[Zaxsdcxs]

How Christian Were the Founders? - NYTimes.com

An unlikely person in Texas holds tremendous power over Texas children's minds. His name is Don McElroy, and he chairs one of the most influential education boards in the country, chairman of the Texas Board of Education. He has never taught in classroom as a profession, or have a background in education at all. But, he "reads a lot", and he is a far-right conservative, which is all the qualifications you really need to sit on this board.

The BOE is charged with creating mandatory basic curriculae that must be taught in all Texas public schools.


Texas holds weight over 45 US states. Because the Texas government is the sole purchaser of primary and secondary education textbooks, the rules fashioned by the board determine what book publishers will write and ship to school children all across America.

The actions by this board have a wide impact. They can and do determine what children in Pennsylvania learn, or Ohio, or Nebraska.



No surprise then that the Board is also center stage, and has been for decades, for the culture wars between hard-right religious fanatics, moderates, secularists, and the left.

[grattperret]

From the article:

If the fight between the “Christian nation” advocates and mainstream thinkers could be focused onto a single element, it would be the “wall of separation” phrase. Christian thinkers like to point out that it does not appear in the Constitution, nor in any other legal document — letters that presidents write to their supporters are not legal decrees. Besides which, after the phrase left Jefferson’s pen it more or less disappeared for a century and a half — until Justice Hugo Black of the Supreme Court dug it out of history’s dustbin in 1947. It then slowly worked its way into the American lexicon and American life, helping to subtly mold the way we think about religion in society. To conservative Christians, there is no separation of church and state, and there never was. The concept, they say, is a modern secular fiction. There is no legal justification, therefore, for disallowing crucifixes in government buildings or school prayer.
This is where I see the danger. Americans have always frowned upon state-sanctioned religion. Look at Iran... a theocratical nation. Almost all theocratic societies have turned to backwards sh_tholes.

Even Jews understand this part. It's why the government of Israel is secular and doesn't leave government to a conclave of rabbis.



Do we really want to go down the path where Evangelicans and the folks who keep their TV's tuned to the 700 Club become a political organ?

Do I want my rights to be spelled out and determined by some Baptist preacher I have never met?


Tell me... if school prayer is so important---are the same Christians who are going to mandate my prayer going to allow me to bring the Rosary to class?

Will they allow imagry of the Virgin Mary to go up in classroom walls alongside crucifixes?



My guess is no, because the people driving the debate are Evangelicals, not Catholics. So I see a new America... dominated by hard-right neo-Puritians, who will be persecuting Catholics in the future.


I will not allow that to happen.

[Stengapsept]

Not to be flippant, but I think you should be more concerned about your sexuality** than your religion from these whackadoos.

** presuming I remember correctly that you are gay? If not, oops and my apologies.

[scewLacysmazy]

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Danbury Baptist Association, CT., Jan. 1, 1802 History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813. Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814 In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814 Thomas Jefferson quotes

[h98hhYxM]

seand,

That last quote in your sig line, from Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G Spafford....do you know who Spafford was? The name is familiar to me because he was a Protestant preacher of the day, who also wrote a number of hymns.

Do you wonder why Jefferson said "priest" and did not include "minister"?

The quote was intended to be anti-Catholic, not necessarily anti-all religion.

Not only was Jefferson a white supremacist and slave owner, he was also anti-Catholic.

[twinaircant]

Not to be flippant, but I think you should be more concerned about your sexuality** than your religion from these whackadoos.

** presuming I remember correctly that you are gay? If not, oops and my apologies.

Yeah, but if you wanna stop them, you gotta point out the facts that the enemies of your enemy will be on your side...

[BoboStin]

seand,

That last quote in your sig line, from Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G Spafford....do you know who Spafford was? The name is familiar to me because he was a Protestant preacher of the day, who also wrote a number of hymns.

Do you wonder why Jefferson said "priest" and did not include "minister"?

The quote was intended to be anti-Catholic, not necessarily anti-all religion.

Not only was Jefferson a white supremacist and slave owner, he was also anti-Catholic.

Another saner way to put this is that Jefferson was vehemently sceptical "official religions" as the Catholic church had historically been throughout large parts of European history. You may remember the whole bit with the Popes of Avignon where there were two competing popes supporting to rival political powers.

A more accurate take might be that not only did most of our founding fathers strongly distrusted the mixing of church and state (because it was bad for politics), but at the time many American Prostestant religious leaders (some anti-Catholic, some not) also shared that distrust (because they thought it was bad for religion). Now by contrast, many Protestant evangelicals (who tend even today to also be viciously anti-Catholic if you scrape the surface) all want to not just rewrite the Founding Father's historical perspective, but the perspective of their own church elders as well.

[LoisCampon]

One more from Jefferson about government's interest in religious tolerance as part of its mission to stay out of the "official religion" business.

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

-Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom

[lizadax]

How Christian Were the Founders? - NYTimes.com

An unlikely person in Texas holds tremendous power over Texas children's minds. His name is Don McElroy, and he chairs one of the most influential education boards in the country, chairman of the Texas Board of Education. He has never taught in classroom as a profession, or have a background in education at all. But, he "reads a lot", and he is a far-right conservative, which is all the qualifications you really need to sit on this board.

The BOE is charged with creating mandatory basic curriculae that must be taught in all Texas public schools.


Texas holds weight over 45 US states. Because the Texas government is the sole purchaser of primary and secondary education textbooks, the rules fashioned by the board determine what book publishers will write and ship to school children all across America.

The actions by this board have a wide impact. They can and do determine what children in Pennsylvania learn, or Ohio, or Nebraska.



No surprise then that the Board is also center stage, and has been for decades, for the culture wars between hard-right religious fanatics, moderates, secularists, and the left.

Some children will just believe what they are taught in school but others will not. Eckhart Tolle dropped out of school since he did not like what they were teaching and taught himself. Some parents home school their children. But our country was founded on the belief that blacks should be slaves and the native Americans should be put on reservations. People think that it is terrible to call blacks the N word but the U.S. presidents before Lincoln thought it was fine for blacks to be slaves.

[expomeHattePe]

The most prominent symbol of Christian conservative power on the State Board of Education, former chair Don McLeroy, lost his seat Tuesday by a razor-thin margin, and with the loss, the board likely won't be quite as much of a Christian Conservative flash point any more. The SBOE, Revised

[Rffkwfct]

^^ he heee Creationism PWNT!

[artofeyyy]

ppop
The surprise of the night came in North Texas, where veteran incumbent Miller, who has served on the board since 1984, lost to challenger George Clayton, an educator with an unorthodox platform. Clayton only spent $1,788 on the race compared to Miller’s $54,685.

The SBOE that takes office next year will be very different from the current panel. The social conservatives lost both their public face in McLeroy and their swing vote in Agosto. Conservative bloc member Cynthia Dunbar did not seek re-election, and the Republican primary in her district will go to a run-off between her preferred successor, Bryan Russell, and Marsha Farney, who ended the first round in a virtual tie.

What Clayton’s addition will mean for the board isn’t clear. His platform, according to his website, argues for ending “all punitive measures against teachers resulting from poor student performance on all district and state mandated tests” and for requiring that all curriculum proposals “be approved by a general vote of teachers in a district.”
And it's the raucous battles over curricula standards that have brought attention in recent years to a board that once was a quiet little backwater in Austin, as a group of seven Christian conservatives have led battles over sex education, the teaching of evolution and the perceived "liberal" content of social studies and history books.

Unfair Park tried to pin Clayton down on where he stood on the GOP conservative spectrum -- using a form of reportorial shorthand. We asked him how old the Earth is, figuring anything in the 10,000-year range would peg him as a religious conservative.

"I'm not going to cut it half and count the rings," Clayton replied cannily.

OK, slippery answer. (Also wrong, but never mind.) We tried again: Should evolution be taught in science classrooms?

Clayton said evolution is and should remain in science classrooms, but he thinks the alternative theories supported by the religious right -- intelligent design and creationism -- can "find a real nice home" in humanities, philosophy or world history classes.

"It's seems to me you can't be taught the one [evolution] without the other [creationism]," Clayton said. "It's an impossibility to talk about evolution without mentioning creationism."

[pGJLweEw]

You can't make this stuff up - This Modern World - Salon.com

[kjsdiuwe]

And when they're done with history, there's always the future.

Christian Groups: Biblical Armageddon Must Be Taught Alongside Global Warming | The Onion - America's Finest News Source | Onion News Network