HR888 is a crock; Congress should NOT endorse lies

Chris Rodda gave background on this in January:

On December 18, 2007, Congressman Randy Forbes (R-VA) introduced H. Res. 888, a resolution "Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation's founding and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the first week in May as 'American Religious History Week' for the appreciation of and education on America's history of religious faith."

This resolution, which purports to promote "education on America's history of religious faith," is packed with the same American history lies found on the Christian nationalist websites, and in the books of pseudo-historians like David Barton. It lists a total of seventy-five "Whereas's," leading up to four resolves, the third of which is particularly disturbing -- that the U.S. House of Representatives "rejects, in the strongest possible terms, any effort to remove, obscure, or purposely omit such history from our Nation's public buildings and educational resources," a travesty of the highest magnitude, considering that most of the "history" this resolve aims to promote in our public buildings and schools IS NOT REAL!

Thirty-one representatives have already embarrassed themselves, demonstrating their lack of knowledge of our country's history by becoming co-sponsors of this resolution. Let your representative know that if they do not oppose this resolution, they will either be demonstrating their own lack of knowledge of our country's history, or, worse yet, will be admitting that they are willing to be complicit in the perpetuation of lies in order to further the Christian nationalist agenda.

Troutfishing at Daily Kos notes this today:

House Resolution 888 has over a dozen new supporters since I last wrote here on the subject, and Chris Rodda calculates the resolution has the endorsement of 35% of House GOP members and also 5 House Democrats. [Emphasis in original]

I am all for recognizing the role of religion in society and for objective teaching of history that includes religious history, but interjecting all manner of distortions and falsehoods into our nation's laws is reprehensible. This is compounded by that fact that the vast majority of Americans are unaware that portrayals of the United States as a "Christian county" are based on outright falsehoods.

Troutfishing clarifies the danger of congressional endorsement of lies:

Even if H. Res 888 only gets passed in the US House of Representatives that would serve the goal of American history falsificationists such as Wallbuilders head David Barton ; if the Resolution gets passed in the House-- rather than rightfully rejected as the foetid mass of history falsification that it is, that House endorsement of H. Res. 888 would be entered into the Congressional Record. In that way, the history lies in H. Res 888-- proven to be lies through the diligent, hard work of Chris Rodda --would become "Congressionally certified".

Check out Troutfishing's post to learn more about this, or Chris Rodda's latest installment from this week. Bruce Wilson's appeal here is also good as it outlines the efforts to re-write American history to promote a "Christian" agenda.

Just because lies come out of the mouth of "good Christians" does not make them true.
--the BB