In May of 2006, Andrew Sullivan coined the term and concept of "christianist" in his Time Magazine article "My Problem with Christianism." (read it here.)
Since then, it has been a topic he has revisited in his own column, The Dish.
Since The Democrat Deal started in February of 2010, we have written extensively on the subject, frequently bringing Mr. Sullivan's lucid observations with us into the fray.
With Rick Perry's entrance into the GOP fray, yesterday, The Dish catches us up to speed.
The Deal would only venture to add that while the Christianist movement has had an impact on the whole of the country, the only "takeover" accorded it is within the ranks of the Tea Party-controlled GOP. This political marriage (with the Tea Party/Christianists forming the male figure and the rest of the GOP playing the subservient wife) is, at best, a rocky one. The Tea Party is feuding among it's own. The GOP is increasingly transparent in it's declining valuation of the radical right. The upcoming election is already being seen as one where losses are expected among it's ranks.
But - there is still plenty of political fuel to be fired. For that, there is no one better than the Gov. of Texas. It is an obvious career choice. Rick Perry should be able to suck all the air out of Bachmann and Palin while sweeping the floor with Romney, succeeding whether he wins or loses. (take it easy, he will surely lose the general, should he get there.)
Perry will, undoubtedly, succeed at increasing his own number of zealots, sheep, and career options for a former Gov of Texas. It is a tough job to follow. Ask anyone.
The Christianist Takeover
by Andrew Sullivan
c/o The Dish
It now appears to be complete. When I wrote "The Conservative Soul," David Brooks was underwhelmed by its core argument: that an accelerating shift was taking place in American conservatism that was transforming the small government secular temperament into a fundamentalist religious mindset that sought its refuge not in doubting humankind's capacity for good, but in believing in God's ability to heal all things, including politics.
David argued that the religious and fundamentalist shift in the GOP was over-rated, and that there was no conflict between evangelicalism and mainstream American values.
As any number of historians, sociologists and pollsters can tell you, the evangelical Protestants who now exercise a major influence on the Republican Party are an infinitely diverse and contradictory group, and their relationship to these hyperpartisans is extremely ambivalent.
Well, a few years later, examine the candidacies of the two front-runners for the GOP. One launched his campaign in a revival meeting calling for God to solve our economic problems (having previously led mass prayers for the end of the Texas drought); the other emerges entirely out of Dominionist theology and built her entire career in the Christianist world of home-schooling, and anti-gay demonization. One reason Mitt Romney is not a shoo-in? Sectarianism, and his own previous deviations from binding orthodoxy. And it is this fundamentalist mindset - in which nothing doctrinal can be questioned, and the real world must be bent to the shape of a rigid theo-ideology - that defines these two candidates.
Hence Bachmann's belief that the entire deficit can be ended in short shrift solely by massive cuts in spending. This "spending alone" principle cannot be compromised, since taxation in and of itself is a way in which the liberal elites control people's lives. It doesn't matter what economists say about the consequence of wilful default or of austerity too sharply imposed. It only matters what God says. And God is bound up with a radical American theology in which slavery was more benign than the Great Society, and that the Founders were abolitionists. That American theology creates the justification for the use of American military power across the globe, especially in protecting and advancing Greater Israel, Bachmann's and Perry's fundamentalist cause of causes.
This is what this party now is: a religious movement clothed in anti-government radicalism. It has nothing to do with the conservative temperament, conservative political thought or conservative ideas. It is hostile to most existing institutions, especially government, contemptuous of the courts, and seized of an ideology as rigid as any far-left liberalism, as utopian as any wide-eyed socialist, as fanatical as anything the left spawned in the 1960s.
And it has hijacked an entire political party; and recently held to ransom an entire country. I knew it would get worse before it gets better. But this bad?
[Yes, Mr. Sullivan "this bad." The phoenix must burn to ash before it can take to the skies. ed.]
The socio-political monster that is the Tea Party/Sarah Palin/Christianist movement must first rise for it to be slain. The result will be a more vibrant, constructive and civil political environment. But at what cost? If the last two weeks are a precursor of what is to come, it won't be pretty.
In February of this year we argued that the rise of Sarah Palin as a political figure in the U.S. would, ultimately, be good for the GOP, the Dems and America as a whole. [Read the article here.] Briefly, we believe Palin (and with her the Tea Partiers and Christianists) have placed the GOP in a position where it is splitting along ideological lines. The rift has been visible just beneath the surface since Sen. Barry Goldwater's (R-AZ) 1964 Presidential Campaign. The 1980's saw Ronald Reagan's hired gun, Lee Atwater, mobilize the "Christian Conservative" movement into a powerful base of the Republican Party. Atwater's protoge, Karl Rove, did the same for Pres. George W. Bush. In the meantime, the conservative-right has moved from being a reliable and effective grassroots supporter of the GOP to outright challengers to the leadership of the party. When John McCain ushered Sarah Palin onto the national political scene eighteen months ago, she captured the imagination of the far right as no one else in the past decade. Which was just what McCain had hoped she would do for his lackluster campaign. What he hadn't fully taken into account was the push-back from the moderates of the GOP and independent voters. In the end, Obama won the election with most of the independent vote as well as a modest, yet notable, percentage of moderate Republicans.
Jump ahead to 2010 and the Tea Party movement. The midterm elections are around the corner and the Charlie Crist/Marc Rubio Senate campaign in Florida shows what we can expect from the GOP. A big, vocal, ugly split. Charismatic young Rubio has the Tea Partiers/Palin folks sewn up. Gov. Crist has the support of the GOP establishment and the moderates along with some independents. This results of this race, the other primaries and the midterm general elections will be a precursor to what the next Presidential election in 2012 looks like.
It is most likely the Democrats will lose seats but keep the majority in both houses of Congress in 2010. The Tea Party/Palin/Christianists (TPPC) and the moderates will both claim some victories and suffer some defeats. As a result, the direction of the GOP will not be decided in the mid-terms and the struggle for dominance will boil over into the 2012 elections, culminating most visibly in the 2012 Republican National Convention.
This will do one or both of two things. The GOP traditionalists will win out and reestablish the party's fiscally conservative/socially moderate roots while reaching out to independents as the party with the "big tent." This could also mean the rise of a third party political force made up of the purged and disgruntled TPPC. Or, less likely, the vocal right wing of the GOP, bolstered by wins in the mid-terms and meeting with tepid or ineffective resistance from Republican leadership, will gain control of the party, perhaps even with Ms. Palin at the top of the ticket. Here, again, the possibility of the third party emerges with a candidate along the lines of Christine Todd Whitman, Colin Powell or Bill Weld.
How is this good? Because a healthy political system partially depends on a vibrant opposition. Look at the healthcare debate as a case in point. The GOP is still in a shambles following the 2010 election. The was very little constructive debate and negotiation between parties. With little exception, the GOP offered no proposals of their own and only a few Republican members became part of the process and suffered backlash for doing so. As a result, they are heading into the election cycle having to overcome their image as obstructionists. A robust GOP would have had plenty of political cover and wherewithall to develop and negotiate its own healthcare policy measures and temper those democrat proposals they deemed excessive. The Democrats, meanwhile, facing only the strategy of "No" were not put into a position where they had to unite, focus and fight for a cohesive policy. Instead, they split into factions and fought amongst each other, House against Senate, with the President staying above the fray without employing leadership to the cause of either faction. The result? A watered-down, middle of the road health care bill that, while making some significant headway, fell far below the expectations of just over a year ago when the new government was swept in with huge margins under a now less prescient banner of "Hope" and "Change."
Ultimately, the GOP is already heading into an identity crisis and the TPPC are accelerating that process. That is a good thing. The sooner the Dems have an opposition that relies more on constructive ideas, accountability and mutual respect than fear, misinformation and obstruction, the better.
The more timely question, given the events of the past two weeks, is what will be the cost of this process. While often characterized as such by the left, the TPPC's are neither wholly insane or racist (though arguably some of the former and much of the latter may be found). What may be said of those in the movement as a whole is that they share significant frustration, are motivated by deep-seated beliefs and are nearly entirely misinformed. This is not just a matter of believing false or misleading information from talk radio, the internet, Fox News or one another. It is also a matter of gravitating towards and accepting as legitimate information and ideas that reflect deep seated beliefs, fears and prejudices. This phenomena, known as cultural cognition, makes beliefs specifically and perspective of reality in general impervious to fact or reason. Topical examples abound. Climate change, for instance, is accepted as fact by nearly every element of the scientific community. Yet, there are those who wholeheartedly believe otherwise. The so-called "Birthers" believe Barak Obama is not a U.S. citizen. There are those who believe homosexuality is a choice made by the individual rather than the natural development of an individual's biology as shown in every major study on the issue. And there are those, as we covered in previous articles, who would claim America was founded as and intended to be a uniquely "Christian nation" despite the overwhelming contradiction of the U.S. historian community. In each of these instances, there are two clear factors. The belief in question is met with an irrefutable body of evidence to the contrary while it simultaneously reflects the cultural beliefs and perspective of the individual.
Cultural Cognition on display at McCain/Pain '08 rally.
Tea Party Convention, 2/10, Sarah Palin, Orly Taitz, and interviews with participants.
This is where things start to get sticky. Once one removes reason from the situation, you are essentially left with crowd control. Trying to limit the damage made by those who see themselves as leading a modern revolution. The crowd control around the Capitol earlier this month was not enough to restrain Tea Party protesters from shouting obscene language, racial and sexual slurs, and even spitting on a Member of Congress. This while other Members like Michelle Bachman stood on a Capitol balcony cheering and rallying for the protesters.
Rep. Bachman (R-MN) and fellow GOP members cheer on Tea Party health care protest.
Examples of racism at Tea Party demonstrations.
Politicians and political figures have taken to fanning the flames of the TPPC crowd to further their own political objectives. Witness the Sarah Palin poster of her "targeted" politicians, each with a gun sight symbol while encouraging her supporters to "reload." As the fears and prejudices of the TPPC are being exploited we hear of a brick through the window of Rep. Louise Slaughter's office in upstate New York. A coffin placed in front of Rep. Russ Carnahan's home in Missouri. A gas line cut at the home of the brother of Rep. Tom Periello in Virginia after the his home address was mistakingly posted as the Congressman's by Tea Party activists who encouraged others to "stop by." Earlier in the year we saw a man attack guards at the Pentagon and another fly a plane into an IRS building. Just today, nine men from a Michigan-based, Christianist Militia have been arrested and charged with planning to kill a police officer and bomb the funeral procession in an effort to spark a national uprising against the U.S. Government.
What does it take to get a highly motivated individual to move from the threat of violence to carrying out an act of violence? Seemingly, too little. And we are likely to have ample instances to inform an answer as long as there are those who continue to encourage such behavior directly or indirectly.
It will be a while before the TPPC begins to fade as it has yet to reach its apex. In the meantime, politicians and public figures who do not publicly and vociferously condemn the violence and threat of violence and, instead, fan the flames of this jingoistic, racist and fear-based anger do so at their peril. And our peril, as well.
For more on Tea Party rage, see Frank Rich opinion piece in NYT 3/27 here.
To learn more about "cultural cognition" go here.
We nearly had a collective coronary at The Deal last week when l'enfant terrible, Glenn Beck, announced that "social justice" was a "perversion of the bible" and a "code word" for communism and nazism. We scoured the Book of Mormon for corroborating testimony, and while we found some crazy stuff, we found nothing THAT crazy.
Really, next to "love" or "compassion," what truly captures the essence of the gospels like "social justice"? Was not Jesus, arguably, the most significant social justice activist in history? Seriously, what IS this guy smoking?
As usual, our friend Jim Wallis, responds beautifully in his column for the Huffington Post:
"Dear Glenn,
Since I challenged your claim that "social justice" was a code word for Communism and Nazism, and your calling on Christians to leave their churches if their pastors preach social justice, you have begun to modify what you are saying -- and I appreciate that. You said social justice was a "perversion of the gospel," and I countered that to assert that, instead, it is at the heart of the gospel and part of the core meaning of biblical faith. And the church authorities you wanted Christians to turn their pastors in to would all agree that social, economic, and racial justice are integral to the message of Jesus.
But now you've moved from labeling social justice as Communist or Fascist to saying that it only means "big government" and that it violates the separation of church and state. Then you said that some Christians mean Marxism by that term and some do not. Finally, you said that if social justice means "empowering" people to act individually, then that might be okay. Well, that's progress, but there's still some need for conversation here. Christians can have different views of the role of government but still agree that social justice is crucial. Very few who believe that are Marxists. And while we all preach empowerment to live out the gospel, we don't think the meaning of social justice should be reduced to just private charity. Biblical justice also involves changing structures, institutions, systems, and policies, as well as changing hearts to be more generous. So there is still a lot to talk about here.
I am glad to see you are beginning to recognize the deep richness of the term "social justice." I and my organization, Sojourners, have committed 35 years to exploring this and to working with Christians across the spectrum to deepen their commitment to this essential, biblical concept. Now that you're willing to admit that social justice is more than just a code word, we have a wonderful opportunity for the two of us to sit down together and have an open and public discussion on what social justice really means and how Christians are called to engage in the struggle for justice.
Why don't we do that, on your show, or in some other venue? And let's make this a civil dialogue and not engage in personal attacks on each other -- which is never helpful in trying to sort out what is true. So let's talk about the heart of the matter. When would you like to get together for this conversation?
Blessings,
Jim Wallis"
We at The Deal cannot wait! C'mon, Mr. Beck, bite.
Read the article in it's original at the Huffpost here.
On Friday, the Texas State Board of Education approved standards for a new social studies curriculum that will alter what is taught in Texas schools. As the largest single consumer of textbooks in the U.S., these changes are expected to be reflected in classrooms across the country.
As we reported last month in Part 1 of our story, the majority of the 100+ amendments represent a well publicized and long-standing effort to recast public school curricula to include a neoconservative, Christianist perspective held by the majority voting bloc of the board. These board members see their changes as necessary to rectify a liberal stronghold on public education. From Friday's New York Times article by James C. McKinley Jr: “We are adding balance,” said Dr. Don McLeroy, the leader of the conservative faction on the board, after the vote. “History has already been skewed. Academia is skewed too far to the left.”
The neocon-dominated board chose not to have any subject matter experts appear to evidence or opinion. Members of the liberal academic intelligentsia, as they are viewed by the majority, were neither needed nor welcome in the process. In fact, they are regarded specifically as the "opposition." During the board's previous successful effort to change the subject of evolution to include it's weaknesses as a theory, Dr. McLeroy offered his now well-publicized quote, "Somebody's got to stand up to the experts." You can witness that little gem yourself here:
Here are some of the changes McLeroy and his ilk have made to what children will be learning in schools:
The study of “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association,” in a positive light without opposing, liberal perspectives.
Less criticism of the infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his communist witch-hunt, showing how his views were partially vindicated in later years.
Removal of Thomas Jefferson's role in the Enlightenment Movement and it's role in spurring revolutions in France and other countries. (Jefferson's views on separation of church and state, pure fiction to the conservatives, makes him persona non grata.)
Alongside studies of Abraham Lincoln, student will learn about President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis with more equal stature.
On the topic of civil rights, student will study the "violent philosophy of the Black Panthers in addition to the nonviolent approach of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr." References to Justice Thurgood Marshall as the first black United States Supreme Court Justice have been removed altogether.
In economics, the term "capitalism" will be replaced with "free-enterprise system" because of the stigma they fear is carried by the term. “Let’s face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation,” said one conservative member, Terri Leo. “You know, ‘capitalist pig!’ ”
In sociology, students will learn about responsibility for their own choices when it comes to dating violence, sexuality and eating disorders.
U.S. History classes will call into question the "separation of church and state." "I reject the notion by the left of a constitutional separation of church and state,” said David Bradley, a conservative from Beaumont who works in real estate. “I have $1,000 for the charity of your choice if you can find it in the Constitution.” [The religious anti-establishment in the First Amendment and the religious test clause in the Sixth Amendment. You can make the check out to Planned Parenthood of Texas, Mr. Bradley. Thank you.]
The standards will now be published for review by Texans and come up for final vote by the board this spring. If history is any indicator, little if any changes will be made.
Dr. McLeroy recently lost his bid for re-election and is serving out the rest of his term this year. There are no signs the majority voting bloc will be unseated, however, and even if they were, these standards, if passed, will remain in place for the next ten years.
After her own amendment to require studying the reasons behind the founding fathers' idea of separation of church and state was defeated, Mavis Knight, a democrat from Dallas and member of the minority, commented, “[t]he social conservatives have perverted accurate history to fulfill their own agenda.”
On Wednesday, March 3rd, loving couples in DC will be able to be married regardless of their genitalia. As a result, DC employees of Catholic Charities learned that spouses will no longer be covered by the company's new health plan.
Let's break this down, shall we?
As- decent Americans are coming to realize that marriage may have more to do with mutual respect, partnership, commitment, responsibility and love and less to do with which public restroom one uses,
Therefor- charity employees working for peanuts to help those in DC with the greatest needs and scarcest resources stay fed, clothed and housed will not be able to provide health care for their own spouses,
Because- the church that holds the purse-strings has decided it is better to blaspheme the very essence of Christianity, to love thy neighbor, to do unto others as you would have done unto you, - in order to adhere the public to some man-made decree about sexuality while they have been 'doing unto' little boys in darkened vestries for centuries on a global basis.
That is pretty much the deal, isn't it?
It isn't the deal with World Vision. Who? World Vision, as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof points out in his recent NYT piece, is "the largest U.S.-based international relief and development organization" with "40,000 staff members in nearly 100 countries." They are also a "Christian organization (with strong evangelical roots) whose budget has roughly tripled over the last decade."
World Vision marches to the beat of a different (dare I say, decidedly Christian) drummer. At present, the man with the drum is Richard Stearns, head of World Vision in the US. Mr. Stearn, also an author, "begins his fascinating book, “The Hole in Our Gospel,” with an account of a visit a decade ago to Uganda, where he met a 13-year-old AIDS orphan who was raising his younger brothers by himself." In his book, he observes "What sickened me most was this question: where was the Church?” he writes. “Where were the followers of Jesus Christ in the midst of perhaps the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time? Surely the Church should have been caring for these ‘orphans and widows in their distress.’ (James 1:27). Shouldn’t the pulpits across America have flamed with exhortations to rush to the front lines of compassion?"
What World Vision doesn't do is convert. It is strictly forbidden in it's bylaws. If they awaken any awareness of grace in those they comfort and care for, it is by power of example alone. Now there's a concept.
Kristof goes on to observe "Mr. Stearns argues that evangelicals were often so focused on sexual morality and a personal relationship with God that they ignored the needy" and that "[i]n one striking passage, Mr. Stearns quotes the prophet Ezekiel as saying that the great sin of the people of Sodom wasn’t so much that they were promiscuous or gay as that they were “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49.) "[A]rrogant, overfed and unconcerned [?]" Jerry Falwell must be turning over in his grave.
Yes, the Catholic Church would do well to take a few pages from World Vision's playbook. But lets not hold our breath. Entrenched doesn't even begin to describe the unwillingness of the Vatican to open their eyes to the world around them or open their hearts to the meaning of Christ. Even the most optimistic of Vatican III proponents would roll their eyes with a "Ne, Deo, Ne."
The hard truth to all this is the Catholic Church and Christianists the likes of Pat Robertson and Rick Warren make it real easy for many of us to turn our backs on faith altogether. Kristof points out "[t]he American view of evangelicals is still shaped by preening television blowhards and hypocrites who seem obsessed with gays and fetuses. One study cited in the book found that even among churchgoers ages 16 to 29, the descriptions most associated with Christianity were “antihomosexual,” “judgmental,” “too involved in politics,” and “hypocritical.” Given the above, is it really any wonder the words of Hitchens and Dawkins resonate so resoundingly these days?
Amidst all this hullabaloo, however, World Vision quietly carries out God's work on Earth and churches across the country equate being "open, welcoming and affirming" regardless of sexual orientation to following in the footsteps of Christ. These stories, unfortunately, are far more rarely shared than the titillating obscenities of hypocrites hiding behind crosses that make the headlines as they have in DC.
Kristof, no starry-eyed dreamer himself, concludes wondering "[i]f secular liberals can give up some of their snootiness, and if evangelicals can retire some of their sanctimony, then we all might succeed together in making greater progress against common enemies of humanity, like illiteracy, human trafficking and maternal mortality."
Agreed. And maybe, just maybe, in the process, experience a hint of grace, a moment of selflessly doing what is right and good. And Christian. That would be good, too.
Read the full piece by Nicholas Kristof in the NYT here.
Not a joke people. There are actually Pastors leading their congregations in prayer calling for God to take Obama from the living. It is generally no longer surprising to us when many of today's Christianists speak of their personalized God. You know, the God that seems to share many of the same human-like hang-ups of the congregations themselves. Their God is vengeful, intolerant, easily Republican, very much an American, and extremely homophobic.
Well, those same Christianists have outdone themselves and actually surprised us with what they are willing to attempt to cloak with religion - calling for the death of the President. John Avalon, author of Wingnuts: How The Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America, tells in The Daily Beast how some Pastors chose to celebrate Presidents Day this year. And we're afraid it isn't an isolated incident. From the article:
At a time when some people confuse losing an election with living under tyranny, it’s perhaps no surprise that a day set aside for marking past presidents’ birth has become, for some, a day for praying for the current president’s death.
Praying for President Obama’s death has become a sick cottage industry for some evangelicals on the lunatic fringe. Bumper stickers, T-shirts, and teddy bears are sold with the wholesome-sounding slogan “Pray for Obama” but tagged with the more troublesome “Psalm 109:8”—which reads “May his days be few; may another take his place of leadership” followed by “May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.”
“If you have an evil leader above you, you pray that Satan will stand by his side and you ask God to make his children fatherless.”
In Wingnut circles, it’s known as the “Imprecatory Prayer.” Offered not just from select pulpits, but increasingly expressed through tweets and forwarded via email, this decidedly un-Christian Christian subculture has found its most enthusiastic advocates in a few Obama Derangement Syndrome-afflicted preachers—notably Orange County’s Wiley Drake and Arizona’s Steven L. Anderson.
Pastor Wiley Drake kicked off this Presidents’ Day Weekend with an email blast to his supporters saying “Imprecatory Prayer is now our DUTY” and announcing a daily teleconference call to advance the cause. Drake has been an enthusiastic advocate of imprecatory prayer since he announced that God answered his call with the murder of Kansas abortion clinic doctor George Tiller in church last May. “George Tiller was far greater in his atrocities than Adolf Hitler,” Drake said at the time, “so I am happy. I am glad that he is dead.” This emboldened him to add “the usurper that is in the White House … B. Hussein Obama” to the list said in his church on Sundays.
If you feel up to it, here is an AP video with excerpts of Christianist Pastor Steven L. Anderson's sermon. Warning, this video may test your confidence in humanity.
In the Texas State Board of Education's quest to save the future of Christianity, US history, education and our democracy, - they must crucify each.
How you ever seen, read, or been exposed to something and been so viscerally offended on multiple levels that you simply do not know where to begin? I get that every once in a great while when something comes into my purview and I sit aghast, mouth agape, unable to find the words to communicate my disappointment with the human condition.
This, my friends, is one of those times. Except, here, my repulsion is matched by my sense of duty (ie. ego) to shine whatever meager light I might muster on this train wreck of a truly American moment.
In his article in The Times Magazine last week, Russell Shorto brings us inside the Texas State Board of Education, it's members, and current undertakings. For many of us who follow issues at the nexus of the US church/state relationship, the mere mention of the Texas State Board of Ed (TSBE) is enough to make your knees knock. It is an ongoing and bloodied battlefield between those who would preserve the separation of church and state and those who are driven to rewrite American history, utilizing the state's public school system to indoctrinate children (aka, the future leaders of America) in a human, national and world view skewed to a grotesque misrepresentation of Christianity.
What's the big deal with what Texas decides to do? Because it is a very, very big deal. The Texas public school system is the largest single unified state school system in the country. (California's has the most students but the school systems within the state have more diversity in their approaches to curriculum.) As the biggest market for the country's multi-billion dollar textbook industry, Texas, essentially, gets to decide what goes in them. And the rest of the states get to buy them. As a long time player in the textbook industry put it in the article "Texas governs 46 or 47 states." Ouch. It seems, in terms of our children's education in this country, as goes Texas, so goes the nation.
The TSBE boasts a cohesive minority of seven (out of fifteen) self-proclaimed "christian fundementalists" who have a clear and very public agenda and are as serious as they are dangerous. While the Times article focuses on the recent campaign to revise American history to integrate the "Christian "truth"(sic) of America's founding," the much publicized recent history of the board's contemplative work includes the expected - failing to insert creationism into the science curriculum by one vote, schools now must teach evolution as a theory with scientific "strengths and weaknesses"; to the surprising - the banning of books by Bill Martin, Jr, author of the subversive classic "Brown Bear Brown Bear, What Do You See?" and nearly three hundred other childrens titles. How did this latter decree get passed down? Not through voracity of research. It seems a TSBE board member was informed by another member of a book entitled "Ethical Marxism", "who suggested that anyone who wrote a book with such a title did not belong in the TEKS [ie. Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills or the states official curriculum guidelines. -ed.]." The author of this book was Bill Martin. No relation to Bill Martin Jr, but, apparently, close enough for the board to pass the amendment along with hundreds of others it considers with great, but not precise, dexterity.
This year's initiative for the TSBE Christianist voting bloc is history. U.S. history to be precise. The pile of amendments attempt to re-write American history to portray the founding of our country to be an emphatically Christian endeavor. Unsurprisingly, they rarely refer to the Declaration of Independance and never the Constitution. Why? Because, as nearly the unanimous community of history scholars point out, while the majority of this country's founders identified themselves as Christian, they intentionally refrained from using any Christian of biblical language in the either the Declaration or the Constitution. At the core of religious freedom, they believed, was the prevention of a state religion. But the TSBE has a well documented history of not letting facts stand in their way of truth, as though saying something repeatedly and with conviction will eventually make it true. From the article: "Gail Lowe, who became chairwoman of the board after McLeroy was ousted and who is one of the seven conservative Christians. “Many of us recognize that Judeo-Christian principles were the basis of our country and that many of our founding documents had a basis in Scripture. As we try to promote a better understanding of the Constitution, federalism, the separation of the branches of government, the basic rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, I think it will become evident to students that the founders had a religious motivation.”
Instead, the revisionists point to other documents such the The Mayflower Compact and from there draw their evidence. As Shorto writes "The language in the Mayflower Compact — a document that McLeroy and several others involved in the Texas process are especially fond of — describes the Pilgrims’ journey as being “for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith” and thus instills the idea that America was founded as a project for the spread of Christianity. In a book she wrote two years ago, Cynthia Dunbar, a board member, could not have been more explicit about this being the reason for the Mayflower Compact’s inclusion in textbooks; she quoted the document and then said, “This is undeniably our past, and it clearly delineates us as a nation intended to be emphatically Christian.” See? "Emphatically."
While the Christianists operate with impressive zeal around the assumption that "the true picture of America’s Christian founding has been whitewashed by 'the liberal agenda,'" there continues to be an equally zealous community holding them somewhat accountable to reality, namely, historians. A casualty of the situation has been the subject of religion in our schools. Where the Board and it's theocratic counterparts haven't succeeded into injecting their warped view of Christianity into the country's textbooks, there is little material on the subject as a whole. The topic is such a lightening rod, textbook publishers have opted to stay away from the subject completely except when pressured to do so by the folks who write the checks. This is a pity. The subject brings with it exceptional insight into the history of our country and other cultures. It is truly ironic that the work of a small group of evangelicals to weave their beliefs into the fabric of the country has resulted in the misrepresentation of one religion and the exclusion of the others. But for now, that irony is lost on the Texas State Board of Education and it falls to us to "save" them (and our children) from themselves.
Few are better skilled at naming hypocrisy than Andrew Sullivan. One of the most prolific bloggers around, Sullivan identifies himself as gay, roman catholic and a political conservative.
Are you a Christian who doesn't feel represented by the religious right? I know the feeling. When the discourse about faith is dominated by political fundamentalists and social conservatives, many others begin to feel as if their religion has been taken away from them.
