Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

Michelle Goldberg’s recent op ed piece, “The Christian Right in in Decline, and it’s Taking America With It“, includes this cogent insight:

The fight over critical race theory seems, on the surface, further from theological concerns. There are, obviously, plenty of people who aren’t evangelical who are anti-C.R.T., as well as evangelicals who oppose C.R.T. bans. But the idea that public schools are corrupting children by leading them away from a providential understanding of American history has deep roots in white evangelical culture. And it was the Christian right that pioneered the tactic of trying to take over school boards in response to teachings seen as morally objectionable, whether that meant sex education, “secular humanism” or evolution.

Ms. Goldberg’s overarching theme in the article is that evangelicals know they are in decline and because of that they are willing to fight to the death to survive… even if THEIR death means the death of our country. Her concluding paragraph summarizes the point:

I was frightened by the religious right in its triumphant phase. But it turns out that the movement is just as dangerous in decline. Maybe more so. It didn’t take long for the cocky optimism of Generation Joshua (the name she coined for the ascendent evangelical wing of the GOP in the early 2000s) to give way to the nihilism of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. If they can’t own the country, they’re ready to defile it.

If you have any doubts about that assertion, the proof is that these same folks have already indicated a willingness to defile democracy’s greatest institution: the public school.