Ezra Taft Benson
As a nation, we have become self-sufficient. This has given birth to a new religion in America which some have called secularism. This is a view of life with the idea that God is not in the picture and that He has nothing to do with the picture in the first place. 1
The world worships the learning of man. They trust in the arm of flesh (see D&C 1:19). To them, men’s reasoning is greater than God’s revelations. The precepts of man have gone so far in subverting our educational system that in many cases a higher degree today, in the so-called social sciences, can be tantamount to a major investment in error. Very few men build firmly enough on the rock of revelation to go through this kind of indoctrination and come out untainted. 2
It seems fashionable today for historians to “secularize” our history. Many modern scholars seem uncomfortable with the idea that a divine power had a hand in the beginning of our nation. They seek to explain away what the colonists themselves saw as divine intervention in their behalf. They credit even those remarkable events to “natural causes” or “rational” explanations. All events are explained from a “humanistic” frame of reference. This removes the need for faith in God or a belief that He is interested in the affairs of men. 3
