Religious conservatives in the US are determined to get Christianity back into the school curriculum. For the longest time, they were on the retreat as the US Supreme Court pushed back against attempts to use public schools as vehicles to teach religious ideas, arguing that the First Amendment to the constitution that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” implied that no agency of the state could show preference to one religion over another or to religion over no religion. Thus not only was teaching the Bible excluded but even religious ideas such as intelligent design creationism could not be taught in science classes as an alternative to the theory of evolution.
Christian conservatives have chafed at these restrictions, since they see the US as a Christian nation and are quick to view any social problems as due to this exclusion of religion from public life, especially schools. The propagate the idea that putting religion back in schools would return the country to a more moral footing. The inconvenient fact that some of the worst times in US history (slavery, Native American genocide, subjugation of women) was when Christianity and the Bible were dominant and ubiquitous in schools and in society does not seem to register in their minds.
But they now see the lurch towards conservatism in the makeup of the US Supreme Court as a chance to turn the clock back and there have been two brazen attempts to to do so.
In June, Louisiana passed a law requiring that the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom. And now the state superintendent of schools in Oklahoma has decreed that public schools are required to teach the Bible and the Ten Commandments.
It used to be that while the Supreme Court took a somewhat lenient view to passive and ceremonial religious iconography in the public sphere (such as monuments and statues and words on currency), it set a high bar when it came to the teaching of children, viewing them as more susceptible to indoctrination and thus needing to be protected from efforts to impose one set of religious ideas on them. So I would have expected that these moves would have been struck down easily, the Oklahoma case particularly so.
But now I am not so sanguine. The current court seems quite willing to set aside long-standing precedents based on convoluted reasoning. I can well see Samual Alito and Clarence Thomas finding ways to justify this. It will depend on how far the others are willing to tolerate moving towards making this an explicitly Christian nation.
You can follow the letter of the law while subverting it. Post the rival set of ten commandments next to the ‘classic’ set.
Teach the nasty parts of the bible, like smashing the heads of children against rocks.
Teach the silly parts of the bible: flies with four legs, a flat Earth allowing Jesus to see it all from a tall mountain.
I’m not too sure about having the Ten Commandments posted in various schools but as long as the US continues on its total anti-science approach I suppose we should brace ourselves for the disaster and figure out how many scientists and doctors we can pick up. I have read about doctors fleeing Texas to go to New York, I don’t see why we should not have a few choosing Ontario or Alberta. Well maybe not Alberta with Danielle Smith in office but BC looks good.
Having our major trading partner and the closest neighbour collapse is going to do really horrible things for the economy but we will probably survive albeit in a rather horrible state.
I thought I was joking just after Donald Trump got elected about us having to set up refugee camps at the US border. Unfortunately I was not wrong. We actually did have the army setting up tents along the border to shelter refugees. I just had not understood US politics enough to realize that it would be Haitians fleeing not US citizens.
The inconvenient fact that some of the worst times in US history (slavery, Native American genocide, subjugation of women) was when Christianity and the Bible were dominant and ubiquitous in schools and in society does not seem to register in their minds.
Oh, it registers all right -- just not the part about “worst”.
All the rest of that package looks pretty good, to them.
Funny how the Republicans are happy to reinterpret the Constitutional amendments at will until it comes to the 2nd..
1. “But they now see the lurch towards conservatism in the makeup of the US Supreme Court as a chance to turn the clock back and there have been two brazen attempts to to do so.”
vs
2. “But on a more serious note, regardless of how they are portrayed in the media and how many people perceive them (including, apparently, Australians) the USSC is not generally explicitly liberal or conservative based on the people who appointed them.”
Lurching vs. not-lurching; what is an Australian to think?
(Oh, right. Go by what they actually do. Cui bono?)
But hey, not generally does not mean not episodically, so… fair enough, I guess.
(Only a bit misleading)
This guy is a blatant christofascist.
He also doesn’t have the legal authority to order this under Oklahoma law. He has tried this before and lost in court. Xpost from Pharyngula.
It turns out as I suspected, that Ryan Walters the christofascist, in fact doesn’t have the legal authority to require that the bible be taught in Oklahoma schools.
“Just a couple of weeks ago, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that local school boards have the final say to determine which books and instructional materials are deemed to be appropriate in Oklahoma classrooms.”
The local school boards determine which books and instructional materials are deemed to be appropriate.
Which actually is just as bad or worse than having the clown Ryan Walters decide. I’m sure some of the local school boards in Oklahoma make him look like a woke liberal.
It looks like Ryan Walters wants to be sued and lose again. It’s free publicity.
My parents saddled me with religious schools from 1st grade through to my last year of high school. It was easily some of the worst years of my life. And that was in part due to the school and the environment it fostered. But part of the college religion classes was a class that taught us the first five books of the bible. The teacher wasn’t concerned with our beliefs, he saw it as his job to teach the content, philosophy, and what could be gleaned of the history of it instead.
This all happened a little before the internet became common and considerably before I ran across this place and realized there were whole groups of people who didn’t believe in religion.
Frankly I don’t think the religious people benefit as much as they think they do from teaching the bible. I had 12 years of religion classes and the only parts I actually recall were the hypocrisy of first communion and confirmation (it was a Catholic school), the first time they taught us that the golden rule supersedes and is an improvement on the 10 commandments, and the some of that class on the historical bits of the first 5 books of the bible. Nothing else stuck.
Having the internet where you can learn that you’re being lied to? Having even these same conservative schmucks promoting distrust in teachers while they’re pushing those same teachers to support their lies? Learning that the same churches that push for this because they want to promote themselves as moral authorities are tax frauds who actively support pedophiles and gaslight their victims? And how even so this is the golden age of church morality because they were far worse actors in the past?
They think a few illegal classes flaunting debunked nonsense are going to fool kids into ignoring all of that? They really don’t think much of anyone else, do they?
Slight correction: part of the high school religion classes taught the first 5 books of the bible.
Sorry, I was thinking that in college after firmly deciding I was an atheist I met some people who studied religion, the bible, and archaic Hebrew. The college pursuits were a much more academic approach and it surprised me that some of the scholars in that field were not believers. The earlier high school class I took felt like an easy beginner version of that.
@jkrideau; one of the idiocies of the USA is that a Cuban citizen who makes it to the USA is opened with welcome arms because that will really piss off (the deceased) Fidel Castro…but anyone else from the region is treated as human vermin, with particular hatred toward the Haitians and the Puerto Ricans. People from Puerto Rico are, of course, American citizens by birth since PR is a territory of the USA and are legally welcome to come to the continental USA, Alaska, and Hawaii just as any other American citizen. But take into consideration the problems the people of New Mexico (a US state) face when dealing with people who don’t think they’re Americans either.
How To Comply With Louisiana’s New Ten Commandments Law. Malicious compliance. Though shall read, honor, and obey the first amendment. Plus some bonus commandments to be posted in addition to the required ones.
Anat @ 10
That link was what I was thinking of at @1, but I could’t find it.
BTW in first and second grade in Sweden 1968-1970 we had “Christianity” as a subject. It was utterly confusing, and had no impact on our minds whatsoever. We had a State Church until ca. 2000 but only the elderly cared.
Making religion a part of the state bureaucracy did not help it resist modern culture. The Anglican church is suffering a similar fate.