Much to the chagrin of groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way, Bible curriculum classes are being taught in more than a thousand public high schools across the United States…. Some school districts are frightened off by the specter of lawsuits; nevertheless, Bible curriculum classes are now being taught in some 1,100 high schools in 300 school districts in 35 states across the nation – and this is going on during school hours, for credit, with the bible as the textbook. That is because those 300 school districts are currently offering a course called “The Bible as History and Literature,” a course curriculum from the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS).
I am all for spiritual education, even as an elective in high school, as long as it covers all faiths, and is not exclusively limited to Christianity or the Bible. Let the class cover the Torah, as it relates to History and Literature. After all, it's been around far longer than the Bible.
The United States is a country of multiple faiths, regardless of whether Christianity dominates or not. What scares me most is this trend toward converting our secular laws into biblical laws, which is inapposite with the constitution of this great nation.
"Conquering by Stealth and Deception/How the Dominionists Are Succeeding in Their Quest for National Control and World Power," in explaining Dominionists and their tactics, opens with:
Since the writing and posting of my essay, The Despoiling of America in February 2004, there is more and more evidence that not only has a cultural war been launched, but that the plotters are winning it. “Dominionism” now looks more like a term that is applicable to both right-wing-religious believers and to the neo-cons who were created and born in an astonishing resurgence of an immoral Machiavellianism: both groups believe in domination and control. While religious adherents adopted a decidedly heretical Christian doctrine, the neo-cons continue to use the American churches to help execute their cabal.
The author continues, paraphrasing what she considers to be the four immoral principles of the Dominionst movement:
1) Falsehoods are not only acceptable, they are a necessity. The corollary is: The masses will accept any lie if it is spoken with vigor, energy and dedication.
2) It is necessary to be cast under the cloak of “goodness” whereas all opponents and their ideas must be cast as “evil.”3) Complete destruction of every opponent must be accomplished through unrelenting personal attacks.
4) The creation of the appearance of overwhelming power and brutality is necessary in order to destroy the will of opponents to launch opposition of any kind.
One only has to look at the talking points of late emanating from the Republican party to see the mirror image of the above. Lamenting this condition, Bill Moyers writes:
One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.
Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians
alike, oblivious to the facts.
I beg to differ with the perception that the United States is a Christian nation. I believe the Christian population in America is the majority, but inasmuch as the founding fathers sought to separate church and state, it is just impossible for me to make that mental leap granting the title of Christian nation to America. To do so would be tantamount to surrending democracy to a theocracy. Unfortunately, to speak up against this trend results in one of the four priniciples above being applied to you, and that type of tyranny, most people avoid.
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American Dominionists - who have much in common with Islamic and Hindu radical fundamentalists - cannot be checked and defeated through secular liberal political action. The battle now is being waged on religious grounds, between the theocratic right (less than 20% of Americans) and a slowly awakening Christian center and left that is becoming tired of being bullied. Dominionism is a marginal, crackpot protestant theology everywhere but in the United States.
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