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Sanitized History for Fundies


Sister Mary Savage

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I wonder how fundies teach history to their blessings (former Gothardites/fundies please chime in). I wonder how they explain things such as the civil rights era, the 9/11 attacks, and other issues.

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I wonder how fundies teach history to their blessings (former Gothardites/fundies please chime in). I wonder how they explain things such as the civil rights era, the 9/11 attacks, and other issues.

Ugh, I don't want to know. I mean, I do, but it would drive me crazy if I actually knew.

I'm curious what fundies think about the Civil War.

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I want to know how they feel about Native Americans being forced onto reservations, being given small-pox filled blankets, being forced to go to "White" boarding schools where they were punished for speaking their own language, and being punished if they rejected Christianity.

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I did BJU, which sometimes was good and sometimes was... interesting. I had a history book that explained that most historians think that Pompeii was just caused by a volcano, but we know that it was God using the volcano to punish the people of Pompeii for their hedonistic lifestyle. (It's been a while since I read it, but that was the gist of it.)

I also had a history book that explained that the Japanese internment camps in WWII were really a good thing for the Japanese people. They liked being in the camps, you see. Thankfully my parents saw that and didn't let me read it until I found it years later when I already knew what crap that was.

I don't know about civil rights, but 9/11=terrorists hate America's freedom and Christian values. (Unless you're a conspiracy theorist like Zsuzsanna, which I think is actually worse.)

I've seen Columbus portrayed as a great Christian man, and lots of portraying Native Americans throughout US history as the bad guys. (Not that they were always wonderful either, but is it that hard to recognize that killing them was a bad thing?)

Edit:

I want to know how they feel about Native Americans being forced onto reservations, being given small-pox filled blankets, being forced to go to "White" boarding schools where they were punished for speaking their own language, and being punished if they rejected Christianity.

Well, the blanket thing was probably a myth, but generally it's hard to get fundies to admit that the Native Americans might not have been treated right. I always felt sympathetic to the Native Americans, but thought it was bad to express that.

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They leave out practically 91 percent of the known history, which isn't much either, and, they change the remaining 9 percent to taste ,) My bet here!

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I went to Christian school for a year in elementary school and I remember a huge emphasis being placed on Thanksgiving and religious freedom. But I also went to public school where I learned that my small town in the deep south was immune to segregation and "everybody just got along :D :D :D ". Which was hysterical since everybody knew the run down school building that was rotting away was once the school for African American children :roll:

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Actually, my parents didn't teach a sanitized version of history. And, despite following Gothard, wanted us to go to college, so we got a pretty good education. They didn't try and make it all "Christians were wonderful". I did a report once on Japanese internment camps and we discussed how horrible it was. Not that there wasn't some bias, but I think it helped they didn't use Christian history books and made us read huge amounts of biographies.

But I do know that there are lots and lots of fundie homeschoolers who do change up history to make Christians come out squeaky clean.

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What about witch trials in Europe and in the US? Were those Christian women who dared to lead prayer groups, etc. really just witches?

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I want to know how they feel about Native Americans being forced onto reservations, being given small-pox filled blankets, being forced to go to "White" boarding schools where they were punished for speaking their own language, and being punished if they rejected Christianity.

They would ignore most of it and simply say that the tribes were raised out of ignorance and given the benefit of Christianity and European education.

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It was mostly left out or taught from a highly biased perspective from us. There was some curriculum we used that ONLY focused on religious history. In other words, our history started with "Biblical" history and then covered any events that progressed Christianity such as the Reformation (with Catholics being evil, of course) and huge emphasis on the US as being the best country ever because the Founding Fathers had a Christian vision. :doh:

It was awful.

Anything that was difficult to understand within that light was glazed over or skipped entirely. Some basic facts were taught about the some of our nation's wars and some European history, but that's about it. The religious forces behind that stuff was again from a biased perspective or completely left out (yeah, they attacked each other for no reason!). I think my mother was too uneducated to know any better herself and my dad was more involved with math and "science" for us.

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I wonder how fundies teach history to their blessings (former Gothardites/fundies please chime in). I wonder how they explain things such as the civil rights era, the 9/11 attacks, and other issues.

I was married in 2000 but my knowledge of history (until I began studying it myself of late) was limited. We learned creation, Bible stories then skipped to government which was very much limited to how Christians are being persecuted. I didn't know about civil rights much more than the story of Rosa parks being a "feminist" and not obeying her "head". I was told that most protests were lack of God or women who didn't love their kids enough to stay home with them. When I started home schooling my own children (the oldest did kindergarten at home before I left) the "homeschool education director" at church encouraged parents to skip history until high school then use only church approved material. The stress in early grades was on value teaching.

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I remember reading on the Wikipedia page for ACE (Accelerated Christian Education) that their history material has been criticized because it depicts things like colonialism as beneficial for the people being colonized, and apartheid in South Africa as being just fine. It's basically Heart of Darkness without any realization. I can't imagine ATI or other fundie "curriculum" is much different.

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I wonder how fundies teach history to their blessings (former Gothardites/fundies please chime in). I wonder how they explain things such as the civil rights era, the 9/11 attacks, and other issues.

It probably differs with region and the individual teaching. I saw some homeschool Christian curriculum that looked similar to what I would read in school and some "revisionist" bullshit that teaches the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression and that era and the old south as the best and that slavery was not really that bad. I used to think it was a joke when people called it that, but nope, met a few. Some nuts have actually refused to acknowledge the state I grew up in because it split during that war to become its own state. No, really, I'm serious. There are some curriculum like Sonlight that is more neutral even though it is Christian and has Bible study, but I've heard of Christian curriculum fairs not allowing Sonlight in because they felt it was not "Christian" enough. Found one:

johnscorner.blogspot.com/2009/01/change-of-interpretation-on-chec.html

Zsu and her hubby teach that 9/11 was a conspirancy, but not all of the fundies do. Some fundie-lite churches here even taught that it was a result of sin. Others just see as a tragedy. Some see it as confirming why Christianity is the truth, etc. Some pretend the various days of old were the good ol' days and ignore the realities of what life was like at that time. There is no so much variation and it probably depends on the individual fundie's beliefs and how they were raised. Some are hidden racists while others would fight to the death for the rights of every race-I was the latter as a fundie. I still will fight to the death for the rights of every race, religion, culture, gender, etc. in this country.

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What about witch trials in Europe and in the US? Were those Christian women who dared to lead prayer groups, etc. really just witches?

I've wondered what fundies teach their kids about this, too.

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I've wondered what fundies teach their kids about this, too.

I also would like to know what they think about this as today's mordern fundy woman like Kelly or Zsuzsu would either be branded as a heritic or hung/burned as a witch. Anne Hutchinson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Hutchinson and Ann Bradstreet http://www.annebradstreet.com/ are really no different from Martha Corey http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/saxon-sal ... -cache=yes or Rebecca Nurse http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/f ... l_bnur.htm. Even my own many times great grandfather Rev. George Burroughs http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/salem/peo ... oughs.html was hung inspite of he being able to recite the Lord's Prayer. http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/f ... /salem.htm I really doubt fundy type mindsets can even handle the critical thinking that is needed to study the Salem Witch Trials.

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I've wondered what fundies teach their kids about this, too.

One of my old high school classmates (who was raised Catholic) said that he really believed that the Inquisition really burned witches because they turned against God. Also another fundie acquaintance of mine believed that the Salem Trials really hanged witches because the women were "dancing naked in the forest by a cauldron"

He watched the Crucible too many times.

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I can't remember which family/blog it is/was, but I remember going through a bunch of re-enactment posts/pictures where, over the course of the blog, the Civil War became the "War of Northern Agression"...idiots.

There are some fundies who teach 9/11 as a punishment for accepting homosexuals, feminism etc (Pat Robertson said something akin to this - he's big on the whole disaster/war as punishment thing).

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This stuff is sad. No wonder you left "fundyism"

Covering up history is a wicked way to teach doctrine, and is completely out of sync with what the Bible teaches by it's example. It (to my recollection) does not glaze stories with perfect heroes, or perfect motives. It tells it like it is. I know you guys don't like much else of what I have said, but is all this "conspiracy" (if I can call it that; ie hiding facts, covering up the truth, etc) really true?

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Regardless of what you may think of people here, there is no reason for those here that tell those stories about their eduction, or lack their of to lie. they are sincere in telling their stories. Many of them were taught this stuff from commercial text books and curricula that obviously are developed and marketed to a specific fundamentalist Christian demographic and sold to willing consumers. I don't know about a conspiracy, but many people make a lot of money meddling this crap.

Edited to not that I an drugged and some one should say this in a way that is coherent

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Guest Anonymous
This stuff is sad. No wonder you left "fundyism"

Covering up history is a wicked way to teach doctrine, and is completely out of sync with what the Bible teaches by it's example. It (to my recollection) does not glaze stories with perfect heroes, or perfect motives. It tells it like it is. I know you guys don't like much else of what I have said, but is all this "conspiracy" (if I can call it that; ie hiding facts, covering up the truth, etc) really true?

Why don't you haul your cowardly ass back over to the thread that you ran away from and answer those questions that people asked you?

Or alternatively, bugger off.

**ETA: Since you're here, why don't you explain why a person using a consistent alias instead of their real name on the internet makes it impossible for you to refute/debate them?

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When I was homeschooling, we used a literature based curriculum that was pretty awesome and comprehensive when it comes to history. There were certain things that bugged me--idolatrous attitudes toward the founding fathers, for example--but no more so than I encountered at a pretty liberal public high school. There are things that second graders don't need to learn in detail, like about small pox infested blankets. No matter where you school, so much of grade school history is watered down to suit young ears, with good reason.

Because the curriculum was literature based and not exclusively on Christian literature, there were things that the teacher's manual advised parents to skip, such as references to very early man and evolution. But I didn't skip them. Also, part of the curriculum was a set of missionary stories that were full of anti-indigenous attitudes. Those got sold on eBay as soon as I flipped through them, which left me some holes that could be filled with books that balanced the other stuff.

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In the very early years, I used BJU with my kids. It was all right, as far as textbooks go. As the years progressed, I was disappointed in the overly black and white view of history and I was pretty religious at the time. It seems to me that a lot of 'Christian' history books really try hard to seperate figures into good and bad categories. Yet, history isn't quite so simple.

Sometimes people who are horrible in their personal lives are good leaders of their country, while people who seem upright and kind, can be really poor leaders. It is strange and seems to go against common sense. Often people with good ideals do bad things for those ideals or are hyprocrites.

By the way, the most interesting part of history is the weird gossipy parts that our teachers try to keep from us when we were younger.

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