Morality is a personal choice, as Jesus argues in his teachings. Through discipline, some Christians try to awaken morality in themselves during Lent.  It is enough to commit to disciplines before God. It is too much to enforce them on others. That is the overreach we are witnessing in the Missouri legislature and in the State Board of Education in Florida, an overreach that is un-Christian and undemocratic.

The season of Lent turns some Christians into abstainers or observers of new disciplines.  Giving up alcohol would be an obvious one.

The real test, however, is to abstain without recognition and without self-appointed sainthood, the kind of holiness Jesus advocated when he preached: “And whenever you fast, do not look dismal,  like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces, so as to show others they are truly fasting. Truly I tell you they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others, but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret, will reward you” (Matt 6:16-18).

After two thousand years Christians still resist the discipline to abstain in silence.  It was once popular in my former church to ask before Ash Wednesday, “What are you doing for Lent?”  The Jesus-sanctioned reply should have been, “None of your business,” but I never thought of that.

Christians want others to recognize and, even better, share their abstentions. They create laws that compel others to “fast” the same way they do.  The demand for a universal abstinence motivates the impending legislation in Missouri to compel public librarians to defend their book choices and the demands of some state Boards of Education to eliminate systemic racism from the Advanced Placement curriculum.

In Missouri we anticipate the legislature drafting a bill that enacts Jay Ashcroft’s proposal to require public librarians to submit lists of books and their rationales for their selection or lose state funding.  When Ashcroft first invited public responses to his proposal, he received 20,000 pages of reactions. The majority opposed the proposal, according to Ashcroft’s office. As the proposal becomes a proposed law,  it receives the scrutiny of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules. That committee might also invite public reaction, but it may forgo the embarrassment of an aroused public.

That’s because no one wants to fast alone. If we abstain from “prurient” reading, as Ashcroft calls it, we want everyone else to abstain as well. It is not enough to keep your children from reading objectionable books, you have to keep other children from reading those books. Public librarians are being compelled to keep those books away from all children.

In the true spirit of Lent, Christians should adopt their own standards of moral literacy without enforcing them on others.  No doubt this is what St. Paul meant by his charge: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2).   The “renewing of your mind” suggests that morality is a private matter, not something we enforce on others. Christians are still trying to wrap their minds around that message.

The same moral conflict motivates some legislators to control the message of the curriculum of African American Studies. The curriculum, as first drafted in April 2022, contained topics that have been marginalized in the current version, published in February, 2023.  According to the Washington Post, “An April update paired ‘systemic’ with discrimination, oppression, inequality, disempowerment and racism. A December version said it was essential to know links between Black Panther activism and ‘systemic inequality that disproportionately affected African Americans.’”

That application of the word “systemic” has been eliminated following a critique of the Florida Board of Education. The Advanced Placement Board claims that its edits were internally driven, not in response to Florida state educators.

When a curriculum suggests that racism is more than a personal choice, it invites a critique of our system of governance, a critique that some politicians have called “critical race theory.” Clearly the AP curriculum of three months ago was inviting a critique of a system that first allowed slavery, then practiced discrimination in the Jim Crow laws, then restricted the right to vote for another century. Why this should not be called “systemic” racism is a mystery. Our system permitted civil rights violations of some form for three centuries, yet the historical commentary on this has been called “indoctrination.”

This loaded word “indoctrination,” has made it appear that teaching about “systemic racism” was the same as compelling students to believe one theory over another. But the elimination of language from a curriculum is no different than indoctrination, because it compels students to believe that racism is merely a personal choice, that our system did not reinforce prejudice by keeping Blacks from voting from the Civil War until 1964.

In the original version of the AP curriculum, the word “systemic” was mentioned nine times. In the current version, not at all. Eliminating controversial topics from a curriculum is a white-washing of flaws that were built into our laws and practices for most of our history, but the Florida Board of Education wanted that word stricken from the ultimate goals of African Studies in secondary school. When you strike a viewpoint from an advanced curriculum, a curriculum for seventeen-year-olds, that is indoctrination.

When those who call  themselves Christians demand the indoctrination of high school seniors to their “personal choice” view of racism, they compel all society to their Lenten fast.  It is not enough that they define racism for their own conduct, they define it for everyone else.  It is not only anti-Christian to enforce moral standards on others, it is also anti-Republican in the sense that personal freedom should not be curtailed.

It is enough to commit to disciplines before God. It is too much to enforce them on others. That is the overreach we are witnessing in the Missouri legislature and in the State Board of Education in Florida. It is un-Christian and undemocratic.

 

CRUCIAL REVISIONS

The frequency of key words, phrases and names in the course plan for AP African American studies shifted significantly from April to February.