National Religious History Week -- Not

PAUL HARVEY

Quite possibly much ado about nothing, likely an election-year stunt to fire up the base rather than some grave evidence of the theocrats on the march. But still -- courtesy of Tenured Radical, here's a discussion of a House Resolution to establish a National Religious History Week -- aka "America is a Christian Nation" week. Here's an excerpt from the resolution:

"Whereas political scientists have documented that the most frequently-cited source in the political period known as The Founding Era was the Bible" and "Whereas the United States Supreme Court has declared throughout the course of our Nation's history that the United States is 'a Christian country', 'a Christian nation', 'a Christian people', 'a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being' and that 'we cannot read into the Bill of Rights a philosophy of hostility to religion....'"

Apparently the bill's sponsors have not talked to John Fea, among others.

Here's the best portion from The Radical's take:

The bill clips a fistful of historical "facts" that link American political institutions to Christianity, including the presence of a Gutenberg Bible in the Library of Congress. These facts are stripped of their historical context, and strung together in chronological order, to "prove" that the United States is, and was intended to be by its founders, a Christian nation . . . Curiously, it also suggests that religion really has no history as such -- only a timeless present that can be used to re-order a political past in the interests of a contemporary interest group, a charge often aimed at leftist academics by cultural conservatives who want to minimize the importance of race and gender to national history.

UPDATE: Another History Blog looks under the hood of the "facts" stated in the resolution, briefly; Chris Rodda does so, more extensively, here. Truthiness reigns in this regiment of the right.

One presumes this will collapse of its own absurdity.