I find it fun to follow whorls and eddies that mark the chaotic patterns of the interconnectedness of topics online. Follow the links and who knows where you might end up. Via SusanG's front page "Open Thread and Diary Rescue" on Daily Kos, I was led to Troutfishing's diary, "Fake History 'Bible Course' Now in 382 School Districts," which admirably shines a spotlight on "The National Council On Bible Curriculum In Public Schools (NCBCPS), a stealth effort associated with the far right Council On National Policy," as examples of the religious right's efforts to spread a false historical narrative--a type of political propaganda, ideology-based and manipulative--in which America's founders intended the republic's laws and culture to forever expressly favor Christians and be influenced by conservative Christianity. Troutfishing:
Over the past two decades the creation of revisionist historical works claiming America's founders intended the US as a "Christian Nation" has turned into a booming cottage industry. Meanwhile, esteemed and tenured American historians at the nation's finest Universities have almost completely neglected to address the spread of a fabricated, mythologized Christian right historical narrative on America's alleged origins. That's a shame, because over the past several years a well funded, politically connected, organized effort has succeeded at inserting its course curriculum featuring that fake history into possibly hundreds of American public schools from Texas to New Jersey.
As political propaganda, what this fake history concludes with is America's moral decline precipitated by our apparently ever-more vehement rejection of the founders' intentions for a Christian America: i.e., everything wrong in America today is the result of secular humanists' influence. Apparently, their influence even on the Supreme Court, since that body's decision that the devotional use of the bible is not permitted in public schools is would-be evidence these propagandists and false historians cite. (Devotional use of the Bible in school is correctly forbidden. Nonetheless, the academic study of the Bible is prudent, because the Bible has influenced politics, art, literature, music, and so very much else for centuries. That's why it's great that the comments following Troutfishing's diary led me to The Bible Literacy Project.)
And Troutfishing's diary included a link to Liars for Jesus, a book about the religious right's ongoing efforts to spread their false narrative. (The book is available through Amazon.com.)
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