Texas Board of Education and our Christian founders

Nicole Stockdale:

Sunday, yet another long-form essay on the Texas State Board of Education will hit the newsstands, this one in The New York Times Magazine.

"How Christian Were the Founders?" discusses the philosophy of "members of what is the most influential state board of education in the country, and one of the most politically conservative," focusing the debate on whether the authors of the Constitution intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation.

The one thing that underlies the entire program of the nation's Christian conservative activists is, naturally, religion. But it isn't merely the case that their Christian orientation shapes their opinions on gay marriage, abortion and government spending. More elementally, they hold that the United States was founded by devout Christians and according to biblical precepts. This belief provides what they consider not only a theological but also, ultimately, a judicial grounding to their positions on social questions. When they proclaim that the United States is a "Christian nation," they are not referring to the percentage of the population that ticks a certain box in a survey or census but to the country's roots and the intent of the founders.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at February 13, 2010 1:28 AM
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