A Demonic Drive for Christianity in the Classroom
Joshua blew his horn and the walls of Jericho came crumbling down.
That’s a story from the Christian bible that will be taught in Oklahoma Schools, following Ryan Walters, the state’s superintendent of public instruction, announcing that all state schools will be required to incorporate the Bible and the Ten Commandments into their curricula. Fifth- through 12th-grade teachers will be mandated to keep a Bible in their classrooms and teach from it.
“The Bible is an indispensable historical and cultural touchstone,” Walters said in a press release. “Without basic knowledge of it, Oklahoma students are unable to properly contextualize the foundation of our nation. This is not merely an educational directive but a crucial step in ensuring our students grasp the core values and historical context of our country.”
What Walters and his ilk describe as core values is based upon the United States as an adjunct to extreme Christian theology.
The state of Louisiana has passed a law requiring all state-funded schools and universities to display the St James version of the Ten Commandments.
“If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original law-giver, which was Moses,” Louisiana’s GOP Gov. Jeff Landry said at the signing ceremony on June 19, referring to the biblical precepts believed to have been revealed to the Hebrew teacher and leader depicted in the Bible.
Louisiana legislators dealt with the problem of so many versions of the Ten Commandments existing by mandating a version not in the Bible. (Exodus 20:2–17, Deuteronomy 5:6–21, and the "Ritual Decalogue" of Exodus 34:11–26. The Commandments also appear in various forms in the Quran and the Torah. And these examples don’t include the various translations recorded over the centuries.)
In Colorado, the Republican Party issued a call for all parents to pull their kids from public schools because Democrats use them to “turn more kids trans.” The email proclamation was in response to a bill requiring schools to develop policies that prohibit discrimination around using students’ chosen names for unofficial documents such as rosters and name tags.
North Carolina’s public voucher dollars are funding Christian Nationalist indoctrination in schools. Education observer Justin Parmenter reports:
“Daniel Academy’s mission is to ‘raise the next generation of leaders who will transform the heart of our nation’ by equipping students ‘to enter the Seven Mountains of Influence.’ The Seven Mountains of Influence (also referred to as the Seven Mountains of Dominion or the Seven Mountains Mandate) refers to seven areas of society: religion, family, education, government, media, arts & entertainment, and business. Dominionists who follow this doctrine believe that they are mandated by God to control all seven of society’s ‘mountains,’ and that doing so will trigger the end times.”
It’s not just lesson plans. books, and posters creeping into public schools.
From the Washington Post:
Lawmakers in mostly conservative states are pushing a coordinated effort to bring chaplains into public schools, aided by a new, legislation-crafting network that aims to address policy issues “from a biblical world view” and by a consortium whose promotional materials say chaplains are a way to convert millions to Christianity.
The bills have been introduced this legislative season in 14 states, inspired by Texas, which passed a law last year allowing school districts to hire chaplains or use them as volunteers for whatever role the local school board sees fit, including replacing trained counselors. Chaplain bills were approved by one legislative chamber in three states — Utah, Indiana and Louisiana — but died in Utah and Indiana. Bills are pending in nine states. One passed both houses of Florida’s legislature and is awaiting the governor’s signature.
Voucher funding for religious charter schools is another coordinated effort. The Save Our Schools Arizona Network explains:
Much of the legislative action around school vouchers has focused on pushing taxpayer funding into church-run schools and microschools with no regulation around what is taught.
As a result, Arizona taxpayer funding is now being used to push dangerous, anti-scientific religious curricula such as materials from Bob Jones University, Abeka, and Accelerated Christian Education. Analyses of these materials show they inaccurately portray events in Muslim and Catholic history while perpetuating anti-Semitic stereotypes.
The materials speak disparagingly of Native Americans and Native culture. For instance, an ACE textbook referred to Manifest Destiny as spreading the gospel: “It was considered God’s will that this vastly superior American culture should spread to all corners of the North American continent… The benighted Indians would be among the many beneficiaries of God’s provision.”
Although the particulars may differ, extremist religious movements all strive for supremacy and elimination of competing faiths. Leaders of the Taliban and House Republicans aren’t that different when it comes to goals.
If the political and social movement behind developments in various Red states have their way, we can look forward to a lot more of this nonsense. And we’ll also see incremental steps being taken with the twin aims of instilling angst in non-believers and building a series of legal challenges leading up to the Supreme Court decision they hope will pave the way for their Christian Nationalist dream.
Meanwhile, a majority of Americans are moving away from religious institutions. The percentage of Americans attending religious services on a weekly basis has declined over the past two decades from 42% to 30%. Two religions with growing attendance are those most likely to be excluded from Christian nationalist curricula; Muslims and Jews. Three in four respondents in Gallup polling say religion is declining in terms of influence on life in the US.
So it’s not like there’s any overwhelming demand for any of these performative interventions on behalf of Christianity. But there’s also no denying that our national religious pluralism tradition is a cherished part of our history.
It’s a huge mistake to look at these developments in schooling in a vacuum. Everything is connected to everything everywhere when it comes to understanding the deconstruction of a secular democratic republic and a social system that dares to challenge the supremacy of the (white male) individual.
The instances of these so-called-Christian incursions aimed at indoctrinating the nation’s youth parallel an ongoing effort to reconstruct the institutions our predecessors created in order to serve an authoritarian state.
The US Senate released a report last week taking a deep look into the funding for the efforts at degrading education. Here’s Sen. Bernie Sanders’ comment on Report on the Coordinated Effort by Billionaires to Dismantle the American Public School System:
For too long, there's been a coordinated effort to sabotage our public schools and privatize our education system. Unacceptable. On this 70th anniversary year of Brown v. Board of Education, let us recommit to creating an education system that works for all, not just the wealthy few
Schools, libraries, public health, the judicial system, regulatory agencies, unions, and more are being eroded by a constant drip, drip, drip of actions based on restoring a patriarchal society. The notion of collective responses to various challenges integral to American development is to be washed away from our memories.
Florida leads the pack when it comes to undermining public schools. A combination of low teacher pay, poor student investment, harsh state oversight, and a restrictive curriculum that cripples students’ ability to learn has all but destroyed public school systems. It shouldn’t surprise anybody that this strategy created a demand for alternatives.
Here’s Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:
As a bonus for parents who choose to homeschool their children, the state is willing to cover Disney passes and giant televisions. No questions asked. So it’s absolutely no surprise that Florida’s available homeschool vouchers were all snatched up for this school year and are expected to double next year.
But Florida isn’t the only state that has caught onto the make-it-terrible-and-they-will-leave system of driving kids to private schools. Tennessee now comes in just ahead of Florida on spending per student, and ranks No. 44 on teacher pay. Tennessee’s Republican legislature is considering the unprecedented step of turning down federal funding for education in hope of evading federal requirements on education. Not even Florida went that far.
When the Supreme Court started making rulings undermining the segregationist order, religious academies arose to serve white students in the south. The system of education built upon notions of racial superiority prospered thanks to the tax exempt status of its financiers.
When that pathway for funding was challenged, religious and social institutions became aggressively political. Knowing that segregation was a concept unlikely to gain popular acceptance in many regions, the leaders (and often beneficiaries) of those movements shifted their attention to abortion, using extreme rhetoric to further the ambitions of politicians who eschewed the gentler side of our national evolution.
Classrooms and instruction are an important part of the social safety net. Schools that have acknowledged this reality have been rewarded in ways going beyond test performance; children are healthier, parents are more engaged, and access to valuable institutions is enhanced.
Our brains are being rewired by technological inputs; there are effectively no public paths leading to ethical responses. Instead of building a generation to rise to these challenges, we see Christian nationalists furthering an agenda aimed at undermining public trust, limiting opportunities and encouraging materialism.
The so-called Christian attack on public education is about as un-American as you can get. It’s devilishly direct and dangerous for democracy.