The Indoctrinators 0
The Des Moines Register’s Rekha Basu comments on a proposal in the Iowa legislature to teach Bible studies in Iowa public schools. The studies will masquerade as “historical.”
The promoters of the bill argue that the Bible is central to American heritage, when, in fact, it is not. With the exception of the Massachusetts Puritans and the Rhode Island Baptists (who founded Rhode Island to escape the oppression of the Puritans–look it up), most of the colonists were spectacularly apathetic to religion; they were more interested in gold than in godliness. (Religion did not become a significant factor in American public life until the “Great Awakening” of the 1830s.)
Here’s a bit of her column:
(snip)
Zahn’s contention that American values “did not spring from the cornucopia of ‘world religions’ but specifically from the Judeo-Christian scriptures” hints at something else, a mindset that America is not a place for a new immigrant population of different faiths. It has disturbing echoes of Rep. Steve King’s contention that America can’t restore its civilization with “someone else’s babies.”
