“Genteel Racism” in “America’s Providential History”

Mark Beliles and Stephen McDowell’s America’s Providential History, which I started writing about in my pervious post, has been used in Christian schools and in the home-schooling movement since its initial publication in 1989. In American Fascists, Chris Hedges points out that the authors of this textbook define “‘liberty’ as fealty to ‘the Spirit of the Lord.’” Working towards “liberty” means freeing oneself from “secular humanism,” thus escaping the bonds of “different moral codes and belief systems, to introcude a single, uniform and unquestioned ‘Christian’ orientation.” Essentially, the “liberty” that Beliles and McDowell define “means theocratic tyranny.” We see this throughout the textbook, but it becomes abundantly clear when they detail the role that “Christians” should play in the political system.

For the authors of the textbook, America has lost its “Christian” path because it has become led by the “law” not by the “spirit.” This has occurred for many reasons, but in order to redirect the nation back on the “correct” path, Christians must show up to the polls, not just in national elections but in local elections too. They must also become involved in every step of the political process, from attending party meetings to voting in primaries because if they wait till November then they will, as the textbook says, have “to choose between ‘the…