Scourging the schools

OK, OK, you say. Enough on The Passion of the Christ. It's only a movie, right?

Well, it is. And it isn't.

Obviously, Mel Gibson's religious revenge melodrama has become more than just a movie. It's now a cultural event -- a broad volley, as it were, in the raging Culture Wars. In that context, it's also become a kind of Rorschach test for the million-dollar question, Which Side Are You On?

And it is in that respect that the film has real significance -- not so much for what it actually says, but for what it symbolizes to the religious right: namely, a hard right hook thrown at the forces of "anti-Christian" secularism. A blow against the liberal empire, as it were.

The real role of The Passion is to serve as a propaganda victory in service of a larger cause -- namely, the multi-faceted offensive to remake America as a "Christian nation" by fundamentalist True Believers. By leaping to promote it, the right reinforces the idea of remaking of the Constitution -- and by extension, American society -- currently being promoted on a variety of fronts. These range from the "Constitution Restoration Act" to the rabid right's railing about Janet Jackson's exposed breast to the fight over gay marriage to the appearance of The Passion on the scene.

It may be tempting to view these cases in isolation. The religious right's legislation seems unlikely to pass. The issue of gay marriage seems like it is working its way through the courts. And on the outside, The Passion is just another movie.

But placed in their larger context, they collectively represent a serious surge in the power of the theocratic right to in fact enact their agenda. This is not merely an abstract problem, or Margaret Atwoodesque paranoia. It's manifesting itself right now in our everyday lives.

Consider, if you will, an event that took place last week in the small town of Darby in western Montana (and brought to our attention thanks to John McKay at archy).

On what should have been a normal school day, some 50 students -- nearly a third of the local high school's student population -- turned out on the little town's streets to protest the decision by the Darby School Board to institute a so-called "intelligent design" science curriculum. Such programs, of course, are Trojan horses, intended to bring creationist pseudo-science into the classrooms. And even the students in Darby, Montana, know it:

Objecting to 'origins': Darby student protest highlights concern over new policy

About one-third of the high school's 170 students Wednesday walked out of school 15 minutes before the bell rang and assembled between U.S. 93 and school property in protest of the school board's decisions to question evolution.

Carrying signs criticizing the newly adopted policy, students walked the sidewalk and drew honks and yells from passers-by hoping school officials and trustees would take heed.

"Students really care what's going on in the school," said senior Aaron Lebowitz, who organized the protest. "(The school board) has been on their own track and haven't really listened to us."

What spurred the protest was the board's "intelligent design" program, favored by such theocratic "think tanks" as the Discovery Institute, all of whom are financed by an amalgamation of "Christian reconstructionists" who object to teaching evolution in the public schools:

Trustees last month adopted a policy that calls for teachers to question evolution. The policy was brought to the board based on the idea to teach intelligent design theory -- a biological origins theory that assumes there is a designer of the biological world but stops short of saying who or what that designer is.

Critics claim the theory is a guise to introduce creation science in the classroom.

"Over the past few weeks, students have discussed the issue at length and formed opinions about intelligent design," Lebowitz said.

One sign read, "Creationism in a cheap tuxedo." And others called on people to go to church for creationism.

It must be pointed out that the Bitterroot Valley in Montana, where this took place, does not fit the stereotype of podunk Montana. The Rocky Mountain Laboratory is in the valley, as is a noted biotechnology firm. There's also been a significant influx of newcomers in the valley in recent years.

At the same time, it has been home to a broad array of right-wing activism over the past several decades as well. One of the more notorious Patriot claques in Montana, headed by tax protester named Calvin Greenup, continues to operate in the area. (Greenup engaged local law enforcement in an armed standoff for several months back in 1995, a case In God's Country covers in detail.) The religious right has maintained a steady presence in the region for some time, and has evidently taken charge of the Darby School Board.

This became painfully obvious when the board, in responding to the protests, sought legal assistance from a Christian fundamentalist support group called the Allied Defense Fund:

The board Tuesday voted to retain Lincoln attorney Bridgitt Erickson, whose fees will be paid by the Allied Defense Fund, an organization that traces its founding in part to the groups Focus on the Family and Campus Crusade for Christ.

Of course, this isn't only happening in Montana. "Intelligent design" programs are being quietly implemented in school districts around the nation, while state legislatures are busy considering passing laws to force them on other districts.

BurningBird recently posted about such an effort in Missouri:

This little uncomfortable writing of mine was inspired by a new Missouri House Bill, HB911, which is attempting to insert the teaching of creationism in our schools, through the concept known as Intelligent Design. The response to this bill from the educational community was compelling, intelligent, seemingly impossible to deny, and it does look as if the bill is not progressing at this point. The thing, though, is that it will appear again. And again. And again. And eventually, if we're not paying close enough attention, it will succeed at some time because our politics are influenced by the Political Christ, no matter how much we want to deny this.

Indeed, if you want to keep track of all the fronts on which "intelligent design" programs are being used to assault science education in our schools, check in at the National Center for Science Education Web site. The New York Times reported on the Darby case as well, and observed:

Partly because of the contentious dynamics of an election year, partly because of the coast-to-coast influence of the Discovery Institute, local disputes on the teaching of evolution are simmering in states from Alabama to Ohio to California. But with the help of the Internet, defenders like the group in Ravalli County are springing up all over the nation.

There is just one of the fronts on which the fundamentalist right is attacking public education. Another, of course, is the disastrous "No Child Left Behind" program that is gradually emerging as a recipe for leaving millions of children with third-rate educations; others from the religious right keep pounding away at "school voucher" proposals that would gut local funding for public schools.

Probably the real reason that public schools face such withering fire is that fundamentalists have come to what is almost certainly a correct conclusion: that their real enemy, in the battle for hearts and minds, is education. The fundamentalist approach to the world is built on faith; its thinkers begin with what the tenets of their faith as the core of what they believe, and then go about finding "facts" to support those beliefs. The educated approach -- especially the scientific approach -- is to gather facts first, with an open mind, and then to synthesize through logic a model that explains things. The two styles of thought are diametrically opposed and, ultimately, irreconcilable.

The religious right knows that the only way it will win this Culture War it has started is by relentlessly attacking, on a multitude of fronts. These range from cutting taxes so severely that social and education programs are gutted; rendering the issue of gay marriage a national cause celebre; attacking abortion rights at every step; restricting civil liberties and promoting the notion that church-state separation is a "myth"; and finally, engaging in a relentless propaganda war over the right-wing airwaves, both radio and television, that pounds tirelessly at the notion that liberalism is the cause of all the nation's problems, and that America's real identity is a "Christian" one. On one hand, they attack Janet Jackson's breast and Howard Stern's foul mouth as benchmarks of our supposed moral depravity, but simultaneously swoon over a sadomasochistic representation of the Crucifixion that is one of the most violent films ever made and assure us that such spectacles improve the nation's moral fiber.

Anna Quindlen remarked on the wide range of fronts in the Culture War, and their markedly increased ferocity, in a recent Newsweek column:

... [T]he other night I listened to Bill O'Reilly speak of "secularists" on Fox News, and as I tried to parse out who those secularists might be, I discovered to my surprise that they would be me. From same-sex marriage to Mel Gibson's gory cinematic take on the Crucifixion, the new wedge issue is religiosity, not to be confused with faith. ...

... Democratic politicians have had this problem, and the new conventional wisdom is that to overcome it they need to be doing a lot more public God talk. Forget that. Any time I hear a guy going on and on about how his road to the statehouse or the White House was paved with prayer (not to mention a good bit of soft money), I get the uncomfortable feeling he's doing what Mel Gibson has done with his movie: trading on God for personal gain. The modern version of 30 pieces of silver.

The connection between politics and religion for me lies in the motto of Cornelia Connelly, the Philadelphia wife and mother who founded the order of nuns by whom I was lucky enough to be educated. Actions, not words. Touch the sick, the poor, the children, the powerless, as Christ did, and never mind quoting Leviticus. For the record, I have never written the name of God without capitalizing the G. But that is the letter. What truly matters is the spirit.

What Quindlen overlooks, of course, is the fact that merely asserting the ability of faith and reason to co-exist is no longer enough. In today's environment, it means standing up for yourself -- and for all those who do not share the faith. Like those kids in Montana did last week.

Then, there can be no mistaking Which Side You Are On.