The Battle of the Textbooks
Few things in life are as clear as the futility of a real debate on the clarity of America's religious origins.
"Debate," I said? Lay a finger, unsuspectingly, on The New York Times Magazine's inspection of the attempt by so-called Christian fundamentalists to overhaul history textbooks, and you require treatment for first-degree burns.
I refer less to the article itself than to readers' sulfurous responses to the claims of Texas State Board of Education members concerning the need they see for forthright teaching of the founding fathers' Christianity. Yow-ee! "These people are dangerous." "These people are scary." "Can't we simply return Texas to the Mexicans and terminate this national embarrassment?" "Next we will be arresting 'non-Christians' and putting them in internment camps." "There seems to be an unlimited supply of lunatics in America." This, and more, from readers of our major newspaper of record.
See what I mean? Better yet, see what many Christians, not all of the "right-wing" variety, mean when they suggest the presence in the United States of growing hostility to their faith, or supernatural faith of any kind?
The magazine article in question comes down, tonally, on the side of those who reject the understanding of about half the state education board's members "that the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to biblical precepts"—and that textbooks should reflect that understanding.
The reason this is a big deal is that Texas buys 48 million textbooks annually, which gives textbooks publishers the incentive to "tailor their products to fit the standards dictated by the Lone Star State." Jeepers, some innocent Brooklyn kid, on the instance of boot-wearing yahoos from Bushland, could actually hear in class (shudder) that our country's founders saw Christianity as more than a personal opinion. Clearly, if you read The New York Times, you're supposed to stew about such a prospect.
Jeez, guys, I consume The New York Times myself, seven days a week, and the major worry I see emerging from behind the sulfur smoke is the sanctification of religious intolerance. In the name of "tolerance." Such is the irony here. We can't talk about claims to religious Truth without reviling those who claim such a thing as religious truth exists and requires intellectual notice, if not affirmation.
Was the United States organized as a "Christian nation"? That's a claim I'm not sure you can get away with. You can say, with total accuracy, that Christianity informed and inspired the whole of the civilization to which the founders belonged. Which seems to me the claim that really is at stake here. No Texas school board member contends the founders intended to "establish" Christianity as the state religion: Merely that they accepted Christianity's assumptions, in greater (Washington) or lesser (Jefferson) degree—viewed them as reflective of truth about human origins and destiny. From this a second contention follows: Students need reminding, in greater or lesser degree, that the founders prayed. (And, yes, they did pray!)
Why? What goes on? Chiefly, the working out of trends that set in during the early 1960s: growing secularism, growing depreciation of religion's—any religion's—importance in shaping motives and actions and consequences. The U.S. Supreme Court's often hostile rulings on school prayer and religious symbols in public places reflect a growing view, chiefly on the political and social left, that people who want God can look for Him in church and leave everyone else alone.
OK, interesting. Can we talk about that approach to civic life? Evidently not. As with abortion, the Supreme Court governmentalizes the discussion. A theological matter becomes, in our democracy, a power question. The State Board of Education in Texas takes up the question at precisely the level—the political one—to which the Supreme Court invited us all half a century ago.
My fellow New York Times readers don't appreciate my fellow Texans getting in their faces. Too bad. The secularists started this whole needless foofaraw. Let them, if they care to, pray for an end to it.
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Speaking of high school students, the powers that be in some districts are now requiring that literary theory be offered to advanced seniors. Amazing. Kids who haven't been introduced to much literature at all are being taught to annihilate it beforehand. The stuff's deadly since even reading a parody of theory like Crews's "Postmodern Pooh" causes you to look for the scurrilous accusations anyway. The subversive nature of today's curriculum has gone from the mere lies of Neo-Darwinism to undermining the epistemic nature of value, truth, belief, judgment, and so on itself. We shouldn't be too quick to recommend teaching Christianity's role in the founding of this country since the best-selling books on religion--and they have only one religion in mind--are venomously anti-religious, straightforward lies. The NYT crowd and their ilk would be only too happy to provide their history of the role of Christianity in America, casting freakish exceptions to Christian practice as its essence.
As an antidote, there's David Bentley Hart's "Atheist Delusions, The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies" for a polemical thrashing of the likes of Dennett, Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and their enablers at the NYT. David Berlinski's "Devils Delusion" is more light-hearted, but also right at the jugular of those New Atheists who get their picture taken in lab coats. For a knock-down refutation of relativism and constructivism, there's the short and sweet "Fear of Knowledge" by Paul Boghossian.
The reason this is a big deal is that Texas buys 48 million textbooks annually, which gives textbooks publishers the incentive to “tailor their products to fit the standards dictated by the Lone Star State.”
No school or collection of schools should purchase this many textbooks. No responsible parent today, who is even the least bit concerned about their children's education, should be expecting it from public schools -- Or even private schools for that matter. Outside of a very small neighborhood, there is no longer any agreement on what should be remembered, when in fact most things worth remembering have been forgotten. What honest Chronicle reader could possibly care what New Yorkers think about anything outside of New York? Robert E. Lee was tutored in his early years as he sat by a fire, memorizing the same or similar Latin that Light-Horse Harry had learned and his father's father had learned. Heck, even a snake pit or pig run like Lonesome Dove had cowboys and former Texas Rangers who knew a little Latin.
By what standard is anybody considered educated today? Once the fear of atheists, marxists and bureucrats becomes the beginning of Wisdom, it is too late to debate what should be handed down or drawn out in "educare."
We need to require atheists and secular people to post disclaimer on any display, television show or news article that they are responsible for the deaths of over 100 million people in the 20th century. Stalin - 30 million, Mao - 90 million, Pol Pot - 2 million, the leader of Ethopian Marxist government during the Carter Administration 1 or 2 million. They are history's criminals, not the christians, jews or muslims.
Everyone, please join me in proclaiming this the decade of Atheist atonement. Let's advocate reparations from atheists.
Matt,
It is not only those fools who are simply mad at God for holding his peace towards them, but those who believe in supply and demand -- and nothing else!!! Wendell Berry once reduced the whole dispute between Christians and conservatives to one wholesome
observation: "Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand. It is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy." This is still a very prominent notion in out of the way places where people still mind their own business and expect their vendors to do the same.
Mr. Murchison, as usual, a sober, restrained and realistic look at the issue. The origins of this country lie in several strains of English and Scottish Protestantism, to which later immigrants adapted to one degree or another. In fact, one or another variety of Protestantism was established in many of our original states. This ia far from the whole story, of course, but it's an essential aspect of our origins.
That is our history. Why not acknowledge it with gratitude and move on? Nobody's driving non-Protestants to the baptismal font at sword's point. Those who think the rather innocuous ceremonies of our civic religion are inefficacious should be content to stand by politely and smile inwardly at the eternal human comedy.
The US certainly was founded as a Christian country; as proof, see the many references to Jesus, the Triune God, and other Christian phrases in the Constitution ... oh wait...
Jack,
It would not matter at this point if they were. (some were, some were not) Joe Sobran recently summed up The Cultural State of our Union:
And besides, how many journalists know the Bible? Most of them may be gullible enough to think there is a Bible story of early Christians in some lion’s den, or to suppose that “brother’s keeper” signifies fraternal affection. They aren’t noted for literacy, and they’d probably notice nothing amiss if Mark Antony said: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, loan me your ears.”
Christians should stop wasting their time and money trying to "reform" the government schools. Instead, they should start their own schools.
#9: I concur. Nearly all public institutions of education are imploding due to illiteracy, truancy, violence, etc. ad nauseam. Trying to fix them (except possibly in some very provincial cases) is a waste.
#6 "The origins of this country lie in several strains of English and Scottish Protestantism..."
That IS some of the story, yes. The rest would be the legend that America was meant to be a neo-Atlantis, founded by Kabbala and Masonism.
John Seiler @9: The problem would not be solved by religious schools, unless they stopped employing teachers "certified" by the state. Teachers' Unions control the certification requirements.
Years ago, my wife and I reviewed applications for elementary school positions at a religious elementary school. The applicants, all state of Maryland certified, had all the code words for multiculturalism, environmentalisn, and all of the other popular isms down pat, but they could not spell or punctuate their poorly constructed sentences properly.