The Good Mandate
by digby
Hobby Lobby's owner Steve Green believes it's a constraint on their religious liberty and the 1st Amendment for the government to mandate they pay for insurance that covers contraception. But never let it be said that they are against government mandates on principle. Or even religious mandates:
STEVE GREEN: “We're working on 4 year public school bible curriculum. The first year will be a summary of all three of those section. It's history, it's impact and it's story. Then the next 3 years is going in depth in each of those -- a year for the history, a year for the impact and a year for the story -- in some order... The nation is in danger because of its ignorance of what God has taught. . . . If we don’t know it, our future is going to be very scary ... We were looking - uh- we -- we were talking - - discussed a college curriculum but it's no -- we really want to get -- be into the - um - high school level because we want to reach as many as possible. Someday, I would argue, it should be mandated. Here's a book that's impacted our world, unlike any other, and you're not gonna teach it? There's -- there's something wrong with that."
When I was in high school I took a course called "comparative world religions" which, needless to say, discussed the Bible since it is the basis for three of them. It's "history" "story" and "impact" were a huge part of he course as I recall and I think we all came away understanding how important the Bible has been in the development of Western Civilization. They didn't teach us that what was in the Bible was revealed truth or that its stories were to be taken literally or that we would all go to hell if we didn't believe in it. And that is undoubtedly what this fellow really wants the public schools to be teaching children.
Now, I also went to Sunday school for years and in those classes, we got the religious instruction. Of course, my parents wanted me to be schooled in that religion. I guess I just can't understand why that's not good enough. And anyway, if their job isn't to teach the good word then I don't know what their job is.
Religion is given a huge piece of the private sphere in which to do its work. They don't pay taxes even though they own a lot of property. Their social and cultural influence is immense. There is no reason on earth that they cannot be in charge of religious instruction. If they aren't successfully getting it done I'd have to say it's pretty lame to blame the poor overburdened public schools for failing to do their job for them.
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