For Immediate Release: January 15, 2008
Contact: Anne Singer, 202-271-4679

Congress Aims to Dumb Down History, Pushes Fiction of Christian Nation in Public Schools

The Secular Coalition for America Responds

Washington, DC - Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) and 31 other Representatives could bring House Resolution 888, introduced December 18, 2007, to a floor vote as early as this week. H. Res. 888, "Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation's founding and subsequent history" specifically proposes an "American Religious History Week" to be taught in public schools each May. Lori Lipman Brown, Director of the Secular Coalition for America, issued the following statement in anticipation of a vote:

Congressman Forbes apparently knows as much about history as pollsters know about voters in New Hampshire.

The Secular Coalition would welcome the unbiased teaching of America's religious history, but this resolution presents such a distorted version of that history, real education can't possibly be its goal.

The fact is that the "spiritual and religious history of our Nation's founding and subsequent history" is rife with persecution against Catholics, Jews, Muslims, atheists and other minorities. The Puritans, for example, not only burned witches at the stake, but they also tortured and hanged Quakers.

In 19th Century Philadelphia, Catholic children in public schools were forced to read the Protestant Bible, and their churches were burned when they resisted. Various groups gained political power on explicitly Christian platforms, such as the Know Nothings' anti-Catholic campaign, and the Ku Klux Klan's political and violently brutal campaigns against Jews, Catholics, religious liberals and, of course, African Americans.

Today, military personnel who don’t identify as born again Christians are being harassed, and students who opt out of prayers in public school are being bullied. All of this counts as religious history, too, but it's not in the resolution.

The "whereas" paragraphs in this resolution are dishonest: they deliberately confuse the personal religious beliefs of our nation's political leaders with their public actions; they ignore the fact that our Founders (many of whom were deists anyway) checked their religion at the door when they wrote the Constitution.

Contrary to what Rep. Forbes would have us think, the word "God" never appears in the U.S. Constitution, and that's the document which governs our nation and sets the standard for keeping religion out of government and government out of religion.

Our supporters are contacting their members of Congress and asking them to vote No on H. Res. 888. If we don't stop it, next thing you know they'll be trying to teach the Immaculate Conception in biology class.

The Secular Coalition for America is the national lobby for atheists, humanists, freethinkers and other nontheistic Americans with the unique mission of protecting their civil rights. From our office in the nation's capital, our full-time lobbyist and support staff engage public policy makers and the media to increase the visibility and respectability of nontheistic viewpoints and to protect and strengthen the secular character of our government as the best guarantee of freedom for all. Information is at www.secular.org.

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