I hope everyone who celebrated Thanksgiving had a lovely day!
This week, we’ve been translating a published endorsement and defense of The Heritage Foundation’s Phoenix Declaration.
Readers who missed previous installments can find links below. I encourage readers to catch up. This language builds throughout the series.
To recap, the Phoenix Declaration is a Heritage Foundation document that will transform American public education into forced Christian Nationalist religious indoctrination. It has already been adopted for Florida public schools.
Before we get to today’s texts, let’s remind readers of the Christian Nationalist meaning of the word FORMATION:
FORMATION = INDOCTRINATION
The Centrality of Character Formation.
A school could form people in The Gospel of Hedonism or The Gospel of Autonomy or The Gospel of Expressive Individualism. Or it could form students in what Servais Pinckaers called Freedom for Excellence: self-directed action toward the truly good and beautiful. The Phoenix Declaration is admirably clear in the centrality of Character Formation to all education. And that’s right at home in the American tradition in the best sense. Consider the 2nd verse of America the Beautiful where we ask God to “confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law.” The distinction between liberty and license was something every one of our Founders could explicate. And yet we now have entire generations of Americans—including our political and legal elites—who can’t fathom that distinction. (SOURCE: The Heritage Foundation – not linking to them)
Anderson’s choice of the word GOSPEL isn’t accidental.
He assigns it to various schools of thought to make his choice of GOSPEL seem less extreme, to normalize the idea that hedonism is a GOSPEL; autonomy is a GOSPEL; individualism is a GOSPEL.
His choice not to assign the word GOSPEL is also deliberate.
Most readers won’t know that Servais Pinckaers was a Roman Catholic priest of the Dominican order. He focused on applying the Catholic (Dominican/Augustinian/Aquinan) interpretation of morality to ethics, leading to his GOSPEL called Freedom for Excellence.
Where FREEDOM = rejecting one’s sin nature and accepting (in this case Catholic) Christian Nationalist salvation so that one can then be free to pursue excellence.
And EXCELLENCE = Devotion to a holy life.
He again endorses the Phoenix Declaration’s call for character formation (forced Christian Nationalist religious indoctrination) in America’s public schools. He goes on to use a veiled WCN talking point: That the US Founders were all Christian Nationalists. (The distinction between liberty and license was something every one of our Founders could explicate.)
Anderson’s next section is called EDUCATION IS POLITICAL.
Education is formation—intellectual, moral, aesthetic—and political…A large part of primary education is to help people to understand and become contributing participants in their civilization and their political community. A sound education forms people in ways that enable them to inherit and pass on the traditions that are central to their civilization and polity. Capable of inheriting, hence a heritage. Capable of passing it on, hence a tradition, traditio…The Phoenix Declaration is entirely correct to emphasize the importance of cultural transmission and citizenship. A large part of this will be how we teach history and civics, obviously, but also how we teach religion and philosophy, art and music, theatre and literature. To have our heritage and tradition be living. To have it become part of our moral imagination, part of our effective memory. Directing a natural love for our own, for our heritage, our country.
The Phoenix Declaration essentially says EDUCATION IS INDOCTRINATION.
Anderson uses a lot of words to decry all the ways the left supposedly indoctrinated American students to reject the WCN One True God, choose “sin,” and hate their country. I chose to skip those parts in favor of showing readers how Christian Nationalists are operating:
They understand that the key to controlling the government for generations lies in capturing American public schools and forcing every student into Christian Nationalist religious indoctrination.
They intend to make the only acceptable and tolerated form of indoctrination (formation) Christian Nationalist dogma. (Education is formation.)
They clearly aim to control the political sphere with the products of this forced indoctrination. (Intellectual, moral, aesthetic—and political.)
The only sound education will be one that centers on forced Christian Nationalist religious indoctrination. (A sound education forms people.)
They will use forced religious indoctrination to rewrite and transmit America’s history, as well as what it means to be a citizen. (The Phoenix Declaration is entirely correct to emphasize the importance of cultural transmission and citizenship.)