K
Kickin' Ass and Takin' Names
Guest
Here is an event I have no intention of honoring: American Religious
History Week. OK, it's not official yet. But it is spelled out as
Resolution 888 in the bowels of a House committee, sponsored by
Republican Congressman Randy Forbes and backed by thirty-one other
Representatives. This is an insidious attempt by the radical Christian
right to rewrite American history, to turn the founding fathers from
deists into Christian fundamentalists, to proclaim us officially to be
a Christian nation. If you want to know why Mike Huckabee is
dangerous, why his brand of right-wing Christian populism is so
frightening, you should read this resolution.
Sent to me by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the
resolution has passages like this: "Whereas political scientists have
documented that the most frequently-cited source in the political
period known as The Founding Era was the Bible" and "Whereas the
United States Supreme Court has declared throughout the course of our
Nation's history that the United States is 'a Christian country', 'a
Christian nation', 'a Christian people', 'a religious people whose
institutions presuppose a Supreme Being' and that 'we cannot read into
the Bill of Rights a philosophy of hostility to religion....'"
The resolution is staggering for its sheer volume of falsehoods about
our history, our system of government and our democracy. It asserts
that Thomas Jefferson "urged local governments to make land available
specifically for Christian purposes, provided Federal funding for
missionary work among Indian tribes, and declared that religious
schools would receive 'the patronage of the government.'" There are
seventy-six preambular clauses like these, leading up to four
resolution clauses, the third of which states that the House "rejects,
in the strongest possible terms, any effort to remove, obscure, or
purposely omit such history from our Nation's public buildings and
educational resources."
"House Resolution 888 is perhaps the most disgraceful, shocking and
tragic example yet of the pernicious and pervasive pattern and
practice of the unconstitutional rape of our bedrock American
citizens' religious freedoms by the fundamentalist Christian right,"
says Michael "Mikey" Weinstein, head of the Military Religious Freedom
Foundation and a former White House counsel for President Reagan.
The resolution may never work its way out of committee, and even if it
does, it may never be passed. But it is important because it expresses
an increasingly influential ideology. It underlies the ideological
appeal of the Huckabee campaign, however adroitly the Republican
candidate dodges these issues when speaking to the general public. "I
hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ,"
Huckabee told a Baptist convention in 1998. He assured the crowd that
he had not entered politics "because I thought government had a better
answer. I got into
politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that
the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives." And
this ideology, as illustrated by Mitt Romney's coded appeal to
Christian fundamentalists when giving his recent Texas speech on
faith, or even John McCain's humbling trip to Liberty University, has
a powerful pull on Republican candidates.
I saw a persistent rewriting of history in numerous Christian history
textbooks, used by hundreds of thousands of children, when I wrote
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. The
revisionists take a minor historical event -- in the case of the
missionaries, drawing from very rare decisions to provide funds for
mission schools or the building of a church on Indian lands -- and use
it to create a false portrait of a Christian nation. The resolution
asserts that the Fourth of July was designed as a Christian holiday,
and that in 1977 Congress authorized that Bibles be "printed under
their care" and imported for dissemination to the American public.
Congress never imported Bibles. But facts matter little.
It is a mistake, despite the seeming implosion of the Republican
Party, to count these people out. The Christian radicals have, as the
Huckabee candidacy illustrates, broken free from the fetters of their
corporate and neocon handlers. They have unleashed a frightening
populism that, in the event of an economic meltdown or period of
instability, could see the movement ride the wave of a massive right-
wing backlash. So when you get tired of the cute sound bites that
constitute most coverage of these campaigns, pull out this resolution
to remind yourself that we are playing with dynamite, that unless we
begin to re-enfranchise tens of millions of Americans -- and this
means economically -- back into the mainstream, unless we again give
our workers the chance to earn a living wage, we will fail to blunt
this movement and could well fall victim to it.
History Week. OK, it's not official yet. But it is spelled out as
Resolution 888 in the bowels of a House committee, sponsored by
Republican Congressman Randy Forbes and backed by thirty-one other
Representatives. This is an insidious attempt by the radical Christian
right to rewrite American history, to turn the founding fathers from
deists into Christian fundamentalists, to proclaim us officially to be
a Christian nation. If you want to know why Mike Huckabee is
dangerous, why his brand of right-wing Christian populism is so
frightening, you should read this resolution.
Sent to me by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the
resolution has passages like this: "Whereas political scientists have
documented that the most frequently-cited source in the political
period known as The Founding Era was the Bible" and "Whereas the
United States Supreme Court has declared throughout the course of our
Nation's history that the United States is 'a Christian country', 'a
Christian nation', 'a Christian people', 'a religious people whose
institutions presuppose a Supreme Being' and that 'we cannot read into
the Bill of Rights a philosophy of hostility to religion....'"
The resolution is staggering for its sheer volume of falsehoods about
our history, our system of government and our democracy. It asserts
that Thomas Jefferson "urged local governments to make land available
specifically for Christian purposes, provided Federal funding for
missionary work among Indian tribes, and declared that religious
schools would receive 'the patronage of the government.'" There are
seventy-six preambular clauses like these, leading up to four
resolution clauses, the third of which states that the House "rejects,
in the strongest possible terms, any effort to remove, obscure, or
purposely omit such history from our Nation's public buildings and
educational resources."
"House Resolution 888 is perhaps the most disgraceful, shocking and
tragic example yet of the pernicious and pervasive pattern and
practice of the unconstitutional rape of our bedrock American
citizens' religious freedoms by the fundamentalist Christian right,"
says Michael "Mikey" Weinstein, head of the Military Religious Freedom
Foundation and a former White House counsel for President Reagan.
The resolution may never work its way out of committee, and even if it
does, it may never be passed. But it is important because it expresses
an increasingly influential ideology. It underlies the ideological
appeal of the Huckabee campaign, however adroitly the Republican
candidate dodges these issues when speaking to the general public. "I
hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ,"
Huckabee told a Baptist convention in 1998. He assured the crowd that
he had not entered politics "because I thought government had a better
answer. I got into
politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that
the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives." And
this ideology, as illustrated by Mitt Romney's coded appeal to
Christian fundamentalists when giving his recent Texas speech on
faith, or even John McCain's humbling trip to Liberty University, has
a powerful pull on Republican candidates.
I saw a persistent rewriting of history in numerous Christian history
textbooks, used by hundreds of thousands of children, when I wrote
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. The
revisionists take a minor historical event -- in the case of the
missionaries, drawing from very rare decisions to provide funds for
mission schools or the building of a church on Indian lands -- and use
it to create a false portrait of a Christian nation. The resolution
asserts that the Fourth of July was designed as a Christian holiday,
and that in 1977 Congress authorized that Bibles be "printed under
their care" and imported for dissemination to the American public.
Congress never imported Bibles. But facts matter little.
It is a mistake, despite the seeming implosion of the Republican
Party, to count these people out. The Christian radicals have, as the
Huckabee candidacy illustrates, broken free from the fetters of their
corporate and neocon handlers. They have unleashed a frightening
populism that, in the event of an economic meltdown or period of
instability, could see the movement ride the wave of a massive right-
wing backlash. So when you get tired of the cute sound bites that
constitute most coverage of these campaigns, pull out this resolution
to remind yourself that we are playing with dynamite, that unless we
begin to re-enfranchise tens of millions of Americans -- and this
means economically -- back into the mainstream, unless we again give
our workers the chance to earn a living wage, we will fail to blunt
this movement and could well fall victim to it.