Pete Hegseth is bringing Christian propaganda to schools on military bases

A Hillsdale College-linked textbook whitewashes Christianity, vilifies Islam, and distorts history for the children of U.S. service members

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Republicans are already shoving Christianity into the public school curriculum in Texas, but you’d be wrong to think they’re stopping there. The question conservatives are asking themselves is where else they can impose Christianity into schools with as little resistance as possible. A red state is one answer. Another is schools on military bases.

Pete Hegseth (screenshot via YouTube)

In fact, according to Associated Press, there are roughly “160 schools across 11 countries [which educate] roughly 70,000 students who are children of active-duty military or civilian service members.” And for high school students who need to fulfill a world history requirement for graduation, beginning this fall, one of their options will be to take a course called “Western Civilization to 1500,” that uses a textbook falsely suggesting Christianity has always been a force for good.

Titled “The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition, Volume I: The Ancient World and Christendom,” it includes suggested lesson plans created in partnership with Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school in Michigan that has also developed influential materials for K-12 schools.

Historians and educators who reviewed excerpts of the text told The Associated Press it depicts points throughout history in misleading ways, representing Western civilization and Christianity as one and the same and casting Islam as a threat to both.

A deep dive into the textbook shows how conservatives are lying to children about the country’s history in order to indoctrinate them early. It’s perfectly in line with what conservatives have been arguing for years now, that Christianity is and always has been amazing for everyonr, while Muslims and Islam are inherently evil.

The textbook’s authors credit early Christianity with promoting the idea that all people must be treated humanely. It argues that “Christian faith also supported a humane cosmopolitanism.”

The book describes Islam as inherently more violent than Christianity. In a chapter on the Middle Ages, the text describes Arabs as resentful or bitter toward Christians and Jews.

In a section titled “Holy War and Martyrdom in Battle,” the book describes wars fought by Christians, such as the Crusades, as intended to defend and protect other Christians. Islam, in contrast, glorifies violence and war, the book says, invoking the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks and 9/11.

“In recent decades, Islam as a religion has, understandably, aroused acute hostility from a great many non-Muslims around the world thanks to the behavior of radical Muslim terrorists. Sometimes referred to as Islamists, their atrocities have been applauded by depressingly large numbers of ordinary Muslims,” the book says.

While the book goes through the year 1500, it’s safe to assume there’s nothing in the book about how “large numbers of ordinary Christians” in “recent decades” have celebrated ICE raids that terrorize communities of color, or the deportation of refugees who have lived in the country for years, or their tacit acceptance of Donald Trump’s constant stream of corruption and lies.

To argue that the Crusades were all about playing defense and to suggest the views of Islamic terrorists represent the official beliefs of Islam are exaggerations to say the least. That’s true now. That was true in the past.

But what do you expect when the textbook’s publisher is Roger Kimball, a conservative activist who unsurprisingly defended everything—literally everything—in the book?

The book’s publisher, Roger Kimball, said it was peer-reviewed by 15 experts. “As the proud publisher of this incomparable work, I stand behind it in every detail,” he said.

Creationists say things like that all the time. Getting 15 of your buddies to “peer review” your paper doesn’t make it legitimate. The AP managed to find multiple historians who said the book is trash, and I doubt they had to try very hard to find them.

All of this is in line with a broader push to Christianize the military in ways the American public probably won’t notice.

Last year, for example, the government announced that America’s military academies will begin accepting standardized test results from the Classic Learning Test (CLT), the shittier pro-Christian alternative to the more traditional SAT and ACT tests.

The AP also says the multiple administrators who run the schools on military bases have been replaced by right-wing alternatives. The chief academic officer, to name one, worked for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and “oversaw the rollout of a civics curriculum that was criticized for claiming America’s founders did not intend for a full separation of church and state.” Another administrator ran a series of charter schools in Atlanta that emphasizes “classical” education.

In other words, they were hired to push through these pro-Christian changes. It’s yet another example of how the Trump administration and Pete Hegseth don’t give a damn about service members or their families; now they’re screwing over the children of those members by indoctrinating them with a false sense of world history that will make them look utterly stupid if and when they go to a real college.

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