Radio Commentaries

Week: December 16th - 20th, 2024

12/16/2024 - Christmas in Public Schools

The Sioux Falls, South Dakota, School District has a very good policy about holidays. And it has been upheld in Federal Court. The policy states:

“Music, art, literature, and drama having religious themes or basis are permitted as part of the curriculum for school sponsored activities and programs if presented in a prudent and objective manner and as a traditional part of the cultural and religious heritage of the particular holiday.”

See if your school district already has a policy regarding recognition of holidays. If you are an educator, be sure to quote it on any holiday-related assignments or communication going home to families. If you are a parent, make sure everyone at school knows about the policy. If your district doesn’t have a policy, let us help you. You can be a gateway to better education. For help, contact us at info@gtbe.org.

12/17/2024 - How Christianity Benefits the World

Too often students only learn about Christianity by studying the Crusades, the Inquisitions, and the Salem Witch Trials. It is also important that they learn about the good that Christianity has done in the world. Students of all faiths, and no faith, should understand the impact of Jesus on the world.

After extensively studying the impact of Christian missionaries on the developing world, political science professor Robert Woodberry wrote that missionaries “were a crucial catalyst initiating the development and spread of religious liberty, mass education, mass printing, newspapers, voluntary organizations, most major colonial reforms, and the codification of legal protections for nonwhite in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.”

Christians have played a vital role in world development. It’s time our students learn it. For more information on Dr. Woodberry’s research, read this article.

12/18/2024 - Christianity’s Influence in Literacy

Most people don’t realize that Christian missionaries are the reason why so many people around the world learned to read. Robert Woodberry, a political science professor at National University of Singapore, stated in his research that “missionaries wanted people to read the Bible in their own language, which meant poor people and women needed to be able to read.”

He specifically pointed out that the tribal people of North-East India did not have a written language at all before the 1890s, but once missionaries helped them develop a language, almost all of them became Baptists. Today, this region has the highest literacy rate in India, with most of that being among women.

Christians have made a positive impact on world development our students need to learn about it.

For more information on Dr. Woodberry’s research, read THIS ARTICLE.

12/19/2024 - Christianity’s Influence on Economic Prosperity

Christian missionaries have done a lot for indigenous people throughout history. They introduced them to different trades, materials, and ways of living.

Because of that, they had a big impact on the economic prosperity of the countries they visited. In addition to teaching them how to read, missionaries taught them concepts of private property and showed them how to grow cocoa and cotton so that they could make money to support themselves and build their own Christian churches. They also sparked the mass printing movement because Bibles needed to be printed and this led to more books and literacy in those countries.

Christianity has been a force for much good in the world. Public school students should be learning about it. Click HERE to read the article “How Christian Missionaries Changed the World.”

12/20/2024 - Christianity’s Impact on Social Movements

Many people think that the activities in social movements around world -- such as printing pamphlets, public speaking, organizing, and petitions -- just happen naturally, but that’s not the case. They were all pioneered, for the most part, in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries by Protestants in England and the United States. English and American missionaries, then, took their experience in social movements with them as they traveled across the world. They helped fuel social reforms that improved developing countries.

In his research on the impact of Christian Missionaries, Professor Robert Woodbury, from the National University of Singapore points out that modernity “was not the inevitable result of economic development, urbanization, industrialization, secularization, or the Enlightenment, but a far more contingent process profoundly shaped by activist religion.”

Click HERE to read the article “How Christian Missionaries Changed the World.”