America's Christian Right decries the secularization of modern culture. The elimination of their religion as the central defining feature of life and the ability of people to go about their business without ever having to bother with religion is, for them, a terrible tragedy. They are determined to rectify things and this requires changing major social institutions, one by one.

The Economist explains how the Christian Right has recently been focusing on secular education. In a recent lawsuit, they are trying to force the University of California system to give full credit for unscientific religious classes as if they involved recognized, valid science:

UC denies it practices secular intolerance and “viewpoint discrimination”. It notes that it has approved plenty of courses at Christian schools and in the past four years has accepted 24 of the 32 applicants from the Murrieta school. And it says that if the courses had used these textbooks “as supplementary, rather than primary, texts, it is likely they would have been approved.”

What is really being challenged, says the university, is its right to set its own academic standards and admission requirements. In which case the question is what that right implies. The Christian plaintiffs say they have no objection to science students, for example, being taught conventional wisdom, but “their constitutional rights are abridged or discriminated against when they are told that the current interpretation of scientific method must be taught dogmatically, and must be accepted by students, to be eligible for admission to University of California institutions.” In other words, what the case involves is not so much the now-familiar tussle over intelligent design, but a student’s freedom of speech and thought.

All of which, counters the university, is bogus. As long as they satisfy the A-G requirements, students who are headed into the UC system can believe whatever they choose to and take whatever additional courses—including religious ones—they like. In any case, the university’s lawyers point out, there is plenty of precedent establishing a university’s right to control a student’s speech: witness a court ruling three years ago that a UC student did not have a first amendment right to write “f*ck you” to university administrators in his master’s thesis.

The lawsuit against the University of California system is completely absurd; even worse is the fact that the Christian Right has been so dishonest about it, spreading misinformation about what is going on. A fair and honest appraisal of the situation would not produce a sympathetic picture of what the Christian Right is doing or of what their goals are.

At best, the Christian Right is seeking to restore the power of Christian Privilege in America; at worst, they are working to establish Christian Supremacy. Both are highly unlikely to ever come about, but the Christian Right doesn’t believe this and aren’t deterred from their efforts. In the process, they can do quite a lot of damage.

 

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