House Resolution 888: A Beast of Apocalyptic Stature

[Echo In Light]

House Resolution 888: A Beast of Apocalyptic Stature
by Robert Weitzel / February 4th, 2008

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast.
– Book of Revelation 13:18

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth … and God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” So begins and ends the Christian antediluvian history of the earth—all 788 words of it.

It is this scant “history” that fundamentalist Christians, including members of Congress and the President, want taught in public schools in place of the 150 years of accumulated science embodied in the theory of evolution. This sliver of Christian history is the thin edge of the wedge they hope will split Jefferson’s wall separating church and state and allow fundamentalist dogma to pass for fact in science classrooms.

Now, if the founder of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, Rep. James Forbes (R-VA), and thirty-one other Representatives succeed in lodging their wedge by passing House Resolution 888, designating the first week in May as “American Religious History Week,” public school history classrooms will be opened to a fundamentalist version of the “rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation’s founding and subsequent history,” however scant or however fabricated.

House Resolution 888, introduced in December 2007, purports to be about nothing more than a recognition of America’s history of religious faith. In reality, it is an attempt by the Christian Right to rewrite the history of the United States along the same biblical slant as their revision of the history of life on earth.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/house-resolution-888-a-beast-of-apocalyptic-stature/

[ixion]

1. So tell me congress critters: will this include Native American religions, and the Buddhist

religions of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese who helped build America's railroad? How about the Voodoo religions from the Big Easy? Or the Pagan and Celtic religions of the Pastoralists?

Yeah, I didn't think so. Just fundie whacko xian religion will be discussed. My, how very disingenuous of you folks.

[Echo In Light]

2. Exactly: "America’s history of religious faith." Our cult is bigger than your cult!

[LWolf]

3. If it passes,

you can be sure that THIS teacher's classroom will spend the week on a comparative religion study, if we recognize it at all.

We don't do much for those already recognized things like black history, women's history, etc., because it doesn't fit the scope and sequence of state standards, and we have a hard enough time keeping up with the mandated curriculum. I doubt that this would be any different, but it opens the door for shaping the pov presented in future frameworks and standards.

[ThomWV]

4. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"

If there was one Democrat in Congress that would stand up during the debate on that bill and read that first phrase from the Bill of Rights the matter would be over. What more need be said?

[Echo In Light]

5. That is soooo "pre 9/11"

:sarcasm:

[demnan]

6. Why do we grow these shitheads in Virginia?

Thomas Jefferson would be turning over in his grave.