For nearly five decades, religion has been consistently pushed out of the public schools in one way, shape or form. Now, some Christians are starting to push back.
The culture war on campus began with a move to nix prayer from public schools in the 1960s. Currently, there is a battle over whether New York churches can even rent public school facilities to hold worship services.
The culture war on campus has contributed to unwanted results: only 4 percent of today’s teens are Bible-believing Christians.
“Teenagers today represent the most biblically illiterate generation ever in the history of the United States,” claims Carl Blunt, president and CEO of The Life Book Movement, which aims to present Scripture in a way that engages high school students.
The Life Book presents a brief overview of the Old Testament and the Gospel of John using an interactive format with honest student comments and real-life questions in the margins.
The Life Book Movement is collaborating with churches to provide the books for free to students to saturate their schools with God’s Word. Blunt’s organization threads the separation-of-church-and-state opening by getting his publication into the hands of Christian high school students. The students then pass the books out as a gift to classmates at school—a practice within a student’s religious freedoms, as long as the books are not distributed by school staff or other adults.
“Working with local youth leaders, we help students take God’s Word into a closed country—public high schools—to reach an unreached people group,” Blunt says.
The Life Book Movement is partnering with local church youth ministries to provide everything students need to offer The Life Book as a gift to their classmates. The churches receive the books at no cost from The Life Book Movement and provide the books, along with some training, to the students in their youth groups. The students then spend a week or two giving them as gifts to their friends and classmates at school.
Since January 2010, more than 2 million copies of The Life Book have been distributed. Blunt says more than 3 million copies are being printed for distribution in the 2012-2013 school year.
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