Among the myriads of other ways that American Christian Conservatives have copied the Whacko Left Wing has been their wholesale abandonment of Family Values as a core principle. The abysmal state of physical and mental health among the young; the abominable schools, the enshrinement of abortion as a fundamental human right, homo 'equality,' the corrupt social welfare system: all of these things tell us all that we need to know about the state of American Parenthood.
Religious training of children is another thing that Americans have outsourced to third parties; and the latest trend among our woke Republican Party has been to shift that responsibility onto the public school system. Based and Red-Pilled State officials have been grandstanding with various political publicity stunts, pretending to fight Liberal indoctrination by replacing it with their own versions of Political Correctness, and Megachurches and their billionaire donors haven't been slow to capitalize on this growing industry.
Ryan Walters, Oklahoma's Public School Commissar---who himself is heavily funded by Megachurches and Wall Street Oligarchs--- is currently pushing to have mandated teaching of the Bible in the public schools.
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Since the Postmodern version of American Conservatism has thrown up the sponge on issues like School Choice and given up its opposition to Government-Mandated religious indoctrination, Walters feels quite unrestrained as to which particular doctrines he's unilaterally decided to impose upon Oklahoma schoolchildren and teenagers. He's secured a bid proposal for government contracts to put Bibles in all schools; and his criteria for the types of Bibles are quite specific.
I'm not certain how kids who are barely capable in Modern English are going to be able to get through the Elizabethan English of the King James Version, especially without "study guides, publisher narration, or additional commentary;" or exactly how the documents included in Section 2.5 has any relationship to religious worship, but we digress. Bidding for this rather unique edition started last Monday and concludes this week: one of the first miracles might be finding a publisher who meets these exact criteria on such short notice.
The Oklahoman reached out to Mardel Christian & Education---a company that carries 2,900 editions of the Bible---and was informed that not one fits Walters' criteria. However, a more extensive search found two which do.
The God Bless the USA Bible, and the We the People Bible sold by nonprofit organizations connected to the Trump Family (which has collected about $300,000 in royalties so far) appear to be the only publishers meeting the Oklahoma standards. Walters' proposals call for 55,000 such Bibles, even though Oklahoma has a total of 43,000 classrooms---not all of which teach courses upon which the Bible would have any direct bearing. Trump licenses his name, image and likeness to be used in the God Bless the USA Bible’s marketing.
“We have talked about ensuring that our history courses include the role the Bible played throughout American history,” Walters hypocritically snorted at a recent interview. “We’ve talked about the efforts of left-wing groups and the teachers’ unions to drive the Bible out of school. I believe it’s important for historical context for our kids to understand the role the Bible played...Democrats plan to teach kids to hate their country as well as Christianity and Judaism and this Bible initiative is an antidote to that." Walters added that in the future "every state in the country would be doing this."
It probably shouldn't surprise anybody, but I've yet to see any criticism of Walters' policy---or the shady manner in which these Bibles are being procured---from anyone on the Conservative Christian Right. In fact, the Trump Campaign and the RNC has fully backed Walters and his schemes.
Bibles should be in every school library, along with other religious literature, but libraries are not especially high priorities these days. Nor, apparently is our traditions of keeping religious indoctrination out of classrooms; nor, apparently, is subsidizing political fronts with taxpayer dollars considered an anti-Conservative position.
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Kind of amusing, a mom recently got a lot of flack around not being qualified to teach her kid math. She said, "we'll learn together." So why was there some doubt she can teach basic math? Because she went to public school! Ai yi yi.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, if we can't trust our schools to teach basic math to our kids in 12 years time, we surely don't want them teaching the Bible.
And yes, so much of what the Christian political right does that is allegedly related to their deep concern about morality, is often just all about the money and procuring those lucrative publishing contracts.
As if this story couldn't worse; I learned today that the "God Bless the USA" and "We the People" Bibles are made in China. It's like these people can't help themselves, like it's some kind of compulsion to out themselves as fools and hypocrites.
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