House
Resolution 888:
A Beast Of Apocalyptic Stature
By Robert Weitzel
11 February,
2008
Countercurrents.org
“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast.”
-
Book of Revelation 13:18
“In the beginning God
created the heaven and the earth . . . and God saw everything that
he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” So begins and ends
the Christian antediluvian history of the earth—all 788 words
of it.
It is this scant “history” that fundamentalist Christians,
including members of Congress and the President, want taught in public
schools in place of the 150 years of accumulated science embodied
in the theory of evolution. This sliver of Christian history is the
thin edge of the wedge they hope will split Jefferson’s wall
separating church and state and allow fundamentalist dogma to pass
for fact in science classrooms.
Now, if the founder of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, Rep. James
Forbes (R-VA), and thirty-one other Representatives succeed in lodging
their wedge by passing House Resolution 888, designating the first
week in May as “American Religious History Week,” public
school history classrooms will be opened to a fundamentalist version
of the “rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation’s
founding and subsequent history,” however scant or however fabricated.
House Resolution 888, introduced in December 2007, purports to be
about nothing more than a recognition of America's history of religious
faith. In reality, it is an attempt by the Christian Right to rewrite
the history of the United States along the same biblical slant as
their revision of the history of life on earth.
According to Chris Rodda, author of “Liars for Jesus: The Religious
Right’s Alternative Version of American History,” the
seventy-five “Whereas” clauses of H. R. 888 that are meant
to justify its passage are “packed with the same American history
lies found on the Christian nationalist websites, and in the books
of pseudo-historians . . . [used] to further the Christian nationalist
agenda.”
Michael Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation
and former White House counsel during the Reagan administration, said
that “House Resolution 888 is perhaps the most disgraceful,
shocking and tragic example yet of the pernicious and pervasive pattern
and practice of unconstitutional rape of our bedrock American citizens’
religious freedom by the fundamentalist Christian right.”
Alerted to H. R. 888 by Weinstein’s MRFF, Chris Hedges, author
of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America,”
wrote in the Nation, “the resolution is staggering for its sheer
volume of falsehoods about our history, our system of government and
our democracy. Hedges believes that reading the resolution will help
Americans better understand why the right-wing Christian populism
of Mike Huckabee—who wants to amend the Constitution to God’s
standards—is a serious danger to our secular democracy.
Viewed from the summit of forty years, we can now appreciate the iconic
TV drama, Room 222, as a snapshot of American history from the show’s
debut in1969 to its cancellation in1974. The setting for the drama
was the American history classroom of Pete Dixon, a young, idealistic
African-American teacher who helped his students—and the TV
audience— navigate not only the tumultuous teen years, but also
the turbulent swirl of events that defined their generation and became
part of America’s history.
Those of us who watched Room 222, lived the moments and, quite possibly,
made the history. The moments included; the Vietnam War, the 1968
King and Kennedy assassinations, Nixon’s election, Neil Armstrong’s
walk on the moon, Woodstock, the Kent State killings, Earth Day, 18-year-old
vote, the north tower of the World Trade Center completed, Equal Rights
Amendment passed by Congress, the Watergate burglary, Ms. magazine,
Nixon reelected, Roe v. Wade, the last U.S. troops withdraw from Vietnam,
POWs return, first black mayor is elected in a major southern city,
articles of impeachment voted against Nixon, Nixon resigns, President
Ford pardons Nixon.
Predictably, history did not end with ABC’s decision to end
Room 222. And other than maybe the opening in New York City of the
rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, there was nothing particularly
Christian about the history of the show’s six years, though
Christians were certainly a part of it—as were we all—for
good or ill.
Should this resolution be enacted, the history of Room 222, written
in the blood and anger and hope and laughter of all Americans, will
be co-opted and revised by H. R. 888, written by Rep. Forbes’
fundamentalist cabal at the behest of the Christian Right. The result
of their revision will not be America’s history. But then, that
is their aim.
Those familiar with the Christian numerology of end time prophecy
can predict where this resolution will lead.
888-222 = 666 . . .The mark of the Beast.
The resolution’s singular purpose is securing the Christian
Right’s claim to both our nation’s past and its present.
If the wedge of the resolution is hammered deeply enough into the
foundation of our nation’s history, a beast of apocalyptic stature
may slither through the crack, portending the “end times”
of our secular democracy . . . hyperbole notwithstanding.
Robert Weitzel is a freelance writer and contributing editor to Media With a Conscience. His essays regularly appear in The Capital Times in Madison, WI. He has been published in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Skeptic Magazine, Freethought Today, and on popular liberal websites. He can be contacted at: [email protected]
