Resolution 888 Could Change American History

Have you heard of Resolution 888? It’s a little bit of proposed legislature that could help rewrite the foundation of the United States. Should you be scared? Only if you believe that the US should be a nation tolerant of all religious beliefs.

The resolution was introduced by Republican Randy Forbes on December 18,2007 and is being backed by thirty one other Representatives. If it were to pass through Congress American history could be rewritten. The victors after all are the ones that word the history books.

What would change in those texts that school children would take as fact? Mainly that the United States is a Christian nation. There is no question that a mass majority of United States citizens are Christian but this measure would declare the country as a Christian nation as a whole.

Some of the passages that are in the proposal are as follows;

“Whereas political scientists have documented that the most frequently-cited source in the political period known as The Founding Era was the Bible” and “Whereas the United States Supreme Court has declared throughout the course of our Nation’s history that the United States is ‘a Christian country’, ‘a Christian nation’, ‘a Christian people’, ‘a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being’ and that ‘we cannot read into the Bill of Rights a philosophy of hostility to religion….’”

The document could change forever the way United States history is presented. Some of the misrepresentations are that Thomas Jefferson “urged local governments to make land available specifically for Christian purposes, provided Federal funding for missionary work among Indian tribes, and declared that religious schools would receive ‘the patronage of the government.’”

Those who study history know the falsehoods of those statements.

Not every lawmaker on the hill is backing this resolution including head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and a former White House counsel for President Reagan, Michael Weinstein.

He states, “House Resolution 888 is perhaps the most disgraceful, shocking and tragic example yet of the pernicious and pervasive pattern and practice of the unconstitutional rape of our bedrock American citizens’ religious freedoms by the fundamentalist Christian right.”

Right now this document is still in its infant steps and may never leave committee and even if it does may not ever come into being. It has been referred to the House Oversight and Government Reform committee. What is important though is that a document is even being considered that would change American history. It’s a change that seems to be gaining standing during this presidential campaign. Mike Huckabee appears to be leading a fundamental Christian backing to take over the country. He has made it very clear that religion should be at the fore front of the country with statements like, “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ,” Huckabee told a Baptist convention in 1998. He assured the crowd that he had not entered politics “because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn’t have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives.”

Resolution 888 also calls for a `American Religious History Week’ that would take place the first week in May. This week would have schools teach the appreciation of and education on America’s history of religious faith.

There is nothing wrong with having Christian beliefs. That said changing history to suit those beliefs creates a gray area that could prove to be the country’s undoing.