maintain personal power. The church became the icon of censorship.
A key figure in the history of the English Bible was King James I. A poet and scholar in his own right, James quickly agreed to a new English translation of the Bible, knowing that the Bishop's Bible was a rather awkward English version.
But the king didn't believe in religious freedom or the freedom of the press. The statement of the king's authority in the front of the King James Version is actually a witness of the power of the king to censor all books, including the Bible itself.
Our own Constitution stands on the foundation of beliefs in freedom that were birthed by the knowledge of the English Bible. What a paradox that the man who authorized this great translation also exemplified the need for the constitutional freedom of the free exercise of religion. In the end, the Bible prevailed, not King James. I'm Mike Farris.
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Dear HSLDA members and friends:
Nothing in my brief remarks on radio should be understood to disparage the Roman Catholic Church of today. HSLDA takes no position on such issues and my comments were not intended otherwise.
That does not mean that I agree with the actions of the Roman Catholic Church or the Church of England or any other officially established church during the era of Wycliffe, et al.
I think that an objective reading of history will demonstrate the prime importance of getting the Bible into the hands of ordinary people. Without the popular distribution of the Bible, we would not have American self-government and the free world would not exist.
I do not understand current Catholic teaching to say anything contrary to these views concerning the importance of the Bible.
Friends will never agree over all details of history. What is important is whether we agree on what should be done today.
The point I was trying to make on Home School Heartbeat was to highlight the importance of the Bible and its influence in our society. No criticisms of any current person or church were intended.
—Michael Farris
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Next to the Bible itself, the English Bible was--and is- the most influential book every published. The most famous of all English Bibles, the King James Version, was the culmination centuries of work by various translators, from John Wycliffe the fourteenth-century catalyst of English Bible translation, to the committee of scholars who collaborated on the King James translation.
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