Chuck Norris Wants To Kick Secularism's Ass? [VIDEO]

Posted by Bruce Wilson at 8:30 AM on March 24, 2007.

'Christian Nation' Mythos Enters America's Public Schools, As 'Bible Curriculum'

Martial arts maven Chuck Norris who, legend has it, can defeat packs of savage wild animals, hordes of vicious, armed goons, and even onrushing Mack trucks with nothing more than his hands and feet, wants the Bible back in public schools. But roundhouse kicks or even the "claw of death", though appropriate against Bruce Lee, are not especially useful for slipping a sectarian Bible course curriculum touting fake history into public schools. Stealthy, social tactics are needed. Will Chuck Norris become a Liar For Jesus ? We don't yet know but the cult icon has renounced his lone ranger ways and pummeling flurries of hands and feet, to tout the work of the National Council On Bible Curriculum In Public Schools as it sneaks, in a slick wrapper of dubious and flat-out fraudulent takes on American history, its Christian nationalist Bible course curriculum into public schools, cities, and towns across America.

Meet the The National Council On Bible Curriculum In Public Schools (NCBCPS), a stealth effort associated with the far right Council On National Policy and led by a woman who has said God has commanded her to bring the Bible back into public education.

Is the National Council On Bible Curriculum In Public Schools "furtive" as my title suggested ? You might not think so if you go to the NCBCPS website, where giant animated words float in and proclaim, to a triumphant blaring of horns, "IT'S COMING BACK". Below that supersized proclamation is the claim "Our Bible Curriculum Has Been Voted Into 382 schools districts, to date, in 37 states." But, the NCBCPS won't divulge the names of those school districts, not will the organization provide a copy of their current curriculum to journalists or other interested parties.

Evidence suggests that the NCBCPS has insinuated a politicized course curriculum featuring fraudulent history to American public schools from Texas to New Jersey. According to the NCBCPS website "The program is concerned with education rather than indoctrination of students." but analysis of the organization's curriculum suggests otherwise.

The NCBCPS Bible course curriculum is a heavily guarded secret but appears to push Christian historical revisionist lies. The Texas Freedom Network (TFN) has been at the forefront of exposing the Christian sectarian bias of the controversial curriculum and, as Southern Methodist University Professor Mark Chancey, who managed to obtain a copy, wrote in a TFN special report, "[ It ] reflects a political agenda... it seems to Christianize America and Americanize the Bible.". The curriculum Chancey writes, recommends Wallbuilders, "an organization devoted to the opposition of church-state separation" and a Wallbuilders video that "argues that the Founding Fathers never intended for church and state to be separated and that America has descended into social chaos since devotional Bible reading and prayer were removed from public schools." That allegation of "social chaos" is not well supported by facts : American national rates of murder, violent crime, teen pregnancy, and divorce have dropped dramatically since the early 1990's

Over the past two decades the creation of revisionist historical works claiming America's founders intended the US as a "Christian Nation" has turned into a booming cottage industry. Meanwhile, esteemed and tenured American historians at the nation's finest Universities have almost completely neglected to address the spread of a fabricated, mythologized Christian right historical narrative on America's alleged origins. That's a shame, because over the past several years a well funded, politically connected, organized effort has succeeded at inserting its course curriculum featuring that fake history into possibly hundreds of American public schools from Texas to New Jersey.

Should courses on the Bible be taught in public schools ? Yes, some would say, because Christianity and the West, America included, are intertwined and even inseparable. Without Biblical literacy, goes the argument, understanding of Western civilization, and America's cultural and historical roots, is impossible. The centrality of Christianity as a driving force in American history can hardly be disputed, but there's another story to be told because America was founded as a secular, not a Christian, nation. Secular government was a radical, uniquely American innovation that some believe enabled the United States to prosper free from the sort of gruesome internecine religious warfare, in which some combatants literally "pulled guts out for God", that wracked post-Reformation Europe.

But within the American Christian right movement, it is taken as received truth that America was founded as a Christian nation and that the Bible, taught in public school, has served as the foundation of national morality without which America as a nation would surely collapse in a paroxysm of depraved, brutal anarchy.

Liars For Jesus author Chris Rodda is one of the very few who confront Christian historical revisionism head on. Rodda has spent years combing through original archival documents, some never before cited by historians, in researching her book and has been building, as a public Internet resource, an electronic archive of documents she cites in her painstaking debunking of the widespread "Christian nation" myth. Along with other such as James Veverka, another Christian historical revisionism debunker, Chris Rodda is part of a select cadre of fiercely committed but largely unpaid scholars who are picking up the slack left by years of shameful neglect on the part of America's provisioned, institutional historians who have failed to confront, and in some cases even enabled, the rise of a parallel, fraudulent take on US history and America's origins that is widely believed now by, probably, tens of millions of Americans.

See Chris Rodda's three part series:

Barton Revises History to Promote the National Council On Bible Curriculum In Public Schools

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/3/24/12519/6564/More Historical Revisionism from the National Council On Bible Curriculum In Public Schools - 3/18/ 2007

Historical Revisionism from the National Council On Bible Curriculum In Public Schools - 3/10/2007

Tagged as: public schools, rodda, history, christian, barton

Bruce Wilson writes for Talk To Action, a blog specializing in faith and politics.