One of many examples of the Trump wrecking ball at work.
Donald Trump wants to build a wall with Mexico and at the same time tear down the Constitutional “wall of separation” between church and state in the United States. Both are bad ideas.
The 1st Amendment to the Constitution forbids Congress from making laws “respecting an establishment of religion” in this country. In an 1802 letter to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptist association, President Thomas Jefferson explained that this Amendment built a “wall of separation between Church & State.” Jefferson’s view was repeatedly upheld by the United States Supreme Court, including in the 1992 Lee v. Weisman case where it declared it unconstitutional for a public school district to sponsor prayers at graduation ceremonies.
Is recent weeks, President Tweet has transformed himself into Preacher-in-Chief. Prior to and following visits to hurricane devastated Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico, and in response to mass slayings in Las Vegas, the American public gets a stream of God-blesses and prayers for healing. But we have still not seen massive and immediate aid for Puerto Rico or Presidential demands for gun-control legislation.
For most of his life, businessman Donald Trump was largely irreligious, but not the new political Donald Trump. Running for President he declared "I think people are shocked when they find out that I am Christian, that I am a religious person." In speeches to religious audiences he proclaims how much he loves the Bible, his favorite book. He also recently praised an Alabama Republican candidate for the Senate who wants to install a Christian version of “sharia law” in the United States.
Despite his new found faith, Trump’s religious views remains muddled. In a Christian Broadcasting Network interview, Trump was asked, “Who is God?” In traditional Trump fashion, he called God the “ultimate,” and then explained he had gotten a great deal on a golf course. He concluded, “There's nothing like God."
The religious right loves him, and in return, the Preacher-in-Chief is giving then free reign to remake education in the United States. In an article in Fall 2017 issue of The American Prospect, Katherine Stewart, detailed how publicly funded charter schools, and private voucher supported schools, with the support of Trump’s Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, are openly proselytizing Christian religion, or at least how they interpret it.
In addition, Christian ministries are spreading through public schools under the cover of student clubs affiliated with the Good News Child Evangelical Fellowship. In the Preface to the 2017 edition of her book on the Good News clubs, Stewart estimates that there are close to 6,000 Good News clubs in United States elementary schools alone.
As detailed in The American Prospect article, at a charter school in Arizona, high school students are taught that Anglo-Saxons are descended from the lost tribes of Israel and must memorize and preach religious principles including separate and unequal spheres for men and women. Another charter promotes the “free market and minimal government” as divine law. At a Detroit charter affiliated with the “Perfecting Church,” students are required to recite the school’s “creed” invoking the power of their “super-intelligent God.” In Texas, the Advantage Academy charter school network promotes “the Bible, prayer, and patriotism.” Texas-based Responsive Education Solutions, the sixth largest charter school network, and Imagine Schools, the seventh with campuses in Ohio, Arizona, and Florida, promote “creationism” as an alternative to science [see note below]. Essentially, these networks are using public dollars to produce a new generation of rightwing religious stalwarts.
All the religious charters and vouchers schools are not Christian. The ninth largest charter network is affiliated with an Islamic cleric from Turkey. In Brooklyn, New York vouchers are used to support fundamentalist Jewish religious schools. What these charters and voucher school share in common is their threat to public schools and the American principle of separation of church and state that dates back to the founding of the country.
Follow Alan Singer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ReecesPieces8
On October 16, 2017 I received a notice reporting that the January 2014 article in Slate.com cited in this blog contained inaccuracies. I agreed to post this statement. “Immediately following the Slate.com article (now nearing 4 years in age) and due to the seriousness of the allegations, ResponsiveEd pulled down its biology curriculum for legal review, and voluntarily reported to state regulators. While there were ambiguous references that did not violate state or federal law, ResponsiveEd nevertheless updated its curriculum to avoid any misinterpretation or confusion that ResponsiveEd was teaching creationism or otherwise endorsing or disapproving of religion. Creationism is simply not part of ResponsiveEd’s science curriculum and is not promoted “as an alternative to science” as you inaccurately surmise in your article. Accordingly, we respectfully ask that you issue a correction or update to your article and/or remove reference to ResponsiveEd in the above quoted material.”