Ammo for the Fight against Theocrats

As the Sunday New York Times article on the Texas textbook debates suggested, we are in for a full scale assault on our history by Christian revisionists and their right-wing supporters. A close examination of original texts shouldn't give them any comfort as our founding fathers and mothers are very clear about their intentions for our new Republic. But we have learned in the past year that the ability to spin out lie after lie seems to find some resonance in our land.

In case, you are forced to argue with friend, foe, student or professor, books are ammunition, especially those containing some of the writings done by early Americans devoted to the whole issue of the separation of church and state. I received today a very short book edited by Forrest Church called The Separation of Church and State: Writings on a Fundamental Freedom by America's Founders.(Beacon Press, 2004,$16.00) This 160-page book provides the essential writings of everyone from Patrick Henry to Thomas Jefferson on the subject. Since the new theocrats include the Declaration of Independence in their argument about the "Christian" nation, Forrest Church also penned The American Creed:A Biography of the Declaration of Independence ( St. Martin's, 2002). I decided on a liberal theologian as the source for the argument rather than the host of very secular historians because he is sensitive to issues of religion and is inclined to the religious. There are several very substantive books by historians that demolish the Christian revisionist project but I believe Forrest is one of the more effective advocates for the separation of church and state.

In the meantime, while you are carrying on the fight, I'll be reading one of my favorite Nordic writer's Henning Mankell and his new The Man from Beijing.(Knopf, 2010) The author of the Kurt Wallander series, Mankell wrote a wonderful novel about aging and family reconciliation called Italian Shoes, which I urge people to read for its beautiful prose.