Goldilocks in the Public Square
October 07, 2005
What do these people want? I thought evangelicals wanted more acceptance and airtime in the public square, but perhaps it depends which evangelicals are judging what evangelical consciousness raising project. Moreover, I thought this whole desideratum was based on a rejection of neutrality as a mythical Enlightenment concept used to politically disenfranchise religious believers.
Here is the present source of my confusion. CT Editor Mark Galli rejects Bible-as-Literature classes because they don’t treat the Bible as the Word of God, yet he goes on to decry as well the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS) because in its suggested curriculum
“the Bible is referred to as the ‘Word of God’ in a few places, and archaeology is said to prove the authenticity of the Bible. In addition, a nationalistic sub-agenda comes through. As one highlighted sentence on the website says, ‘The Bible was the foundation and blueprint for our Constitution, Declaration of Independence, our educational system, and our entire history until the last 20 to 30 years.’”
Damning and dangerous stuff, that! Moreover, “two leading proponents of America-as-a-Christian-nation–D. James Kennedy and David Barton–[are]on the advisory board. … If a Bible-as-literature curriculum is in fact an attempt to influence the religious views of students while purporting to be an objective account of the Bible as literature–well, it won’t be long before students and teachers figure that out. That will only confirm to many minds that the Bible is a tool of the Religious Right in its attempt to take over America.”
Well so it may, but what is so bad about some tit-for-tat within the public school arena where Dominionist “nationalism” seems much less risible than the more common “anti-nationalism?” If that’s what people want, they can have it.
The Bible Literacy Project, which Galli approves, has its own curriculum, and he assures readers that “the composition of its 40 ‘reviewers and consultants’ demonstrates there is no sectarian agenda afoot.” This is an interesting conclusion for a list including eccentric emeritus and self-avowed Gnostic, Harold Bloom, along with Jean Bethke Elshtain, Frederica Matthews-Green, and some Evangelical college professors. Maybe this is “balance?” Curbing his enthusasim, Galli returns finally to his conviction that Bible-as-Literature programs are suspect, because they do not approach holy writ with an attitude of veneration.
Overall, this sort of commentary goes a way toward confirming my suspicion that with many Evangelicals on the bully-pulpit there is a standard reaction of “lesser enemies on the left,” if not “no enemies on the left.” Sometimes an evangelical is an ecclesially ambiguous protestant who hates ‘the religious right’ almost as much as, if not more than, the secular left.
This is Goldilocks in the Public Square in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Anti Pro Evangelicalism | Next: Cella in New Atlantis | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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