As a lifelong Arkansan it is almost a foregone conclusion that I am not all that fond of the state to our southwest. And I just discovered another reason to dislike Texas. Wingnuts on the Texas Board of Education are working to single-handedly rewrite history. Don McLeroy, the same board member who attempted to remove science from the science books, and his band of imperialist “Christians” want the Texas social studies guidelines rewritten to portray America “as a nation intended to be emphatically Christian.” The New York Times had a great article on Sunday detailing the battle.
Why, exactly, should the rest of us care? Well because Texas’..
… $22 billion education fund is among the largest educational endowments in the country. Texas uses some of that money to buy or distribute a staggering 48 million textbooks annually — which rather strongly inclines educational publishers to tailor their products to fit the standards dictated by the Lone Star State.
McLeroy contends that “textbooks are mostly the product of the liberal establishment, and they’re written with the idea that our religion and our liberty are in conflict.” He may have a point there, but he goes too far when he attempts to force his particular brand of religion on other people’s children.
While it is true that a Judeo-Christian world view certainly influenced the founders’ thinking and that at the time of the nation’s founding, religion was more a part of civic life than it is today, it is also true that the authors of the constitution took great pains to protect individual liberty and choice. They did not set in place a system to ensure people remained Christian. They created a system of government which they thought would ensure that people remain free.
Religion is not at odds with liberty; McLeroy’s authoritarian nature is.
Was America indeed “a nation intended to be emphatically Christian” as McLeroy (McLovin?) claims? Sunday attendance rates were not any higher, perhaps even lower, than they are at present. While language in the founding documents refers to a Creator, such language is entirely consistent with a stripped-down Deism, not a full-fleshed Christianity. The necessity of morals in a republican scheme of government was emphasized, but the role of religion in these documents can be interpreted as instrumental at best. It seems to me that the founders were not aiming at a Christian republic, but rather at a secular republic buttressed by the positive externalities of Christianity.
This half-baked history bothers me. Attempts by fundamentalists to baptize the American founding and history only infuriate the people with whom they should be seeking common ground, and they endanger their own spiritual integrity by draping a flag over the Cross. It is best for Christians and non-Christians alike if these sort of people (who are in fact a subset of practicing Christianity in the US) will acknowledge that their kingdom is not of this world while also seeking to serve all by the model of Christ.
I liked Tony Woodlief’s scathing take on this; no one is spared: http://tonywoodlief.com/?p=2124
Thanks for the post, Stuart. The Woodlief rant points out something I’d not much considered before: the attempt to write Christianity into the American Founding is largely one done by conservative white Protestants, as a matter of fact. Liberal Protestants are less uneasy with accepting our nation’s secular roots, and Catholics feel little inclination to baptize American history since anti-Catholicism has been long enough a perennial prejudice in America.
This is slightly off-topic, but efforts like McLeroy’s are better understood with a knowledge of the historical and spiritual roots from which he’s advocating.