"In American history, religion is all over the place, and wherever it appears, you should tell the story and do it appropriately."

A fundamentalist site such as this ought to be more interested in whether our founding fathers were “broad gate” Christians or “strait gate” Christians; if they were sheep or goats. Further, our preoccupation with the wealthy, powerful and influential, the rulers and the leaders, reflects more Constantinism than New Testament thought. The gospels and epistles were less preoccupied with the powerful influential rulers - who were often depicted as corrupt people who afflicted the poor and persecuted the righteous - and more concerned with the faith and piety of common folk at the margins of society: fisherman, tax collectors, carpenters, laborers etc. The modern concern over whether founding fathers and other such elites were Christian (we do know that not a few of them were Unitarians and freemasons) and how Christians need to be represented in and respected by the mainstream culture and the elite institutions who shape it is just that: modern. It has little to do with “Acts 4:13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.”

Rather than jousting about over whether America has some “Christian heritage” passed down from its leaders and elite classes, it would be far more in keeping with Biblical example to learn and speak more of the simple faith and piety of the poor and the lower classes. Insisting that the founding fathers were Christian or influenced by Christian values, principles or what have you is not going to render 1 Corinthians 1:18 void. That is, unbelievers are not going to stop regarding the cross as foolishness merely because George Washington (freemason) was a professed Christian.

I think that even a good argument that many of our founding fathers were Christians means little to our society. The average person would answer, “So?”

The past is a weak argument for today’s average Joe. He does not agree that it is even relevant.

I believe many of the problems we face today in our culture and gov’t are due to an overall ignorance of history. Our gov’t structure and practices are based on the principles set forth in documents such as The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, The Articles of Confederation, The Federalist Papers…. and it is not insignificant to consider the strongly held beliefs, religious or otherwise, of those who composed these documents.

It is also true, no matter how much kicking and screaming there is in ‘unbiased’ academia, one cannot truly separate God from academics. God is the Creator and Author of all truth, and the continued effort to create a separation between the ‘secular’ and ‘sacred’ is misguided and impossible. It is true that lost man will continue to deny God- nothing new and exciting about that. They will knowingly expunge every mention of God from history and science and literature if they can. Let them try- my kids aren’t going to sit under the guidance and counsel of this lost world anyway. I’d advise other Christian parents to do the same.

As Cynthia Dunbar, another Christian activist on the Texas board, put it, “The philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.”

After 100+ years of reaping the harvest of public education in this country, I’d say this statement is very true.

“In American history, religion is all over the place, and wherever it appears, you should tell the story and do it appropriately,” says Martin Marty, emeritus professor at the University of Chicago… “The goal should be natural inclusion. You couldn’t tell the story of the Pilgrims or the Puritans or the Dutch in New York without religion.”

The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut declare that the state was founded “to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus.” The language in the Mayflower Compact — a document that McLeroy and several others involved in the Texas process are especially fond of — describes the Pilgrims’ journey as being “for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith” …

Why can’t the religious and philosophical beliefs of our nation’s founders be acknowledged and studied as part of history? Why is it assumed that a discussion of the impact of the faiths of the men and women who shaped American history must be proselytization?

Last year, in its science re-evaluation, the board lunged into the evolution/creationism/intelligent-design debate. The conservative Christian bloc wanted to require science teachers to cover the “strengths and weaknesses” of the theory of evolution, language they used in the past as a tool to weaken the rationale for teaching evolution.

That’s pathetic- if evolution were so ironclad a theory, then it could stand up to intense examination- but it can’t, and therefore must be protected at all costs. In the immortal words of Amy Heckerling, author of Clueless, from which our country has adopted, like, this totally new system of, like, grammar and ya’ know, vocabulary- “Whatever”. http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys.php] http://www.freesmileys.org/smileys/smiley-rolleyes010.gif

Public education has always been a battleground between cultural forces; one reason that Texas’ school-board members find themselves at the very center of the battlefield is, not surprisingly, money. The state’s $22 billion education fund is among the largest educational endowments in the country. Texas uses some of that money to buy or distribute a staggering 48 million textbooks annually — which rather strongly inclines educational publishers to tailor their products to fit the standards dictated by the Lone Star State. California is the largest textbook market, but besides being bankrupt, it tends to be so specific about what kinds of information its students should learn that few other states follow its lead. Texas, on the other hand, was one of the first states to adopt statewide curriculum guidelines, back in 1998, and the guidelines it came up with (which are referred to as TEKS — pronounced “teaks” — for Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) were clear, broad and inclusive enough that many other states used them as a model in devising their own. And while technology is changing things, textbooks — printed or online —are still the backbone of education.

Textbooks are by and large a complete waste of time and money. Read-the-chapter-and-answer-the-questions-Read-the-chapter-and-answer-the-questions-Read-the-chapter-and-answer-the-questions… and kids get the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of history, science, sociology, gov’t… and we wonder why their knowledge base is so shallow. All you have to do is read the questions, look through the chapter for the words conveniently printed in bold, and fill in a couple of blanks. Memorize a few unrelated factoids and pass the test. Pass Go and collect a high school diploma.

If we were really concerned about kids receiving a quality education, we’d chuck the textbooks and have them read the actual documents, biographies, journals, letters… of those to whom we owe respect and acknowledgment of their achievements in science and history, and let the religious chips fall where they may. Instead we have the TSBoE spending millions predigesting material to feed the kids, as if they are afraid kids might discover some truth about our nation’s history or apply the scientific method to the origins of the universe.

[URL=http://townhall.com/columnists/BillMurchison/2010/02/16/the_battle_of_t…] Bill Murchison at Townhall.com[/URL]

Was the United States organized as a “Christian nation”? That’s a claim I’m not sure you can get away with. You can say, with total accuracy, that Christianity informed and inspired the whole of the civilization to which the founders belonged. Which seems to me the claim that really is at stake here. No Texas school board member contends the founders intended to “establish” Christianity as the state religion: Merely that they accepted Christianity’s assumptions, in greater (Washington) or lesser (Jefferson) degree — viewed them as reflective of truth about human origins and destiny.