Pearl Harbor, NBC, and National Bible Week
Radio Commentary, 90.7, 91.7 New Life FM, December 7, 2018 – By Sue Ella Deadwyler
Virtually everyone knows about Thanksgiving, but how many know the week of Thanksgiving is, also, National Bible Week, first observed December 8-14, 1941. The Week was established months after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote a personal prologue to a New Testament special edition that was distributed to millions of U.S. soldiers.
Everyone seemed to be excited about the new observance. President Roosevelt hosted special events at the White House to promote the first National Bible Week, and a well-organized media campaign publicized the wide-spread religious, civic, and organizational support. As a prelude to the week-long event, the NBC Radio Network scheduled a live day-long national reading of the Bible for December 7, 1941. That reading was interrupted with news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
However, that attack did not stop the scheduled broadcast. NBC executives asked leaders of the National Bible Association to continue the live reading of the Bible before and after the news throughout the day.
Since then, National Bible Week has been observed nationwide and is still the signature event sponsored by the National Bible Association. As Honorary Chairman of National Bible Week the President of the United States, customarily, issues an annual message from the White House, Congressmen document the occasion in the Congressional Record, while governors and local officials issue proclamations locally.Evidence affirms the U.S. as a Christian nation. According to Pew Research Center’s 2008 statistics, 71.4 percent of the U.S. population identifies as Christian; 1.7 percent as Jew, and 0.6 percent as Muslim. Meaning, almost three-fourths of the U.S. population identifies as Christian.
Dr. Benjamin Rush signed the Declaration of Independence and helped ratify the U.S. Constitution. He was the Continental Army’s Surgeon General, Treasure of the U.S. Mint, Father of American Medicine, and was known as the Father of Public Schools. Realizing the Christian component of the U.S., Dr. Rush stated: “The only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.” Further pin-pointing the issue, he said, “The great enemy of the salvation of man … never invented a more effective means of limiting Christianity from the world than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at schools.”
Dr. Rush, born on Christmas Eve 273 years ago, knew America’s future depended on teaching Bible principles in school. Unfortunately, his foreboding comment about education became a reality and, now, we see the result of tossing the Bible out of public education. For Georgia Insight I’m Sue Ella Deadwyler, your Capitol correspondent.