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Did the handouts make their way around? Good morning. I'm Andy Dearman. I teach Old Testament studies, and I'm the academic dean.

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Ellis Nelson has confirmed the truth of an earlier introduction. He is a wise person. By wise, we mean at least that he has studied long and hard on the subject matter. And he has thus reflected deeply on the implications of those studies.

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I want to suggest that he is wise in yet another and more profound sense. He wishes to take his learning and use it in the service of Christian ministry. I want to affirm personally a remark I overheard from another colleague. That professor said, When I grow up, I want to be like Ellis Nelson.

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Indeed, indeed I do. Dr. Nelson's third Jones lecture is entitled Acquiring Faith in God. Ellis, thank you.

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Well, if there are not enough handouts, please share them. And you can read that-- the first one while I'm talking. I'll get to it in a moment. There are probably not enough handouts for the people in the overflow room, but if they will share them,

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when we get to the handouts, that might be satisfactory. Religion, understood as the effort of human beings to make sense out of the world and to relate themselves to whatever they consider sacred, is a normal function of the mind. That is why anthropologists have never found a group of people without a religion. In our Western Jewish Christian tradition, the result of this mental process of understanding the world as at first with a primitive image of God, and then as infants grow and respond to religious teaching and moral rules, they refine and formulate in a more positive and systematic way their image of God.

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Now it's this secondary process of God formation that begins as soon as caretakers take seriously what the infants say about God. Remember at the end of lecture one, I told how Kristen, 35 months old, explained to her mother how Grandpa Bryce, who had died, was in heaven with God. Now remember her mother's reply was,

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Good for you, sweetheart. That was the beginning of what we call the secondary process. In this case, her mother affirming her statement. Now this secondary process goes on continuously.

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Gradually, children accommodate themselves with their primary image of God with whatever religious and moral instruction they receive. The period from age five to seven is of special significance, but all periods are important. But I'm going to stay with this five to seven and seven to eight-year old period for a moment, because it's during this time that children begin to observe what is happening in nature and human relations more accurately, and to think about these things more logically. By age 7,

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Most children know there is no Santa Claus. They retain, however, the joy of Christmas as they, like adults, enter into the fund of giving and receiving presents. Many researchers wait until children are about 7 or 8, because by that time they have filtered out things like witches and ghosts and so on, and Santa Claus, and have a more enduring image of God. At that age, students of religious development can see how this secondary process of God formation has begun to influence children's beliefs.

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And also at this age, children are often quite willing to draw a picture of God, write a letter to God, or interview God, or talk about God. And they're not quite as sophisticated as the 10 and 12-year-old children, Sometimes, when you work with them, they've already learned how to go to school, so they kind of wonder what you're up to. but so they may slant the answers to fit what they think you want.

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But about seven or eight, you get pretty good, straightforward answers. Now, throughout the previous lectures, I used general statements to describe the way children's religion is formed and is then influenced by the social group in which the child is nurtured. The exact way in which religion becomes a part of one's life can be understood only by observing how it takes place in the life of a person.

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The stories that follow do not disclose all that we would like to know about a person. Rather, the stories are from children ages 7 or 8 years of age who have begun to formulate the image of God. It's important to note that the mental image of God is the dynamic element in their mind. And it's that element which extracts data from experience and organizes it into a plausible explanation.

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All right, now if you'll look at your paper, we'll look first at this concern for fairness. This came about because I was just reading The Christian Century a few, about a year ago. It was an essay on ethics, and the person writing the essay apparently needed an illustration. Now he either turned to his wife or on conversation with his wife, who's a professor in the university, he picked up this story.

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So he quoted his wife. His wife is named Rona Jacobson. And she teaches a class on the relationship between social science and religious faith in the university. And in order to help her students gain experience in how the two are related,

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She requires that the students interview students about their children. She requires her students, who are adult teachers, to interview the children that the teachers are teaching about the children's idea of God. I got that straight. All right, this is only a little paragraph in this professor.

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This professor is just stealing this from his wife to illustrate his point. Okay, now one child when interviewed by this teacher, said, God is like my principal. Now the adult doing the interviewing thought, oh, how sad.

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Here's another child who thinks of God as an enforcer of rules, kind of a policeman. The child, however, continued, they'll often keep, you know, straightening you out. And she said this, she, the principal, goes about the schoolyard at recess, making sure everyone gets a chance to play. Now, this idea of God may seem childish to us to have someone in authority help her get her turn on the swing.

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But notice what she says. On second thought, you see this girl wants everyone to have a chance to play. And by this statement, this girl shows that her response to the use of playground equipment was based on her concern for fairness. She didn't realize that she already had a moral theory, which modern philosophers call justice as fairness.

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Now, we don't have much information about this girl's religious background. Her idea about God wants fairness may have been her own. It may have come from family conversations. But whatever the source, her image of God is in harmony with some very important biblical passages.

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God is often described as judging people on the basis of how well they use their influence and how they use their wealth for the poor or disabled people. The year of Jubilee in Leviticus 25 is 1 illustration. But many of the Psalms say the same thing. In the contemporary English version, which is the one I normally read now, Psalm 82, 96, 97, 110, and 146,

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All say specifically, justice is fairness. Well, John Rawls, who's professor of philosophy at Harvard, has a book entitled A Theory of Justice, published in 1971. I asked Ismael Garcia a while ago if he'd read it, Dean, and it's 607 pages. He said he's not only read it, he teaches it.

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But all he's saying in 607 pages is what this eight-year-old girl has already... That's what the book says. Justice is fairness. It's one of the contemporary theories.

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Now let's look at this next one, a concern for order and efficiency. I've tried to trace the source of this without any success, This is reprinted from the First Methodist Church of Beaumont, Texas, Bulletin, but I phoned the pastor of the Presbyterian Church in this town in California. And the answer was, we don't know this person.

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So I'm sure he's Presbyterian, because you see some of the things in here. And then I called the Methodist Church, and they said, well, they checked the roles, and they called back and said, we don't know this person. So I don't know. Maybe somebody made this up.

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But nevertheless, it is kind of interesting, isn't it? Have you had a chance to skim through it? This person really does Take God's part, doesn't he?

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He's got this thing organized. He's looking at God's job. And God has to get it organized. God is able to delegate.

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He must live in a family where the, I guess the father's a CEO or something. Because he's already got the CEO mentality. God organized, he delegates, he has to get things done efficiently, God does. And children better learn this, you know, don't bother God with little things, because God can't waste his time on this kind of stuff.

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You see that in there. He's something of a theologian. He is trying to find out how God can operate. And I think we ought to take that seriously.

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After all, the Bible is written from God's perspective. How did that happen? You might say he's trying to be biblical in his approach. Well, do as you like with it.

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It's not bad. He wants, he feels an obligation to make God happy. That's where I think he's something of a Presbyterian. You see that next to the last paragraph, We ought to go to Sunday school because it makes God happy.

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And if there's anyone you ought to make happy, it's God. This is the reason I thought he was a Presbyterian. Now, don't skip Sunday school and do something you think ought to be fun, like going to the beach. He's got a conscience already, which he's not supposed to do.

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This is wrong. Now, watch the Presbyterianism. And besides, the sun doesn't come out of the beach. I mean, we can work this out without a committee.

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I mean, this fella is on his way to being a real good Presbyterian. All right. Now, I don't want to make too much fun of this. I just think it's very interesting how this primary concern for order and efficiency is in his being, you see, and how that's now being projected in the material that he knows about God and he's putting it in order.

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That's a primary thing in his life. Now, the next one, when you turn over to these pictures, I'm doing a set here to show different approaches. Now here's a picture of an eight-year-old girl's image of God drawn as her sister.

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This comes from Martin Lange, who has studied the way children acquire an image of God. And he tells about this eight-year-old girl because her picture was of her older sister in jeans with two braids and holding balloons. Now Lange thought the girl had misunderstood his request. He thought she just didn't know what he was asking.

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The girl insisted that she was drawing a picture of God. God is smiling. She has balloons in her hand. I was going to draw a lollipop in her mouth.

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She sees everything we do. In the conversation that followed, the girl said the picture of God was her teenage sister whom she admired. Now, we lack any other information about this girl? We can only speculate she has not received much religious instruction.

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Her primary image of God seems to be a feeling of love toward her, toward people she admires and adores. And this feeling now is attached to her older sister. Like Sheila in the first lecture, her concern is for herself and for her own comfort. Now she may outgrow this, that's not what we're talking about.

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We're talking about the way at about middle childhood, Children have taken these primary things in their being and projected it in or correlated it or in some way tied it into what they've been taught or learned about God. Now the reason I put the next one in is because I wanted to be sure we had a little advertisement for Christian education. Valerie, this is a seven-year-old, said to Lang, I drew

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You see the one I'm talking about here, the crucifix. I drew it like that because it's the first thing I thought about. Incidentally, this was taken during the Lenten season. So you see, she's been hearing this story.

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This is Jesus on the cross. That's Mary and John on one side and Mary Magdalene on the other side. The two women are crying. That's Pontius Pilate at the bottom of the hill.

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He's not crying because he wanted Jesus to die. Now, look at that figure. It looks like to me she's got Pilot clapping his hands. Now, when Lang talked with her about this, the scene was sorrowful, but Larry

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Valerie had first put a smile on Jesus' face. Incidentally, children would nearly always draw God or Jesus as happy. That's fairly standard. But then she erased it after she made Jesus happy when she realized she couldn't be very happy hanging on the cross.

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So she had to erase it and then put some tears as you see coming down. Even though we would think Valerie's seen as depressing, for her, it was a hero story, according to Lang, who got this story, because Jesus was doing something heroic and important for those that are around the cross. Now here you see a child where the lesson is taking, where she's incorporating it, and incorporating it within her own understanding. Now that can be straightened out.

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but that's quite different from the other picture of the other girl. One of our doctoral students, Lee Bowman, who's sitting in the back back here, she'll tell you whether I get this right or not, after reading the recent research on children's formulation of a God image, elected to study a group of children in the church where she serves. Her findings were like those of other researchers, that is, Each child had a unique story of God, and this God reflected his or her concerns.

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One girl about eight years of age said of God's home, It's just a sky like heaven, and like all the things you ever wanted, like a big chocolate cookie and lots of milk and a bowl full of ice cream. Then she added, I think I wasn't there, but I can see this But then I'd have to share it with my friends. God's so lucky.

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He can eat cookies all the time and ice cream and not get sick and not get fat. Needless to say, this child likes to eat and struggles to control her weight. Now, if I stop there, we would not have a very good impression, or maybe not a bad impression, but we wouldn't have the whole story. She must not, however, dismiss this chocoholic girl's idea of God as an appetite out of control.

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Because Lee kept asking questions. And when Lee asked about God's relation to people's troubles, she said, now this is a girl speaking, I think he heals your hurts and makes them feel better. And you feel better inside because he has the power over, probably over your body. There are some things he can't control, like people taking drugs and all that, because, I mean, it's out of control.

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He's trying to fight off the bad stuff, but he can't. He watches over us and makes sure that we're not in trouble. But whatever happens, he might get mad, and he might make a thunderstorm happen or make something bad happen. So leave there and ask her,

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Does a thunderstorm make God mad? No, she replied. It doesn't mean he's mad, but the thunderstorm, well, like, God can't control that. Or if he could, if he wanted, I don't know.

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He just wants us to be safe and everything. Now, you see, she has a much more profound struggle going on here than just with chocolate cookies. This child is moving beyond simple ideas of God as a being who can eat what he wants and not get fat to one of the most difficult theological questions. How can God be good and powerful if God lets bad things happen?

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So she doesn't have an answer. She stutters a lot. But who in this room can answer the question of theodicy? I won't ask for your hands.

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Job worked on it in the Old Testament. It's not new, but she's discovering it her way. Not all children have stories that deify some positive attribute of human life. Lee Bowman, like Heller, and other researchers interviewed a child who was concerned about evil.

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This child pictured, and I'll quote now, God is a large, disembodied head, replete with beard and mustache, and a mouth drawn in a thin line from one side of the face to the other. Now watch this. God is sitting in a swivel chair with three casters.

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Boy, she saw this like a photograph. God sat in a swivel chair with three casters. One of his arms was outstretched, ready to pull a lever so the devil would fall through a trap door. Now it gets more profound.

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The devil was dressed like a man because he, the devil, did not want God to notice him. So Lee said, why? And the child said, so he can turn heaven into hell. Now obviously she's struggling with evil forces as she understands them.

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When asked if God loved her, she didn't answer. Now these and other stories from children show us what they think God must be like. And we learn several things from these stories which might be summarized as follows. First, each child's, incidentally, there are hundreds of these stories, several books full of, most of them done in the last 20 years, most of them done in the 1980s.

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So I've just given a few samples. Each child's primary image of God is used to interpret the child's life situation and what that child has been told about God. Moreover, the child's primary image of God is blended with religious instruction, in life experiences.

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Gerald May, some of you know him, he's a psychiatrist who has spent a great deal of time with what we generally now call the spiritual aspects of life. And this is his summary of this type of situation. Quote, Most children and adults in our society do not relate to God. Instead,

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They relate to images of God, and images is emphasized in the text. They relate to images of God, images that in large part have been conditioned by culture and early childhood experiences. In most cases, these images are anthropomorphized. They emphasize God as a person, and the images are usually masculine.

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And whether it's good or bad, I don't know, that's the end of the quote. and that's his opinion. Secondly, children's primary image of God is based on emotions that are developed out of relation to caregivers during infancy. The word emotion is now being used by developmental psychologists to mean faith, hope, love, happiness, as well as anger, fear, sadness, disgust, guilt, shame, and others.

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These emotions organize all aspects of our life into behavior, our thinking, which includes how we interpret what we see and hear, our speech, and our actions. And since I don't think you'll really believe that, I actually have a footnote. That's really a rather modern Calvinist statement, isn't it?

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It's the emotions that organize our thinking. Thus, the formation and training of our emotions is the foundation on which we construct our image of God, and the moral code by which we live. Heller, who is one of the researchers who's developed a very fine book on children's image of God, has said that children's sets of emotions, what he calls personality orientation, is the most influential factor in their description of God.

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Since every child's set of emotions is different, so is the mental image of God. It was possible, however, for Heller to place children's gods in the major categories of their dominant disposition. But we saw that in some of these cases, especially that boy who wants to organize everything. That's his dominant disposition, and he uses that to interpret God's problems.

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Third, Children are actively engaged in a struggle to understand what behavior God approves or disapproves. And we saw that in some of these stories. The role of God in behavior is complex because conscience in its formative stage is more related to the way a child is disciplined and the relation of a child to caregivers than to the abstract notion of God.

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A child's linkage of God with conscience probably doesn't begin until age three or four, and then only if caregivers help the child do so. Our stories, however, show that children by age seven or eight have connected approval and disapproval behavior with their ideas of God. And as I mentioned yesterday, we now have a recent national study by Robert Coles of Harvard, which shows that by age 10,

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Children have a moral compass by which they are making decisions, not just intellectual judgments, but making decisions about their life by age 10. So the question then is, what happens to childish religion? The above summary of how children by age 7 or 8 formulate what God must be like could be said to be rather encouraging. It shows that if infants experience good relationships with caregivers and are under Christian education at home and church until middle childhood, they have the basic piety from...

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which an adult understanding of God might emerge. Basic piety is of critical importance because it's the inner certainty of one's relationship to God on which beliefs are formulated. Now from middle childhood until the beginning of the teen years, children tend to absorb the general idea of God which are explained to them in the family and the religious community to which they belong. I think this next paragraph is rather important and certainly interesting.

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Robert Coles, and well everybody knows Robert Coles, a well-known child psychiatrist who's written many, many books. After spending 30 years studying children in many races, of many races and under various conditions in several parts of the world, he turned his attention to their spiritual development. One of his interview questions was, how would you describe the heart of your religion, its central message for you and for others?

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And what's important to me here is the general way that they describe God. Children who grew up under Christian influences talked of Jesus' role in salvation. Now that doesn't mean they get it all right, but I just mean they got the general idea. Children who were under the influence of Islamic parents provided examples of how they wanted to surrender to the will of Allah.

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Jewish children by age 12 were concerned about the notion of God as a moral guide and about living according to the rules of their religion. Children of parents who were agnostic or atheist, and he asked them too, what their ideas of God was, and they countered with the same kind of criticisms of religion that they'd learned from their parents. So in some sense, I think that's good news.

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That is, the details may get confused and may be uncertain, but the general idea of the religion and the home and family, be it Christian, Jewish, Islamic, seems to stick in the depths of the children's minds. Now, I want to say more about this matter of continuity and change, and then, as I said yesterday, talk a little bit about educational strategy. The question of what happens to children's religion has been answered in broad terms of human development.

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The studies of children's religious development, which I cited, do no more than illustrate that as individuals grow, they tend to become more knowledgeable and more confident about the religion as they do about other matters in which they're interested. The critical issue is whether children's image of God will become more in harmony with God as we know God incarnated in Jesus Christ. Now there's no way to predict whether a child's, a person's childish religion will change and move toward faith in Jesus Christ

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as the human form of God. We know there are many emotional factors involved, such as a desire to know God, or a search for inner confidence that puts life's goal in God's perspective, or a sense of guilt and shame which urges a person to become reconciled to God, or a realization that God is calling one to a specific task or vocation. There are many life situations which enter into one's spiritual life. And these sometimes are very important, such as a divorce, a death of a loved one, accidents, the influence of a friend, or a peer group, or many other things can happen that will cause a person to change his or her understanding of God.

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But almost without exception, the movement from religion to faith in God is characterized by continuity and change. Now by continuity, I mean that people who are becoming more conscious of and concerned about their relation to God bring to that consciousness their personal story and characteristics. And we'll look at that in just a moment. The amount and kind of change taking place in their lives depends on how successful they are in turning away from their childish religion.

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Under ordinary circumstances, most people who have been raised in a Christian home and have been active members of a congregation, experience gradual change. Bits and pieces of childish religion are discarded as one is exposed to and stimulated by an image of God as celebrated and practiced in a congregation. Under extraordinary circumstances, people who have a vague knowledge of God, who are casual members of a church,

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have experienced dramatic changes. So I want to use two illustrations of people who are alive and well and known to all of you, at least if you read the newspapers. And the first is Charles Coulson. I don't know too much about his background, but I'm going to do this very quickly.

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Both of these come from the two men's autobiography. Here's one example. He, you will remember, described himself as the hatchet man in the Nixon administration. He was a special assistant to President Richard Nixon.

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He was the one that controlled access to the President. On one occasion, a newspaper reporter came to Colson, and this newspaper reporter had written a critical article about the President, but he wanted another interview, so he asked Charles-- Chuck Colson what he could do to get back into good graces so he could get an interview. Colson said, Why don't you try slitting your arms? He quotes that himself.

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He -- that's what he meant by being the hatchet man. But after -- he was a friend of Tom Phillips, who was president of Raytheon Corporation. And in an interview or visit with him one night, Tom Phillips really talked to him very severely and personally about his his almost obscene desire for political power.

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And he talked to him very straight about his obsession with power. And using his own life, he explained how Jesus Christ had come into his life, largely through Billy Graham. Then Phillips urged Coulson to give up his pride and power and turn his attention to what Christ would mean to him.

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This is a very short version of what happened. I'd prefer you read it for yourself. Coulson left Phillip's house and sat in the car outside the house for a long time. But he couldn't start the car.

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He went through an intense struggle with his lust for political power and then He said he felt, and I'll quote, a wonderful feeling of being released. And he said he prayed for the first time in his life. No, pardon me, he prayed for the first real time in his life.

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And I'll quote now, this, you may not count this as a prayer, but this is what he said. God, I don't know how to find you, but I'm going to try. I'm not much the way I am now, but somehow I want to give myself up to you, end of quote. After this, he spent seven years, pardon me, seven months in prison for his involvement in the Watergate scandal.

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That was in 1974. And then after that, he formed the Prison Fellowship, a ministry which he's maintained since that time. and just two years ago received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. Now the reason for using this is partially because it's a person you know, and partially because you have a conversion here of a person with one real interest in life, political power, and a conversion of that to seeing everything differently

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through the eyes of Christ. Now, the critical issue is that 25 years. Now, see, if he'd had a conversion experience and gone back into the political power operation, we could have some doubts. But after 25 years, I think you'd have to say something changed.

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But look, some things didn't change. This man is acquainted with power. He knew powerful people. He knew how to organize.

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He knew how to get things done. So once he had the vision of the political-- of the prison ministry, he had the personality and the confidence to acquire the money and to organize that operation. The next is somewhat similar. but still different, and that's Millard Fuller.

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You know him. The reason for using him is because he was an active church member, very active church member, always had been one. After he received his law degree, he and his law partner, his colleague, his partner, he and his roommate in law school formed a partnership. And the chapter in his autobiography that I'm using here is Making Money in Montgomery.

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He started his law career and also a business career simultaneously, and from 1960 to 1964, within a... space of four years, he had become a millionaire. And when his bookkeeper or accountant told him he now was a millionaire, he said his first thought was, fine, I'm going for 10. To achieve so much so quickly, he was seldom at home.

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But before I start that, let me say, we're talking about a person that said who was a a religious person, a church member. Not only that, he and his wife had started a new church in Montgomery when they went there, United Church of Christ. They started a new congregation.

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So we're talking about a person that, you know, is in our churches, goes to church, pays well, probably votes with management, and starts new churches. I mean, that's a little hard to fault within at least Presbyterian circles, but during this time, His interest and concern was making money. As he put it, making money in Montgomery.

00:39:30.800 - 00:40:08.800

He achieved so much, so quickly, he was seldom at home, and he paid little attention to his family. He said he often worked right through dinner, and he and his partner would eat dinner together downtown, and he'd work several more hours. So he didn't often get home until 10 o'clock at night. Then one Saturday night, 1965, when he came home late as usual, his wife, Linda, told him his values had become different from hers, and she was leaving the next day.

00:40:13.040 - 00:40:31.160

Well, that was a shock, of course. She went to New York to talk with a minister that she knew, and She said, Well, he could come when she would let him come. And there was some back and forth.

00:40:31.160 - 00:40:52.440

He kept trying to call, and finally she said, Okay, you can come now. He chartered a plane, flew to New York to be with him, and to talk with his minister. Well, briefly, this is all very brief, he decided that He was on the wrong path.

00:40:52.440 - 00:41:23.120

And he decided that they would sell everything they had, including the business, and give it all away, and ask God for guidance. Then several years at Koinonia Farms in Georgia, then three years building houses in Zaire. The Fullers moved to return to the United States and were visiting old friends. Bertie and Bill Lytle in San Antonio.

00:41:24.480 - 00:41:49.920

So now you know who it is. And in this chapter, he gives Bertie Lytle credit for helping him to see the need for what is now Habitat for Humanity. So here you have a person who was religious, a church person, and on the outside one would say, was successful.

00:41:49.920 - 00:42:18.600

But now see, this continuity didn't change. There's change because of this sudden joke when his wife said, I'm going to leave you. But what didn't change was his ability to organize. Because anyone who knows about Habitat for Humanity knows that's a highly organized operation, very active in Austin, probably half the people in this sanctuary have hammered on houses.

00:42:21.560 - 00:42:53.480

All the Presbyterian churches in Austin got together a few years ago and did one house and so on and so on. It's quite an achievement. So we have here two people that we know at least through our readings and one obsessed with power who went through a convert, kind of what might be said, a classical conversion experience. Everything was seen different, but not all his character and personality was different.

00:42:53.480 - 00:43:13.520

There was both continuity and change. And so with Fuller, he changed his perspective so everything was different, except the fact that he knew how to develop things. He knew how to organize. He knew once that goal was set, how to reach the goal.

00:43:15.000 - 00:43:54.480

And so we have the possibility of change. But there's also continuity in personality, and it depends, of course, entirely on the way in which a person, through particular circumstances, comes to a personal understanding of the way in which God was revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Now I have a few more minutes, and I said yesterday I wanted to make some implications for this approach to, or rather, this understanding of the way we learn or develop an image of God for our strategy in Christian education.

00:43:55.040 - 00:44:12.560

So I want to talk about that for the next few minutes. There is... a real issue, and there is an issue today in our churches about our strategy of Christian education. And I want to do this by making a very quick comparison.

00:44:13.120 - 00:44:39.600

The strategy that we're using today, generally speaking, a lot of exceptions, but generally speaking is a strategy that worked very well in the 1800s when it was developed. It's a strategy of a congregation which has a building next door where they have some classes, Sunday school. But let's look at what the 1800s were like.

00:44:40.400 - 00:45:21.840

Let's remember that during the 1800s in America, the ethos of this nation was primarily that of an evangelical Protestantism. Higher education, for example, every college with few exceptions, founded prior to the Civil War, were founded by churches, and they were founded by churches in order to have a learned ministry or ministers, and there was a strategy, and that they would also prepare the lawyers and doctors in this evangelical Protestantism so that in their profession, they would be practicing Christians. I can document that.

00:45:21.840 - 00:45:37.840

That's actually part of an address to our general assembly back in those days. That's the reason we have church colleges. We want to influence society and we influence it through our trained people. Public schools in the 1800s.

00:45:39.720 - 00:46:08.320

Again, the Protestant evangelical ethos was very much alive. From 1837 to 1900, four out of every five persons that went to public school learned to read with McGuffey's reader. McGuffey readers are Calvinistic, slightly changed about 1876 or so, but modified very slightly.

00:46:09.120 - 00:46:25.360

If you read that right now, you would say that's pretty stiff stuff. I mean, they didn't -- they didn't have Jane jumping over leaves to read or something of that sort. It was things like The sun comes up in the morning, why does the sun come up?

00:46:25.440 - 00:46:35.520

God sent the sun. God's in charge of the world. And so on and so on. The morality and the theology is Calvinistic.