In my church this morning, we read the Old Testament lesson from an historic Bible that belonged to one of our former communicants–George Washington. So there is no question in my mind that Washington was a Christian. But did he and the other Founders intend for this country to be a Christian nation?
That’s the essence of the fight going on in the Texas State Board of Education and detailed in a terrific article in today’s New York Times Magazine. It outlines the messy process by which a bloc of ideologically-driven school board members have managed to inject their answer to that question into the state’s history standards.
A group of educators and content experts developed the standards. But Texas gives its state board unprecedented authority to make amendments. And amend they do–voting, for example, that while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich passed muster as a “significant American,” Senator Edward Kennedy did not.
Cynthia Dunbar, an attorney who is a member of the Texas board, sums up the goal in her 2008 book One Nation Under God. “The only accurate method of ascertaining the intent of the Founding Fathers at the time of our government’s inception comes from a biblical worldview.”
Americans tell pollsters they support separation of church and state. But in a 2007 survey by the First Amendment Center, 65 percent said they agreed with the statement that “the nation’s