So what goes in the blank space in my title ? "Jugular" ? Or if I am making some sexual allusion should "testicles" or "ovaries" go there ? That would be a dire implication but I think things are in fact even worse ; Christian Nationalism has a surprising number of Americans by the brains, and I can prove it. Here's a recent example....
But let me also preface this by saying : I'm not arguing against teaching Biblical literacy, especially in concert with teaching Koranic literacy, literacy on the the Vedas, the Upanishads....
What I'm getting at is the ease with which Time passed off Christian nationalist arguments, in an op-ed for Bible classes, as "reasonable" to a lot of people here on the Daily Kos; I think that's worth considering. We're not always fully aware of the ideology that's seeped into our heads : myself included.
[note: this is blogswarm against theocracy weekend ]
Introduction
[ images, right: two editions of Time will go out next week. One for Americans, another for everybody else in the World]Only Americans will get the dubious privilege of reading "Why We Should teach The Bible In Public Schools" ; Next week people everywhere around the world except in North America will behold an April 2, 2007 edition of Time Magazine issue very different from what Americans will see. In Asian, European, and South Pacific markets next week's Time will feature a cover story image of a menacingly glaring, black turbaned and bearded man alongside a cover story title "Talibanistan". Time seems to feel Americans deserve something else though, and so Time's domestic US April 2, 2007 edition will feature a cover story entitled "Why We Should Teach The Bible In Public School". Dave Van Biema, Time's senior religion correspondent, has constructed a narrative that sounds mild, reasonable, and evenhanded but advances an agenda, probably inadvertently, that is none of those things. "Why We Should Teach The Bible In Public School" displays a startling lack of awareness of issues underlying the controversy and a creepy oblivion to the existence of a substantial minority of Americans who have good reason to be less than thrilled by Bible classes in school. [ from Time Magazine Story Promotes Christian Nationalism, V.2.0
The April 2, 2007 issue of Time Magazine featured a cover story titled "Why The Bible Should be Taught In Public Schools" and I thought the story so intellectually dubious and slanted towards precepts of the American Christian right that I wrote a rebuttal and posted it in several places including on the Daily Kos website, with the original title entitled "Time Magazine Cover Story Promotes Bigoted Christian Nationalism" ( later shortened to just "Time Magazine Spouts Bigoted Christian Nationalism" ). My post provoked a popular rebuttal post on the Daily Kos, in response, which argued in favor of teaching Bible classes in public schools, and although the rebuttal to my post made a case for Bible classes in public schools I hadn't actually made a case against Bible classes in my scathing critique of Time's cover story.
But the troubling aspect of the controversy, for me, concerned the apparent ability of Time's cover story to short circuit the basic logical skepticism, or so it seemed, of many members from one of the leading US left/progressive community websites on the Internet. The illogic of Time's cover story should have provoked skepticism at least and the fact that the story got a substantial amount of support in the progressive/liberal political activist community is exhibit "A" in my case that Christian nationalist precepts are starting to get their hooks into the heads of people on the American left
Time's op-ed in favor of Bible classes in public schools employed a favorite argument of Christian nationalism ; majority religious preferences rule and if religious minorities don't like the promotion of partisan religious values in schools or elsewhere in the public sphere, tough. Time's article expresses this plainly ; 60% of Americans favor Bible classes in public schools. But I can assure you this ; people in the Indian River School District of Southern Delaware who, in 2005 or 2006, harassed a Jewish family from its home of 18 years, to flee the area amidst death threats, did not think they were being unreasonable but, rather, that the family which fled was out of line for complaining about Christian sectarian displays of religious beliefs in public schools. Christian nationalism works best when it is implicit, part of our background mental assumptions.
One of the hallmarks of good PR and propaganda is that it becomes unnoticeable as ideas sink into our mental landscape to shape our perceptions and even come to seem commonsensical. Were the aspects of the Time story I criticize, in my analysis below, intentional ? That's impossible to say, and I didn't notice some of the most egregious argumentative flaws at first myself even though I seem to spend an unusual amount of energy smelling out the undercurrents of ideology. In retrospect, it seems to me that some of the logical leaps, flaws, and contradictions in the Time piece should have hit me like the stench of an industrial chicken farm, and so I have to assume that there's a good bit of Christian nationalism kicking around in my head too.
There's so much to critique in Time's argument that I could teach an entire course on the subject, and although my initial critique has gone through several versions already ( see V. 1.0 and V. 2.0 ) there's still much more to say, not the least of which concerns the apparent success of the article in selling a coded version of Christian Nationalism to a fair number of liberals.
The rest of this story has been moved here