Danger out of Texas

Have you seen the article in the New York Times Magazine of February 14? It’s about the Texas State Board of Education, members of which try to have text books reflect the notion that America is a Christian nation as promulgated by the Founding Fathers. (You can find the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html) Should this make us in New England nervous? Yes it should. Texas’s curriculum and text books chosen by the board are used in every public school in that state, and publishers, desirous of capturing that huge market will re-write their textbooks to pacify the Texans and then try to sell their books nationally. One estimate is that Texas’s decisions are reflected in 46 or 47 states.

The idea is to capture the minds of children. As Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition put it, “I would rather have a thousand school-board members than one president and no school-board members.” And why? As Cynthia Dunbar, a Christian activist on the Texas Board puts it, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.” I thought about where I’d heard that sentiment before, and then it came back to me. “He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.” It’s a coda from George Orwell’s classic novel of totalitarian mind control, 1984 much of which deals with re-writing history so that the current rulers can be proven always to have been right.

The Christian conservatives argue that separation of church and state is a myth perpetrated by the secular liberal establishment (whatever that is). All they are trying to do is uncover the long hidden truth that the founders were Christian men of God who established America as a Christian nation. Therefore there is no legal justification for disallowing crucifixes in government buildings or prayer in public schools. George Washington, the Conservatives say. called for a national day of thanksgiving after the British defeat at Saratoga in 1777. This is proof that the founders wanted religion in public life. But the Constitution (which does not mention God at all and which forbids any religious test for the holding of public office and the first amendment of which bars the establishment of a national religion) had not been written in 1777. Ah, the conservatives counter, but the Declaration of Independence had been and it refers to our creator and to Nature’s God. And by the legal principle of “incorporation by reference” you can connect the two documents, not read them as separate entities. It’s almost Talmudic. What this argument ignores is that Nature’s God is not another way of saying Jesus Christ; it’s a way that the politicians who wrote the Declaration of Independence could put some God into the document without actually referring to any specific deity. What, after all is Nature’s God, anyway?

The founders had an overtly biblical view of the world, the Christian Conservatives say. “In the new guidelines, students…are asked to identify traditions that informed America’s founding, ‘including Judeo-Christian (especially biblical law)’ and to ‘identify the individuals whose principles of law and government…informed the American founding documents,’ among whom they include Moses.” Yeah, we made it! Shabbat on Saturday! I wonder if the Texans know that Mosaic Law forbids pig roasts?

To Christian Conservatives the separation of powers is based on the Founders’ “clear understanding of the sinfulness of man,” not, apparently on Montesquieu’s “Spirit of the Laws” or Cicero’s “On the Republic,” or Locke’s “Treatises on Government” (which specifically condemn the idea of a state religion). When told by a professor of history that “The Supreme Court has forbidden public schools from ‘seeking to impress upon students the importance of particular religious values through the curriculum,’ and in the process said that the founders ‘did not draw on Mosaic law, as is mentioned in the [Texas] standards,’ several of the board members seemed dumbstruck.” But they insisted it was true anyway.

Be very worried, Jews. The Wise Men of Chelm are in charge of what your children and grandchildren may be learning in school. Already, according to the Times’ article, 65% of Americans agree with the statement that “the nation’s founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation,” and 55% said they believed the constitution actually established the country as a Christian nation.” Welcome to second class citizenship if the Texas conservatives get their way.