It's hard to pick up a print publication or punch up a pixel posting without running into an article about someone demanding religion in public schools.
When they say religion they mean, of course, the Christian religion. This is, after all, they argue, a Christian Nation.
So the questions libertarians and other thoughtful thinkers need to ask are:
1. Really?
2. Which Christian religion?
Taking the second question first, let's rhetorically grant Christians their fondest wish and render religion unto the public schools.
Headline: "Texas schools required to offer Bible course beginning this
school year" - Doug Blankenship, Columbia Evangelical Examiner
(AP photo)
The problem then becomes, whose brand of Christianity gets turned into the Sacred Syllabus? Will students be steeped in the teachings of turning the other cheek or taking an eye for an eye? Will they learn about a loving Savior or become versed in a vengeful Divinity?
Maybe rightwing religionists can make common cause with the liberal left and inaugurate a Christian Sex Education course to teach the kiddos about sex in the Bible, seeing as how it's bursting at the seams with rape and adultery and prostitution and fornication and masturbation and incest and homosexuality and wife swapping and bestiality and orgies and everything else imaginable except online porn and phone sex and sexting which the poor Biblical Times populace just didn't have access to.
Still want religion in public schools?
Or maybe they can create a civics class centered on the endless marauding and murdering and mayhem in the Good Book. There's sacrificing of animals and smiting of foes and cutting off of heads and plucking out of eyes and chopping off of hands and stoning of women and slaying of newborns and burning of whores and killing of Egyptians and executing of Sabbath breakers and the list goes on.
Still want religion in public schools?
And certainly history class should include the history of Christianity, how people were wantonly slaughtered during the Crusades and slaughtered during the witch hunts and slaughtered during the power grab for the wealth of the Knights Templar and slaughtered during the religious wars between Protestants and Catholics.
Still want religion in public schools?
As for that first question...
America may be mostly a nation of Christians but it is not a Christian Nation. It is, at least on paper, a nation of free individuals.
Besides all the Old World Christians America is a nation of European Jews and Asian Buddhists and Middle Eastern Muslims and millions who mark the box on their government mandated questionnaires as Other, Agnostic, Atheist, or None.
Yes, it was predominately Christians who settled America.
There were the Spanish Catholics who built forts and missions from Florida to California while slaughtering and enslaving the "Indians."
There were the Frenchies and the Brits who not only fought the "French and Indian War" to determine who would control North America but whether Catholic or Protestant Christianity would prevail.
There were the Pilgrims who carved out their colonies in Massachusetts in places like Salem and began burning their own women as "witches."
While it may upset true believers who claim that America is a Christian nation, few of the folks who penned the founding parchments of this country, such as the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights, and corresponded with one another about "building a wall of separation between church and state" called themselves Christians. While "God" appears in these documents the names "Jesus" and "Christ" do not. That's because most of the key country creators were Deists.
Being Deists meant they believed that God created humankind, endowed them with free will, and then sent them on their merry way to do their own thing without the Creator's constant incursions.
A Christian Nation being forced upon everyone from the religious right can become the same kind of ugly, intrusive, stultifying, imprisoning experience as the Welfare State being forced upon everyone from the liberal left.
No wonder there's a culture war.
Those who call themselves Christian libertarians understand this. They keep their belief within their own private churches and church schools and homes and home schools where it belongs, understanding that forcing their ideals on others is both un-Christian and un-libertarian.
Still want religion in public schools? Still want public schools at all?
Be very very careful what you wish for.
(Read the Reed interview at The US Report)
Comments
If we ignore the l-o-n-g history before Europeans settled here and pretend it is a Christian nation, can I have concubines?
Dear Gary:
It is too bad you went and ruined (or at least soured) your important and good argument with a lot of false "facts" and exaggerations about history: usually you are more careful about that. The founders DID address the issue of "which Christian religion" (which is why the BOR has what it does, as well as the prohibition on religious oaths/tests of office). And the historical evidence (go and read more of the original writings - your citations are very selective) is that some, not "most" of the founders were deists (although it was possible to be a deist AND a christian, in those days, just not in many denominations). It was those who were "christian" (including deist christians) that fought the hardest for religious liberty. For most of two centuries, even atheists and deists and Jews considered it a "Christian nation" - without a state church - because virtually all citizens subscribed (or claimed such) to a limited set of ethics and morals taken from the New Testament.
The problem is not Bibles in schools. The problem is government in schools. Take the government out, then let each school and their customers (the parents) decide what books to use.
Gary:
Your so right. Do we need public school at all? It took me awhile to realize that any association, group, or organization.
Required my surrender of freedoms at the joining of that group.
Even tho I am avid right religiously. I believe that every one has a God given right to chose and answer to God and debate who God is as the truth is known.
Since none are perfect, how can I possible speak the truth with accuracy? Leave that to God.
If God does not demand obedience and makes it free will, choice and He will judge later. How can I possibly demand anything of anyone? Except individual freedom to choose.
Bibles or Christian principles had been in the classroom for nearly 200 years in this country, and it’s obvious that neither had the effect that those who don’t believe in them claim they have, or we would be a Christian nation and this discussion would be moot. The main reason that this isn’t a “Christian” nation anymore, is because Christianity is voluntary, not mandatory, unlike some religions that encourage its followers to strap on bombs or fly airplanes into buildings to murder innocent people. Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship, and folks who truly study and practice it understand its two basic tenents: love the Lord with all your heart, soul, and mind and love your neighbor as yourself and, do unto others as you would do unto you. If you do that, it would be a whole lot more difficult to do horrid acts in the name of Christianity.
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