Christian Right Trying To Change Public Education In Texas: God Made The USA

Christianists in Texas are trying to create a history curriculum for public schools that says the United States would not exist were it not for the divine intervention of God.

Members of a panel of experts appointed by the [Texas school] board to revise the state's history curriculum, who include a Christian fundamentalist preacher who says he is fighting a war for America's moral soul, want lessons to emphasise the part played by Christianity in the founding of the US and that religion is a civic virtue. Opponents have decried the move as an attempt to insert religious teachings in to the classroom by stealth, similar to the Christian right's partially successful attempt to limit the teaching of evolution in biology lessons in Texas. One of the panel, David Barton, founder of a Christian heritage group called WallBuilders, argues that the curriculum should reflect the fact that the US Constitution was written with God in mind including that "there is a fixed moral law derived from God and nature", that "there is a creator" and "government exists primarily to protect God-given rights to every individual". Barton says children should be taught that Christianity is the key to "American exceptionalism" because the structure of its democratic system is a recognition that human beings are fallible, and that religion is at the heart of being a virtuous citizen.

One of the members of the panel is a pastor who says that Hurricane Katrina and the defeat of the United States in Vietnam were God's punishment for sexual promiscuity and the tolerance of homosexuals. The above-linked article points out that history education in Texas could actually use a tweaking, as one-third of students recently answered a test question to say that the Magna Carta was signed on the Mayflower.

(Via - AmericaBlog)