Sundays With the Christianists: American History Textbooks for Homeschoolers Whose Father Knows Best
Let’s all hop into the Chrono-Tron for a dynamic trip to the Populuxe world of the 1950s, courtesy of a couple of rightwing Christian textbooks for the homeschool market. Along the way, we’ll learn that small government and pious people of faith created prosperity, and the decade’s high tax rates on the wealthy never have to be mentioned because that would be really inconvenient.
Our 8th-grade textbook America: Land I Love (A Beka, 2006) is pretty sure that the economic boom of the ’50s had little to do with anything the government did; rather, the bestest thing about the ’50s is that it was a time when “the moral values of Biblical Christianity provided a just standard of law, order, and mutual respect, which in turn increased material prosperity.” The book’s chapter on the ’50s leads off with a section on “Moral Strength,” and subsections attribute the decade’s good times to “Respect for Christianity,” “Strong families, little crime,” and to the “Sanctity of life” — just in case students need three main paragraphs for their 5-paragraph essays. We learn that even though church attendance was, sadly, not universal,
most people respected the Biblical teachings of law, order, and moral decency. Local governments often required stores to close on Sundays, and community activities were planned in many areas not to interfere with church services. School days often began with prayer and Bible reading, and parent—teacher meetings and civic organizations usually opened with prayer.
In other words, it was as close to paradise as America got in the 20th century.
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