Book Review: Why Christians Don't Vote for Democrats by Richard Miller - Page 4

Also, Miller's conception of what public schools are like does not reflect reality. Almost anyone who has been to public school (and paid any attention in class) will recognize as absurd his claim that the schools try to "convert Christian students into atheists." Public school curricula, by design, have little to say on the subject. Yet his point does illustrate a conflict in educational philosophy. In the traditional "liberal arts" philosophy to which I and many Americans subscribe, the main point of education is to teach children to think. In Miller's view, it's to teach them doctrine. Yet both of these attitudes include their own friction and contradictions.

Church doctrine has been arrived at over 2,000 years of debates, compromise, decrees, political wrangling, and wave after wave of horrendous violence. Miller is aware of that history but dismisses it with the simplistic claim that "the theological table of debate has discovered a vast agreement concerning the teaching of the Bible." (And if you believe that, you probably believe Donald Rumsfeld's claims that things are getting better in Iraq.) The point is that the doctrine taught in a religious school governed by one particular sect reflects just one perspective among many. Even in a country where Christian sects live peaceably, their disagreements about how to interpret the Bible, live their lives, and worship their deity or deities persist. Although "evangelical" Christianity has certainly been on a roll lately, America remains a multicultural stew of dozens of Christian sects, along with several types of Jews, Muslims, atheists, and others. The voting bloc Miller calls for is a pipe dream.

Our nondenominational public schools too live with doctrinal tension. They have often been used to slant children into specific biases, notably with respect to American history and the relative value of non-Western cultures. Religion creeps in too, in the insertion of "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance, in attempts to put nonsense like "creation science" (now rechristened "intelligent design") into the curriculum, in holiday celebrations that presume Christian religious beliefs to be universal, and, in extreme cases like the Delaware travesty, in outright persecution. So, Miller's contention that state-controlled schools are, like state-controlled newspapers, "a form of thought control" cannot be fully denied. But the "thought control" is not, as a rule, anti-Christian.

Article Author: Jon Sobel

Jon Sobel is Blogcritics' Culture and Theater Editor. In addition to reviewing NYC theater, he writes a semi-regular round-up of independent music releases. By day he is a computer professional and a freelance writer and editor, and at night he's a …

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