Faith-Based Parks

The Bush administration's effort to cater to fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals continues apace. As reported here a few month ago, plaques of Bible verses were returned to prominent positions around the Grand Canyon. Now, books that tout creationism and creationist accounts for how the Grand Canyon formed will appear in the park's book store.

Counterpunch explains:

[S]tarting this summer the Park's bookstore began offering a volume titled The Grand Canyon: a Different View. The view is indeed different. This book of lavish photographs and essays presents the creationist account of the origins of the great canyon of the Colorado River. The book is edited by Tom Vail, a river guide, who offers Christian float trips through the canyon. ... Earlier this year, the Bush administration prevented park rangers from publishing a rebuttal to the book for use by interpretive staff and seasonal employees who are often confronted during tours by creationist zealots.

But it gets even better. Not content with simply altering the White House's official web site in order to change history, the administration has ordered the National Park Service to alter video records in order to scrub gays from history: all images of gay protests, demonstrations, and other gatherings at the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Mall have been replaced.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) says that the directive came from National Parks Service Deputy Director Donald Murphy. Murphy is said to have been concerned about pictures in the video that showed same-sex couples kissing and holding hands after conservative groups complained. ... Also ordered cut from the tape were scenes of abortion rights demonstrations at the memorial, and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations "because it implies that Lincoln would have supported homosexual and abortion rights as well as feminism." In their place, the Park Service is inserting scenes of the Christian group Promise Keepers and pro-Gulf War demonstrators though these events did not take place at the Memorial in what Murphy calls a "more balanced" version.

Oh, I'm sure that the videos now shown definitely qualify as "Fair and Balanced" now. A commonly cited quote from George Orwell's book 1984 is: "Whoever controls the present controls the past, and whoever controls the past controls the future." I think that George W. Bush is taking that to heart and acting on it very consistently. I wonder what will be "scrubbed" from history next?

Read More:

• Fundamentalism
• Religious Right
• Evangelicalism
• Evangelical Christianity & Homosexuality