Christian paranoia watch

Seeing the Forest has the best take I can find on this story that's going around about how a teacher was banned from teaching the Declaration of Independence because it has the word "God" in it. Basically, the story is bullshit. The teacher was banned from giving out "supplemental materials" on the use of the word "God" these documents. Dave Johnson is right--twenty bucks says that on Monday someone gets their hands on the supplemental materials and finds that they are lies and propaganda stating that this country was founded by Christians as a Christian nation, i.e. a theocracy.

He's also right that they timed this story to infiltrate Thanksgiving and all the tensions that arise in families that have differing political views. I would also point out that it's bound to come up because Thanksgiving is a secular holiday with religious connotations for a lot of families, who may not be all that comfortable with the fact that in its essence Thanksgiving is secular and belongs to all Americans, Christian or not.

These stories are not designed so much to rile up the fundamentalist Christians, the true believers who go to church twice a week. Those people are already riled up and their family members who don't believe as they do already have coping mechanisms in place. These stories work their magic on the compulsory Christians, because their relatives won't be expecting an ambush. Not many members of my family go to church on a regular basis, but I will bet you one million dollars that if this comes up over their dinner today (I'm not with them) then half of the family will be crawling over each other to denounce the liberals who are trying to take God out of kids' lives. Compulsory Christians are the worst in a way, because they feel guilty that they don't go to church so they welcome a little God-talk in the schools because it takes some of the burden off them to teach their kids respect for God and religion and all that jazz.

Via The Sideshow.