yes, that's the book for me

Since David H. Henry finds it something of a challenge to write an entire 750-word column, he frequently fills out his missives with pats on backs and kicks in pants. Today he also added "another weekly sign that America is heading downhill." Amazingly, he wasn't referring to his own column. Instead, he was discussing the Texas Freedom Networks' concern that Bible classes in high schools aren't being taught as history and literature, but as received wisdom from an Evangelical Christmastian God Almighty.

The problem for Dave is that the Texas Freedom Network is way right on this one.

The problem with the courses begins with the fact that they are often taught by itinerant professional ministers rather than trained educators. It should come as no surprise that these men of the cloth find it hard to avoid proselytizing. It’s more than their job to do so; it’s their calling.

It isn’t easy even for trained educators to jump through all the right hoops when teaching Biblical history and literature in the most rabid parts of the Bible Belt. I used to teach excerpts from Lamentations in my senior English class. It just became too much to deal with, and I banished Lamentations to the part of my syllabus that I never manage to get to. Teaching the Bible apparently gave some kids license to announce that they were holier than St. Augustine. It gave others opportunity to attempt to hijack the class into a denunciation of most of contemporary science. Still others veered off into righteous denunciations of the atheist powers that wouldn’t let them pray in school. And after the kids sang hymns to their own righteousness, the test gave them the opportunity to show that—despite their claims to godliness—they really didn’t know a damn thing about the Bible.

The year after I quit trying to teach the Bible, the Texas Lege allowed that we needed to start praying—sorry, having a “moment of silence”—in class. Surely, these junior Pope Pompouses and Saint Augustthroughmays that I had been teaching would jump at the chance to have a little bit of church on a weekday morning, right?

Not so much. They just used the time to make eyes at one another and to have silent but complicated, lip-read conversations. Or they just talked out loud.

The Revs who teach these classes must find it even harder than I do to stay secular when the young pontiffs who take these classes begin to pontificate. Ordination doesn’t necessarily correspond to education or social appropriateness: I once knew a preacher whose love of fart jokes was unsurpassed. More ominously, he was great friends with the personnel director of the school district. He coulda taught one of these classes.

Dave tips his hand when he makes the sarcastic comment “My goodness! A class on the Bible being taught from a Christian perspective?”. We’re supposed to respond, well, yeah, them Texas Freedom Wahozitwhatsits sure are being ridiculous. I mean, of course, the Bible is a Christian document; of course it should be taught as such.

Only it’s not, not entirely, as everyone but Dave Henry knows. I taught Old Testament books. Lamentations doesn’t really have much to do with Christianity at all. How would Dave feel about the issue if a rabbi taught the class and tried to convert his kid?

Henry hints at how he’d feel when he says “The Texas Freedom Network can feel free to study the high school curriculum of classes on the Quran and the Torah, just for perspective.” This shows you how stone-dumb Dave Henry is: he thinks the Torah and the Bible are two completely different works. And what's he implying anyway? That Imam Hamid Ali is teaching a fundamentalist Moslem class two doors down?

One of the first indicators of stone-dumbness is when you think everyone is just like you except the ones who are not, and they’re all evil. The Emperor W showed this characteristic when he recently announced the Coming of the Third Great Awakening ‘cause, gosh, everyone he talks to sez they’re praying for his ugly ass. The Emperor, like, Dave Henry, sees everything backwards through Christmastian lenses. I suppose I’m even praying for him because I say “God help us all” every time he stammers through another speech or press conference.

Dave Henry and the Emperor are two of a kind. And Henry’s such a lost cause that he would probably think that’s a compliment.


spacedark