There’s such an enormous disparity between different groups’ experience of American history that what is sneeringly called “multiculturalism” deserves consideration. To pick an example, a good history about the New Deal would (a) show it generally working and (b) show it coming up short for blacks. Which isn’t a way of slighting white Christians. If you pick up a multiculturally influenced high-school history textbook you’ll find no shortage of presidents, captains of industry, explorers, soldiers, and judges—occupations that overwhelmingly tend to white Christians. You’ll find revivalists and abolitionists and social gospelers and Bryanites. But evidently that’s not enough.
The Texas Board of Education, which recently approved new science standards that made room for creationist critiques of evolution, is revising the state’s social studies curriculum…
Three reviewers, appointed by social conservatives, have recommended revamping the K-12 curriculum to emphasize the roles of the Bible, the Christian faith and the civic virtue of religion in the study of American history. Two of them want to remove or de-emphasize references to several historical figures who have become liberal icons, such as César Chávez and Thurgood Marshall.
“We’re in an all-out moral and spiritual civil war for the soul of America, and the record of American history is right at the heart of it,” said Rev. Peter Marshall, a Christian minister and one of the reviewers appointed by the conservative camp.
… The three reviewers appointed by the moderate and liberal board members are all professors of history or education at Texas universities, including Mr. de la Teja, a former state historian. The reviewers appointed by conservatives include two who run conservative Christian organizations: David Barton, founder of WallBuilders, a group that promotes America’s Christian heritage; and Rev. Marshall, who preaches that Watergate, the Vietnam War and Hurricane Katrina were God’s judgments on the nation’s sexual immorality. The third is Daniel Dreisbach, a professor of public affairs at American University.
The conservative reviewers say they believe that children must learn that America’s founding principles are biblical. For instance, they say the separation of powers set forth in the Constitution stems from a scriptural understanding of man’s fall and inherent sinfulness, or “radical depravity,” which means he can be governed only by an intricate system of checks and balances.
The curriculum, they say, should clearly present Christianity as an overall force for good — and a key reason for American exceptionalism, the notion that the country stands above and apart.
… But the emphasis on Christianity as a driving force is disputed by some historians, who focus on the economic motivation of many colonists and the fractured views of religion among the Founding Fathers. “There appears to me too much politics in some of this,” said Lybeth Hodges, a professor of history at Texas Woman’s University and another of the curriculum reviewers.
Some outside observers argue that curriculum analysts should be trained academics…
Nearly every state has its own curriculum standards, and there are scores of social studies texts to choose from at most grade levels, so what happens in Texas won’t necessarily affect other states. But the Texas market is huge, so most big publishers aggressively seek approval from the board, in some cases adopting the majority’s editing suggestions nearly verbatim.
38 comments
July 14, 2009 at 12:48 pm
stevenattewell
Christianity is a reason that America’s exceptional?
I…can’t even begin…you know what, I’m going to mess with Texas!
July 14, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Erik Lund
Wasn’t there an essay a few years back about the “Religious origins of the American Revolution?” I recall it falling short of the luminous brilliance of Daniel Van Kley, but I would really like to see a treatment of the Revolution that focused on resistance to the establishment of American Anglican bishops. Maybe it could even thread through Wilberforce’s _History of the Anglican Church in America_ to the Wilberforce-Draper-Huxley contretemps of 1860 to modern Creationism.
Honestly, I think there’s a strand of American history that we’re not getting at, here.
July 14, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Bitchphd
So how are you liking the Sotomayor hearings this week, then?
July 14, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Erik Lund
Oops. _Dale_ Van Kley.
July 14, 2009 at 12:50 pm
grackle
Texas is an interesting place. I know little about the immigration patterns other than an impression of many Germans into the central and western areas in the 1880’2 (?) The laissez faire oil chemical and mineral conglomerates created part of the persona, as did the sheer vastness of the Texas plains. Mennonites and Baptists, Catholics and evangelicals are all in the mix. I suppose the apparent love of the death penalty is another reflection of whatever drives this action. Quite a soup to bring out the particular responses that seem to typify the place. Move over Kansas, Texas is taking over the agenda.
July 14, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Vance
Steven, it’s precisely because the Pilgrims were the lone practitioners of real Christianity that they were hounded out of England — the established church at home being of course a thinly veiled Whore of Babylon.
July 14, 2009 at 1:07 pm
DaKooch
“But the Texas market is huge, so most big publishers aggressively seek approval from the board”
Well, California’s is huger . . .
I have long thought that the two states least representative of the country at large are Alaska and Texas.
July 14, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Chris
The curriculum, they say, should clearly present Christianity as an overall force for good — and a key reason for American exceptionalism, the notion that the country stands above and apart.
So, if there were a nation so Christian that they wrote “God is with us” on their belt buckles, they would be even more of a force for good?
Honestly, you’d think these people had never studied the history of their own freaking religion. (I already know they didn’t study the history of their country.)
Fundamentally (ha), the problem is that they don’t want schools to teach history; they want schools to teach their cultural mythos and call it history.
July 14, 2009 at 2:29 pm
jazzbumpa
Goes hand in hand with teaching their cultural mythos and calling it science.
July 14, 2009 at 2:36 pm
andrew
Were Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez Christians?
July 14, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Jonathan Rees
Those with strong stomachs might want to Google “David Barton Wall Builders.” Make sure you haven’t just eaten.
July 14, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Andy Vance
Mmmmm, radical depravity. I’m thinking Roy Edroso singing “Love Juice (In All Three Holes).”
July 14, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Ben Alpers
Were Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez Christians?
I’ve had a student begin a sentence in a response paper on “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by noting “If Jonathan Edwards had been a Christian….”
July 14, 2009 at 3:00 pm
eric
That’s too awesome, Ben.
July 14, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Charlieford
“. . . a divide has opened over how central religious theology should be to the teaching of history.”
Wait till they start debating non-religious theology.
July 14, 2009 at 4:00 pm
AWC
But… but… what about Haym Solomon? I knew there was a reason I got a B on that third-grade book report.
July 14, 2009 at 4:12 pm
Charlieford
eric failed to include this judgment in his quoted graphs: “Reaching for examples of achievement by different racial and ethnic groups is divisive, Mr. Barton said, and distorts history.”
That’s brilliantly put. I’ve always suspected its those racial and ethnic groups who are the divisive ones. Us white folk just want America for Americans. But them? Oh noooo. They have to be so racial. And ethnic.
July 14, 2009 at 4:30 pm
eric
eric failed to include this judgment in his quoted graphs
There was just too much awesome in the article.
July 14, 2009 at 4:54 pm
JPool
So, in Texas, Whitey is always on the moon?
July 14, 2009 at 5:15 pm
urbino
Given your setup, I kept waiting for the part where they’d forbidden your part “a”. I mean, now that Amity Schlaes has proven it actually was a terrible failure, and since continuing to think of it as positive can only lead to godless Communism, don’t we owe it to the children?
As for your part “b”, well, why bring those people up?
July 14, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Charlieford
If I can be serious for a moment–not sure I can, actually–I’d like to respond to steven’s first comment. Now, I hold–as do a lot of Christians, especially when they’re historians *–that the general effect of these guys (Marshall and Barton) is exceedingly harmful. We have to spend a lot of time undoing what they’ve programmed into the poor kids’ heads. But, like all myth, there’s much truth mixed in with their error, and it gets very hard to separate the two in ways undergrads can understand. But, overall, harmful.
That said, steven, there’s much to be said for arguing that Christianity (read: Puritanism) was central to the idea of “American exceptionalism” (a term of art, not at all the same thing as to say “America’s exceptional”). The term has had different connotations at different times, but a strong theme throughout has been the notion of America’s providential or even millenial mission.
We may be forgiven if we see the down side of that latter, especially given the foreign policy implications of certain takes on the notion we’ve been living with for a few years now. But it has other implications. Last Thursday I heard David Brooks comment that it was John Calvin who bequeathed the idea of “American exceptionalism” to us (it was Calvin’s 500th birthday), and my first reaction was to roll my eyes.
But then I recalled seeing the Rev. Peter Gomes–the gay, black Episcopalian rector at Harvard–when asked what books had most influenced him, answer “Calvin’s Institutes.” He explained that the notion of nations being in covenant with God, and answerable to Him for their actions, was critical and essential to so many of the best reform movements in American history.
* As here — http://www.amazon.com/Search-Christian-America-Mark-Noll/dp/0939443155 — which was written to refute Marshall’s The Light and the Glory.
July 14, 2009 at 6:21 pm
jay boilswater
Texas ain’t called “Baja Oklahoma” fer nothin!
July 14, 2009 at 6:46 pm
kid bitzer
fair enough, charlieford. i think you are right that the ‘shining city on a hill’ stuff that animated some early americans is certainly only comprehensible in light of christian theology.
(i do not include jonathan edwards in this, of course–both because he was not a christian, as ben’s student astutely observed, and because his 1971 single “sunshine” was never followed up by any comparable commercial success, leaving him sadly in the ranks of ‘one-hit wonders’.)
i think lincoln is an interesting case in regard to american exceptionalism. he believed in america’s unique and providential role in human history even after he stopped–if he ever started–believing in jesus’ unique and providential role in human history. the last best hope of earth was as much salvation as mankind could reasonably expect.
the framework, the scaffolding is still recognizably christian. but the content has been radically secularized. humanized, even.
at any rate, i think there’s a case to be made for that. i just doubt it will be made in texas.
July 14, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Charlieford
Oh, absolutely. Filter anything thru Texas and you’re in trouble. Except barbecue. Agreed on Lincoln, too, btw. Guelzo says figuring out his religion is the wildest of wild gooses, but it’s pretty plain he was far from a conventional Christian by the standards of his time, that he and his close friends including Mary Todd all recognized that, that he had drunk deep from several providential wells (his Baptist father’s, the Old School Presbyterian church he attended in D.C.), and that he was very close to the romantics of his time regarding the nation, only with a fine, depressive’s take on the whole matter, saving him from saying anything too embarrassing.
July 14, 2009 at 8:05 pm
kid bitzer
gotta read guelzo. gotta read guelzo.
okay, i’ll add it to the stack. it’s a big stack. every time i come to this damned blog, the stack gets bigger. how you professionals can keep up with it, i have no idea.
July 14, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Sir Gnome
All of my readings of American exceptionalism have come in light of Cormac McCarthy studies, particularly John Cant’s book. I’ll stop dropping McCarthy’s name, but damn, what an author when it comes to critiques of American ideology. And his secondary critical canon is often just as good, if not better (Cant, Bloom, Phillips, Daugherty…).
Can John O’Sullivan’s “Great Nation of Futurity” be excluded from such a discussion? The obligatory but ever exemplary reference in the realm of Christian teleology-meets-American nationalism.
July 15, 2009 at 10:12 am
NickS
I just have to say, I love the post title. I’m always happy for a Gil Scott-Heron reference; particularly to something other than “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”.
July 15, 2009 at 11:02 am
Paul Harvey
We’re having some fun with this over at
http://usreligion.blogspot.com/2009/07/eyes-of-david-barton-are-upon-you.html
My contributor there Seth Dowland has studied this stuff, particularly in its Texas context, in the 1960s and 1970s; you can read his comments there for some good background.
July 15, 2009 at 11:09 am
Charlieford
On O’Sullivan and such there’s this
which I think is great, and I also see there’s this
with which I am unfamiliar.
July 15, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Michael
I suppose that I may as well just cross the entire state of Texas off my list for “potential sites” when I do my upcoming job search (as I’m an American historian whose work deals in part with Darwin). Not only because it would seem frustrating to have to “unlearn” students and re-teach them, but more because I’d probably be tarred and feathered.
A few of my students in the past (at a New England Catholic school) have hailed from Texas, and they’ve always been quite sharp, but how do you teach a student that comes from that type of educational system? Do you pull them aside and say “You are going to need private instruction on top of classroom instruction to get you up to speed?” I have no problem using religion – use it pretty extensively in the first half of the survey where it is appropriate – but this just seems really . . . INSANE?
And who thinks it is acceptable to select a pastor and a “businessman” to evaluate history curricula?
July 16, 2009 at 4:32 am
Don
I am a lurker on this site, also not a historian. Does the curriculum touch on the link between the atrocities of the KKK and Christianity? It seems to me that there must be a tie there somewhere.
July 16, 2009 at 7:52 am
Jonathan Dresner
And who thinks it is acceptable to select a pastor and a “businessman” to evaluate history curricula?
This is the thing about history, and I’ve said it for years: it’s one of the few disciplines in which amateurs (by which I mean people with no real training or background or detailed knowledge, not non-academics) feel they have a right to an opinion, and to have that opinion taken seriously by historians. History is a component of identity, and everyone’s got one. History is the raw material from which our political arguments are constructed (well, sometimes its mostly sociology or ethics, but history almost always comes in somewhere) and its part of the language we all use to talk about current events and the future.
History is a public discipline, which is why I’ve always supported public discourse by historians. Whether we like it or not, non-historians are making historical arguments and using historical examples and, clearly in this case, making decisions about what history matters. I’m not saying that we should shut non-historians out, but we also need to engage them in such a way that they take historians’ views on these matters a little more seriously.
July 16, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Michael
Jon –
I think you raise a very good point, especially about historians being more pro-active about engaging the field in public. But it strikes me that professional historians – those working in the academy – are at a tremendous disadvantage in that there could be potentially negative ramifications to their career. The WSJ article notes that de la Teja is the chair of his department, and another of the reputedly “liberal” historians, Lybeth Hodges is listed as “professor” (which I assume means fully tenured) – perhaps they are beyond the reach retribution, but my first reaction on reading the historians who spoke against these curriculum revisions was, “Oh, I hope they have tenure.”
If we’re considering this as a largely political move (and I am), it doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility that Barton and Marshall “go after” them (so to speak), especially should they lose their argument in favor of Christianizing history. I could see pickets in front of lecture halls, disruptions into the classrooms, etc. When it comes time for a non-tenured faculty member to be evaluated, what if the committee thinks, “well, their outside activities are kind of a disruption to our educational mission….. Let’s not offer tenure…”? Or what if the Christianizers are able to mobilize their members to raise a ruckus to the administration, or pressure large donors not to contribute to the university as long as the “liberals” are on faculty? Someone like Barton and Marshall are completely FREE of any potential professional ramifications because they’re *not* in the profession. Nothing will happen to them (except perhaps that they look foolish) – they can say basically whatever they want. In that regard, there is a cost, or at least a moderate risk, to try to helpfully and constructively engage the public. I find that really scary, especially as someone really committed to just what you suggest – engaging the public – that has only just received a PhD and as yet has no permanent placement.
July 16, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Jonathan Dresner
But it strikes me that professional historians – those working in the academy – are at a tremendous disadvantage in that there could be potentially negative ramifications to their career.
Michael: you’re right, and those of us who blog without tenure, write op-ed pieces without tenure, research things that might make certain groups uncomfortable without tenure are taking risks. And there is a cost, especially if you do that without maintaining a perfect tenure dossier and teaching portfolio to boot.
But if we don’t, we deny the basic truth of our profession: we research to learn, to answer important questions, and to share what we know with those who are interested. If the tenure committees and administration can’t appreciate that, then they will get the historians they deserve and history as a discipline will continue to struggle with relevance.
I agree that our tenured colleagues need to be leading the charge, and some of them are, but we also need to do our part. Reach out locally, write about our work for non-academic publications, work with teachers, review textbooks…. and make the case to our colleagues that this constitutes real academic work which redounds to the benefit of the department, institution, profession.
July 16, 2009 at 7:43 pm
35:1
I do agree that “those of us who blog without tenure” or without doctorates are taking risks. Eric Rauchway’s earlier post, “For Pseudonymity,” addressed that concern. The California budget crisis combined with the already-competitive job market (for tenure-track positions and other professional fields) makes that concern particularly acute. One strong opinion, one critical remark, or one incorrect citation may provide fodder for arguments for and against employment. This blog and others receive wide readership, and I believe that the founders here have done a good job of promoting and protecting pseudoynmity.
In the UC and State Systems, with all the program cuts announced last week, every other issue seems trivial. From talking recently with peers, some either seem to be ignoring or denying the issue. But perhaps this is where bloggers’ optimism should factor in.
July 16, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Jason B.
My wife is an astrophysicist, and since she’s much more social than I am we wind up socializing with scientists a lot–leaving me the only humanities-geek in the room much of the time.
The other night we were discussing this, and the scientists laughed when I said something like “Well, sure. Students respect the physics profs–who could think they can do physics without training? On the other hand, they figure philosophy is just thinking hard and anyone can think, so everyone questions the philosophy prof. Not that that’s a bad thing, but there are many who are bad at learning philosophy, and who take that questioning straight to dismissal.” Or something like that.
I imagine history profs have that even worse.
July 17, 2009 at 8:09 am
Charlieford
Theologians, too. In spades.
July 17, 2009 at 9:39 am
35:1
For history profs, multiple choice and T/F standardized exams mitigate undergraduates’ skepticism. History as erudition is analogous to memorization of the circulatory system (given regional and socio-cultural variance). Same questions, same answer key, little suspicions. In my experience, “the questioning” sets in when professors and their erstwhile graduate students teach “analysis” beyond theses, topic sentences, and citations. I think there’s a potential subjectivity element to the game that undergraduates find hard to ignore. At that point, undergraduates begin to assess history as possibly “bs” and the like. Again, this is just my experience.
I think graduate school and academic history is another ball of wax. There we have the double-edged sword of historians having to “know everything,”–economics, political theory, ecology, etc.–and skepticism that we cannot possibly know all that. But that’s a tale to be told another time.