Media’s Supreme History Lesson

Austin, TX – The Texas State Board of Education met and confirmed by a vote of 9-5 textbook standards for the next 10 years. The Board emphasized the teaching of American history and rejected attempts by historical revisionists to remove significant parts of history. Leading the effort to support more than 200 amendments returning the textbooks’ content to original topics was board member Cynthia Dunbar, who is a professor at Liberty University School of Law. Dunbar offered an invocation before one of the final meetings of the Board, in which she said:

“I believe no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the Savior have from the beginning been our guiding geniuses. Whether we look to the first Charter of Virginia or the Charter of New England or the Charter of Massachusetts Bay or the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the same objective is present – a Christian land governed by Christian principles. I believe the entire Bill of Rights came into being because of the knowledge our forefathers had of the Bible and their belief in it: freedom of belief, of expression, of assembly, of petition, the dignity of the individual, the sanctity of the home, equal justice under law, and the reservation of powers to the people…I like to believe we are living today in the spirit of the Christian religion. I like also to believe that as long as we do so, no great harm can come to our country.”

After this invocation, the Texas Freedom Network (TFN), which promoted historical revisionism, exposed its ignorance of history by writing a scathing article against Dunbar, saying, “She offered the board’s opening prayer this morning and removed any doubt about what she and other far-right board members want students to learn: America’s laws and government should be based on the Christian Bible.” TFN’s faux pas was to overlook the fact that Dunbar was merely quoting the words of the late Chief Justice Earl Warren from a Time magazine article. Warren was a liberal activist Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, who served on the High Court from 1953 to 1969. Some other liberal media that made the same mistake immediately removed similar articles upon learning the source of the prayer.

Mathew Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law, commented: “Those who wish to revise American history are often ignorant of history. Some secularists wish to revise history in order to bury America’s rich religious heritage. It was the Great Awakening that preceded the American Revolution. Without a religious revival, there would have been no lasting civil liberty, and without the American Revolution, there would be no America. Those who wish to exclude God from our history either suffer from dementia or are dishonest.”

This article is excerpted from a Liberty Counsel press release.