Giving thanks to whom?

On the eve of Thanksgiving we pause to give thanks to ... gee, who are we supposed to thank?

Traditionally, Americans have always thanked Almighty God at Thanksgiving. Whether Jewish, Protestant or Catholic, it has been a day in which collectively we have agreed to recognize our blessings as a nation, blessings that flow from a mutually agreed upon Divine Wellspring, an Author, Creator and Father. When we failed to agree upon little else about the nature of the Godhead and worship of Same, we were able to join in Thanksgiving. (If there were those who didn't care for the idea, well they gratefully took their extra day off from school or work and perhaps quietly gave thanks to the religious nuts of America.)

But Thanksgiving is being killed off as a religious observance. Coldly and efficiently throughout the land. For that matter so is God-centered patriotism. The headlines today tell the tale.

Conservative columnist Linda Chavez , in her Townhall.com offering today, notes that
now some school districts want to rob Thanksgiving of its historical roots.

Apparently some school officials worry that the religious overtones of Thanksgiving might represent a chink in the wall secularists insist separates church and state, so they proscribe any mention of Who it is the nation thanks on this day. In Maryland, the Capital News Service recently reported, "students are free to thank anyone they want while learning about the 17th-century celebration of Thanksgiving -- as long as it isn't God."

It goes as far as not teaching students that the Pilgrims were colonists who sought freedom from religious persecution in England. Or as our friendly LlamaButchers remarked, "Why did they come to Massachusetts? For the hiking?" What motivations are teachers ascribing to the Puritans?

Several presidents, including our current president, have issued Thanksgiving declarations that cannot be read to students in many schools. Chavez says:

George Washington had no such qualms when he proclaimed the first day of thanksgiving in 1789: "It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor." In 1863, Abraham Lincoln declared a national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens." In the midst of civil war, President Lincoln thought the day should be used to "fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union." And even President George W. Bush soberly reminded guests who came to the White House last week to witness the mock pardoning of the "First Turkey" that "in this nation of many faiths, we ask that the Almighty God continue to bless us and to watch over us."

So far as we can tell, no president has yet to encourage the American people to give thanks to Mother Earth for her bounty. But in some textbooks used in many classrooms around the country that is just what is recommended. Chavez continues:

Apparently it is permissible to teach about the Indians' belief in a Divine Being, just not a Judeo-Christian one. In one online teachers' guide, I found references to Kiehtan, the Wampanoag name for the Creator, as well as lesson plans that encouraged students to thank "Mother Earth" for her bounty. Indeed, many of the study guides and teachers' resources available online placed greater emphasis on the role Indians played in the first Thanksgiving than that of the Pilgrims.

(But don't you see? The Indians had it right. They built no temples or cathedrals. They kept their worship simple and out of their politics, just like good little liberals.)

Sadly enough there is more news today on a school in a San Francisco suburb forbidding one of its teachers to use "source documents" like the Declaration of Independence in teaching history if those documents include religious references.

From the SmokingGun.com:

A California teacher who teaches his fifth-grade students with the aid of primary source documents like the Declaration of Independence has been ordered by school administrators to stop using such artifacts of American history because the material contains references to God. In the below federal discrimination lawsuit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court, Steven Williams contends that brass at Cupertino's Stevens Creek School have recently rejected his use of "curriculum-related handouts" like the Declaration, various state constitutions, George Washington's journal, John Adams's diary, and writings by William Penn. Williams alleges that the San Francisco-area school's principal, Patricia Vidmar, banned the use of these handouts because "many original source documents from the founding era contain references to God and Christianity."

Williams alleges that Vidmar cracked down on his lesson plans in May, shortly after he distributed an example of a presidential proclamation. The document he chose was one issued by President George W. Bush dealing with a National Day of Prayer. Williams, who describes himself as an "orthodox Christian," states in his complaint that he "understands and admits that he is not permitted to 'proselytize' or seek to convert his students to Christian beliefs during instructional time."

A Reuters News Article on the same topic quoted Williams' attorney:

"It's a fact of American history that our founders were religious men, and to hide this fact from young fifth-graders in the name of political correctness is outrageous and shameful,' said Williams' attorney, Terry Thompson. 'Williams wants to teach his students the true history of our country,' he said. 'There is nothing in the Establishment Clause (of the U.S. Constitution) that prohibits a teacher from showing students the Declaration of Independence."

The 2004 election results notwithstanding, there is a sense among many that we are losing this country, our culture and traditions. Not to outsiders bringing foreign cultures from elsewhere, but through the systematic and deliberate castration of our history from its spiritual life force as it is taught to our children. This perversion of the learning process -- ostensibly to remove God from our national vocabulary -- is a not new thing. During the last century in Soviet Russia atheism was imposed by a totalitarian regime. The results were not pretty.

Perhaps this year we should give thanks to God that there is still time to stop the slide.