Word: religion
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Religion...
...wrote New York Times Columnist William Safire, "to expect the U.S. . . . to forgive and forget the corrupting of American citizens that led to a raid on our National Security Agency by a foreign power." Continued Safire: "American supporters of Israel cannot support wrongdoing here or there. In matters of religion and culture, many of those supporters are American Jews, but in matters affecting national interest and ultimate loyalty, the stonewalling leaders of Israel will learn to think of us as Jewish Americans...
...First Amendment bans any governmental "establishment of religion." So, to avoid objections from school boards, textbook publishers have often purged mention of the religious underpinnings of events like Thanksgiving or of moral values involving such matters as teenage sex and divorce. The result is a temporal outlook that critics, particularly Christian Fundamentalists, contend has become a creed of its own, secular humanism. Last week U.S. District Judge W. Brevard Hand, who has previously indicated his sympathy for such arguments, banned 45 textbooks from Alabama public schools because they unconstitutionally promote "the religion of secular humanism...
Hand, concluding that the history, social-studies and home-economics texts purvey man-centered views at the expense of belief in God, enjoined use of the books in any class except a "comparative-religion course that treats all religions equivalently." The next day school officials in Mobile called in the books, including the eleventh grade's sole history text...
...Religion...