Time Magazine Cover Story Pushes Bigoted Christian Supremacy

[ images: two editions of Time will go out next week. One for Americans, another for everybody else in the World]

Is "vibrant access" to the Bible is a Constitutional right of every American school child ? Is ensuring that access is the patriotic duty of every American citizen ? That's one of many claims to be found in next week's issue of Time Magazine. But only Americans will get the dubious privilege of such naked, bigoted expressions of Christian nationalist ideology. Why ? Well, 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". The story appears to say that Christian right beliefs are the only true expressions of Christianity, that liberal Christians are little more than atheists in disguise, and that all other religious beliefs on Earth are invalid and only Christians can achieve a fully meaningful life. Time's story has vanished 45 million moderate to liberal American Christians from the debate over the Bible in schools but Americans with non-Christian religious and philosophical beliefs, Muslims, Jews, atheists, and so on, fare even worse....

Welcome to America, 2007.

Note to readers: this critique has been through several substantial rewrites, and I've posted a version 2.0 now that contains substantial new material. In version 1.0, I came out swinging, in version 1.1 that you're reading here on Alternet, I toned down the rhetoric and firmed up the analysis. In 2.0 I've pushed that trend much farther along and gone into very specific detail on how Time Magazine's cover story advances Christian nationalist, bigoted ideology that may well be inadvertent but that hardly matters the groups and minorities Time has seemingly excluded from the debate over Bible classes in public schools.