U.S. History (rejection of the “rule by atheism” model)

[barnhart]

Back to the topic of this thread, if there was an element of rejection of atheism in the founding, a topic of some debate, it is found in contrast to the militantly secularized French Revolution where the power or authority of church and tradition were intentionally cleansed. The more pragmatic Americans sidestepped that confrontation by using an empty category of God or religion, stripped of particulars, as the basis or authority for the new regime.

This has some welcome benefits such as freedom to publicly practice religion but there are drawbacks as well. Some movement may come along and fill the undefined category of "god" with their own specific god with specific demands, and use the American system to promote it.

[Jazman]

As a school board member I have been working to eliminate the ACE (fundamentalist southern Baptist) curriculum from our church school. Several years ago my children brought home curriculum praising the Confederacy. This type of reverse engineering of history is not good for anyone in the long run. I managed to get through grade school with an appreciative, careful and slightly outsider view of American history that is in my mind quite healthy. I suspect the people who taught me would be suspicious of Hillsdale and their history, and for good reason.

I wish my mennonite schooling had been a little more intentional in that regard... at least it didn't seem that way... (I'm not sure what textbook we used in high school but my teacher had been trained at Bob Jones... it feels now like we got an attempted syncretized version of anabaptist + fundamentalist southern Baptist lens on history... (Not sure such a thing is possible, but I think it was attempted...)