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sisyphusshruggedBy now I'm sure you've all heard from Dave and Digby that a teacher in California is suing because he was told not to use materials "including the Declaration of Independence" which mention God in his classroom.
Steven Williams, the plaintiff, is suing with the assistance of the Alliance Defense Fund, an organization founded by these ladies and gentlemen
The lawsuit was filed on Monday, but the stories (which, I'm assuming, rapidly followed the press release from ADF) started appearing just in time for Thanksgiving.
Let's see what's actually involved, shall we? Granted we only have what the plaintiffs have provided, since they released the material during a school holiday, ensuring that the defendants will not be able to respond until Monday. Still, we have some information. Let's see.
What exactly is it that Mr. Williams has been asked not to teach in his classroom?
Granted, this is not a complete list. The complaint itself does not provide a complete list, although materials such as A handout entitled "Fact Sheet: Currency and Coins: History of 'In God We Trust'" (which deals with events which took place during the civil war and has precisely jack to do with the founders) and Excerpts from "The Principles of Natural Law" by Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui (an attempt to demonstrate that all laws are based on God's law written by a swiss jurist who died in 1748 and whose works on the religious basis of man's law are popularly credited by fundamentalists fighting the separation of church and state with being a great influence on the founders because various founders are known to have read them. Certainly more influential than that blackguard Paine, whoever he was.) were left out of the Reuters and MSGOP stories, for lack of room, no doubt.
Do principals have the right to ask teachers to submit materials not on the curriculum for approval? Yes. Do any other teachers in Mr. Williams' school have to submit their materials? No. Is there a reason for this? Well, yeah.
A brief history of the Pledge of Allegiance and the addition of the words "under God"
OK, who guesses Mr. Williams gave his class a rousing talk on utopian socialism and the history of racial and gender discrimination in the religious establishment of the US during the turn of the last century? Bueller? Anybody?
Now, was this supplemental material appropriate for the subject matter of the course Mr. Williams was teaching? Well, first, what was the course Mr. Williams was teaching?
If someone can explain to me how a proclamation on prayer by George W. Bush in 2004, a handout on coinage in the 1860s and words added in the 1950s to a pledge written in the late 1800s are relevant to the origins of the United States (which took place in the late 1700s, if memory serves) I'd be delighted to hear about it.
Mr. Williams also, presumably for Thanksgiving consumption, whips out the old chestnut about Christianity not being given equal status in a diverse society
Well, not quite that either. From the complaint:
See, Christmas? Not a Christian religious holiday and he was allowed to teach it in a lesson talking about multicultural religious celebrations and their role in american life.
Help, he's being oppressed. It's the violence inherent in the system. Or something.
Kudos, though, for his recognizing that the first Thanksgiving was a native harvest festival and not a Christian religious event, which the Pilgrims would have celebrated in church and not while eating. Not all that many people appreciate that.
If Mr. Williams is willing to balance his teaching of this material with the teaching of secular and agnostic and deist thought amongst the founders (and there's certainly a great deal of that to chose from), and maybe stick to materials which were within, say, fifty years either way of the founding rather than cherrypicking two hundred-ump years of american history for material which supports his personal religious views, I'd say fine. Go for it.
As it is, Mr. Williams was looking for a fight, and he got one.
Lovely, though, that his handlers in the political arm of the Christian right chose a day when all americans are supposed to drop tools and dedicate to appreciating what we have been given and what we have made of it to slip this turd in the punch bowl, divide us as a people and deepen the differences between us.
I'm sure God appreciates it. He's probably had enough of brotherhood and the community of spirits this year.
Quick, fill in the blank:
And they'll know we are Christians by our ____________.
I'll give you a hint: the missing word is not "tshirts"
To you and yours and them and theirs and us and ours, a very happy Thanksgiving.
Namaste, as Jesus used to say.
Steven Williams, the plaintiff, is suing with the assistance of the Alliance Defense Fund, an organization founded by these ladies and gentlemen
Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christto promote, among other things, this principle
Larry Burkett, founder of Christian Financial Concepts
Rev. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family
Rev. D. James Kennedy, founder of Coral Ridge Ministries
Marlin Maddoux, President of International Christian Media
Don Wildmon, founder of American Family Association
(And 25+ other ministries)
President and General Counsel: Alan Sears
Date of founding: 1994
Finances: $15,411,093 (2001 budget)
ADF also defends the right of Christians to 'share the gospel' in workplaces and public schools, claiming that any efforts to curb proselytizing at work and school are anti-Christian.
The lawsuit was filed on Monday, but the stories (which, I'm assuming, rapidly followed the press release from ADF) started appearing just in time for Thanksgiving.
Let's see what's actually involved, shall we? Granted we only have what the plaintiffs have provided, since they released the material during a school holiday, ensuring that the defendants will not be able to respond until Monday. Still, we have some information. Let's see.
What exactly is it that Mr. Williams has been asked not to teach in his classroom?
The lawsuit alleges the school's principal Patricia Vidmar required Williams to submit his lesson plans and the supplemental handouts he planned to use in his classroom for review.
She then prevented Williams from giving students several handouts including:
- Excerpts from the Declaration of Independence with references to "God,'' "Creator,'' and "Supreme Judge.''
- "George Washington's Prayer Journal.''
- "The Rights of the Colonists,'' by Samuel Adams, which includes passages excluding Roman Catholics from religious tolerance because of their "doctrines subversive of the civil government under which they live.''
- George W. Bush's presidential 2004 Day of Prayer proclamation, with a supplemental handout on the history of the National Day of Prayer.
- Several excerpts from John Adam's diary, including the July 26, 1796 passage, "Cloudy ... The Christian religion is above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity, let the black guard Paine say what he will it is resignation to God, it is goodness itself to man.''
Granted, this is not a complete list. The complaint itself does not provide a complete list, although materials such as A handout entitled "Fact Sheet: Currency and Coins: History of 'In God We Trust'" (which deals with events which took place during the civil war and has precisely jack to do with the founders) and Excerpts from "The Principles of Natural Law" by Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui (an attempt to demonstrate that all laws are based on God's law written by a swiss jurist who died in 1748 and whose works on the religious basis of man's law are popularly credited by fundamentalists fighting the separation of church and state with being a great influence on the founders because various founders are known to have read them. Certainly more influential than that blackguard Paine, whoever he was.) were left out of the Reuters and MSGOP stories, for lack of room, no doubt.
Do principals have the right to ask teachers to submit materials not on the curriculum for approval? Yes. Do any other teachers in Mr. Williams' school have to submit their materials? No. Is there a reason for this? Well, yeah.
Speaking from his home Wednesday, a school holiday, Williams said the problems started last year after he responded to a student who asked why the Pledge of Allegiance includes the phrase, "under God.''
Eventually a parent complained and the principal started requesting his lesson plans and handouts.
"I've never even tried to hint the kids need to believe this or this is the right religion to believe,'' said Williams, who has been teaching eight years. "I'm just trying to teach history.''
A brief history of the Pledge of Allegiance and the addition of the words "under God"
Francis Bellamy (1855 - 1931), a Baptist minister, wrote the original Pledge in August 1892. He was a Christian Socialist. In his Pledge, he is expressing the ideas of his first cousin, Edward Bellamy, author of the American socialist utopian novels, Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897).
Francis Bellamy in his sermons and lectures and Edward Bellamy in his novels and articles described in detail how the middle class could create a planned economy with political, social and economic equality for all. The government would run a peace time economy similar to our present military industrial complex.
The Pledge was published in the September 8th issue of The Youth's Companion, the leading family magazine and the Reader's Digest of its day. Its owner and editor, Daniel Ford, had hired Francis in 1891 as his assistant when Francis was pressured into leaving his baptist church in Boston because of his socialist sermons. As a member of his congregation, Ford had enjoyed Francis's sermons. Ford later founded the liberal and often controversial Ford Hall Forum, located in downtown Boston.
In 1892 Francis Bellamy was also a chairman of a committee of state superintendents of education in the National Education Association. As its chairman, he prepared the program for the public schools' quadricentennial celebration for Columbus Day in 1892. He structured this public school program around a flag raising ceremony and a flag salute - his 'Pledge of Allegiance.'
His original Pledge read as follows: 'I pledge allegiance to my Flag and (to*) the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.' He considered placing the word, 'equality,' in his Pledge, but knew that the state superintendents of education on his committee were against equality for women and African Americans. ['to' added in October, 1892.]
Dr. Mortimer Adler, American philosopher and last living founder of the Great Books program at Saint John's College, has analyzed these ideas in his book, The Six Great Ideas. He argues that the three great ideas of the American political tradition are 'equality, liberty and justice for all.' 'Justice' mediates between the often conflicting goals of 'liberty' and 'equality.'
In 1923 and 1924 the National Flag Conference, under the 'leadership of the American Legion and the Daughters of the American Revolution, changed the Pledge's words, 'my Flag,' to 'the Flag of the United States of America.' Bellamy disliked this change, but his protest was ignored.
In 1954, Congress after a campaign by the Knights of Columbus, added the words, 'under God,' to the Pledge. The Pledge was now both a patriotic oath and a public prayer.
Bellamy's granddaughter said he also would have resented this second change. He had been pressured into leaving his church in 1891 because of his socialist sermons. In his retirement in Florida, he stopped attending church because he disliked the racial bigotry he found there.
What follows is Bellamy's own account of some of the thoughts that went through his mind in August, 1892, as he picked the words of his Pledge:It began as an intensive communing with salient points of our national history, from the Declaration of Independence onwards with the makings of the Constitution...with the meaning of the Civil War with the aspiration of the people...
The true reason for allegiance to the Flag is the 'republic for which it stands.' ...And what does that vast thing, the Republic mean? It is the concise political word for the Nation - the One Nation which the Civil War was fought to prove. To make that One Nation idea clear, we must specify that it is indivisible, as Webster and Lincoln used to repeat in their great speeches. And its future?
Just here arose the temptation of the historic slogan of the French Revolution which meant so much to Jefferson and his friends, 'Liberty, equality, fraternity.' No, that would be too fanciful, too many thousands of years off in realization. But we as a nation do stand square on the doctrine of liberty and justice for all...
OK, who guesses Mr. Williams gave his class a rousing talk on utopian socialism and the history of racial and gender discrimination in the religious establishment of the US during the turn of the last century? Bueller? Anybody?
Now, was this supplemental material appropriate for the subject matter of the course Mr. Williams was teaching? Well, first, what was the course Mr. Williams was teaching?
The state's fifth-grade social studies standards include learning about the religious, economic, social and cultural origins of the United States.
If someone can explain to me how a proclamation on prayer by George W. Bush in 2004, a handout on coinage in the 1860s and words added in the 1950s to a pledge written in the late 1800s are relevant to the origins of the United States (which took place in the late 1700s, if memory serves) I'd be delighted to hear about it.
Mr. Williams also, presumably for Thanksgiving consumption, whips out the old chestnut about Christianity not being given equal status in a diverse society
Williams said he thinks society has become hypersensitive to any reference of Christianity in the public arena, especially schools. He said he has taught students about Ramadan and Kwanzaa and applauded for those lessons.
"People are like, "Oh good, that's diversity,' '' he said. "As soon as Christianity involved, it's separation of church and state.''
Well, not quite that either. From the complaint:
In November 2003, Mr. Williams taught a lesson on the origins of Thanksgiving.
On December 2003 and January 2004, Mr. Williams taught lessons on the origins of religious holidays, including Christmas, Ramadan, Diwali, Hanukah and the Chinese New Year.
Principal Vidmar did not object to the lessons about Thanksgiving or the religious holidays.
In April 2004, Mr. Williams intended to teach a lesson about the religious holiday of Easter.
Principal Vidmar ordered Mr. Williams not to teach a lesson about Easter.
Principal Vidmar gave this order because Easter is a Christian religious holiday.
See, Christmas? Not a Christian religious holiday and he was allowed to teach it in a lesson talking about multicultural religious celebrations and their role in american life.
Help, he's being oppressed. It's the violence inherent in the system. Or something.
Kudos, though, for his recognizing that the first Thanksgiving was a native harvest festival and not a Christian religious event, which the Pilgrims would have celebrated in church and not while eating. Not all that many people appreciate that.
If Mr. Williams is willing to balance his teaching of this material with the teaching of secular and agnostic and deist thought amongst the founders (and there's certainly a great deal of that to chose from), and maybe stick to materials which were within, say, fifty years either way of the founding rather than cherrypicking two hundred-ump years of american history for material which supports his personal religious views, I'd say fine. Go for it.
As it is, Mr. Williams was looking for a fight, and he got one.
Lovely, though, that his handlers in the political arm of the Christian right chose a day when all americans are supposed to drop tools and dedicate to appreciating what we have been given and what we have made of it to slip this turd in the punch bowl, divide us as a people and deepen the differences between us.
I'm sure God appreciates it. He's probably had enough of brotherhood and the community of spirits this year.
Quick, fill in the blank:
And they'll know we are Christians by our ____________.
I'll give you a hint: the missing word is not "tshirts"
To you and yours and them and theirs and us and ours, a very happy Thanksgiving.
Namaste, as Jesus used to say.
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-24 11:58 pm (UTC)Your kid is very lucky; I'm sure that you'll start teaching her to look for information apart from the very narrow sources used in schools. Most kids never get that.
/bitter rant
no subject
Date: 2004-11-25 12:02 am (UTC)sigh.
no subject
Date: 2004-11-25 09:16 am (UTC)And he is going to balance that with telling about the history of Maryland, which was founded to protect the religious freedom of Catholics, right?
Damn crickets. I am sure he isn't going to talk about the Anabaptists of the Portuguese Jewish residents of New Amsterdam, either.