Christian Nationalism Breaches Cy-Fair ISD School Board
What began as a relatively predictable conservative opposition to mask mandates and vaccines morphed into an often-incomprehensible obsession with the “threat” of Critical Race Theory. The parents who initially disrupted school board meetings to question the recommendations of public health experts became consumed by the prospect, always ridiculous and unfounded, that their children were being indoctrinated by progressive and “woke” ideas that all White people are “oppressors” and that they should feel shame and guilt for being White. This notion, that children were being made to feel bad about the color of their skin, became the genesis of a groundswell of opposition to “CRT,” which became the term for anything that discussed concepts of white privilege, systemic racism, or the legacy of white supremacy.
In truth, the analytical framework known as “Critical Race Theory” is not being taught in any K-12 schools, but discussions about privilege and systemic racism had begun to show up, appropriately, in some high school settings within the context of the nation’s collective reckoning with racial injustice after George Floyd’s murder. The propagandists of the GOP saw an opportunity to stoke White insecurity and inflame White resentment toward society’s attempt to wrestle with deep questions about race. They funneled money into a faux grassroots or “AstroTurf” movement against CRT in the hopes that it would inspire higher turnout of conservative voters at the polls. Their campaign of lies, as with previous warnings about the threat of “socialism” or “illegal immigrants” or “Ebola” or “health care death panels,” succeeded. What is somewhat different, and more troubling, about the anti-CRT movement’s success is that it is laced with Christian Nationalism and poses a direct threat to our local schools as the site where the principles and practices of pluralistic, democratic self-government are taught.
In Cy-Fair ISD, the third-largest school district in Texas, the school board’s members and policies reflected the district’s diversity. While school board races are non-partisan, there are both Republicans and Democrats on the board, which reflects the fact that both Republicans and Democrats represent Cy-Fair residents in the Texas state legislature. While the district reflects some generalizations about suburbia in being mostly White and affluent in certain areas, it is also very economically and racially diverse in other parts of the district. For this reason, the school board led with courage in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by adopting a “Resolution Condemning Racism.” What seemed appropriate, if not benign in 2020, became “proof” of an agenda to indoctrinate students with “Critical Race Theory” in 2021.
Three extremist school board candidates campaigned together opposing mask mandates, denouncing CRT, and signaling their conservative evangelical worldview as the defenders of “parental choice.” In their minds, anything that schools teach or promote that contradicts what a parent believes is an attempt to indoctrinate their children. These candidates seem totally oblivious to the fact that the diversity of values that parents hold within the district is equal to the diversity of the student population itself. They have no comprehension of what the purpose of a public school is in preparing everyone for participation in our economic and civic communities. They believe that their personal religious and political worldview should never be contradicted, or should even become the standard that is taught to everyone. The purpose of the public-school system is to provide equal opportunity to every student to develop skills that can be applied in the workforce and cultivate the civic principles that are foundational to a pluralistic, multicultural republic.
Christian Nationalists are opposed to the idea of a pluralistic, multicultural republic if it means a conservative Christian worldview is on par with other world-views in the public sphere. Christian Nationalists want their worldview to be dominant. Christian Nationalists want their religious beliefs to override secular laws. They believe their religious liberty should permit them to discriminate against people and receive exemptions from mandates others are expected to follow. They claim to believe deeply in “choice” when they don’t want to do something, but they believe just as firmly in forced compliance to promote their beliefs. For example, they believe that schools should be forced to teach a mythical version of American history that presents conservative Christians as the nation’s founders, sustainers, and heirs. They believe that a woman should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term against her will.
Not satisfied, as in the past, to retreat from the public schools to private Christian schools, they are now engaged in a total war with the public-school system. The Texas legislature has passed legislation, HB 3979, preventing teachers from discussing the truth about the role of white supremacy, and how Christians used the Bible to justify it, in the nation’s founding and early history. The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has accused public school libraries of making pornography available to students and tasked the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB) to investigate the matter. A committee in the Texas House led by Republican Matt Krause has ordered school districts to report whether they have specific books on their shelves that focus on race, gender, or sexual orientation in an attempt to undermine culturally relevant pedagogy. Now, they are taking over school boards.
In the Cy-Fair ISD school board election, three incumbents were defeated by three extremist candidates, Natalie Blasingame, Scott Henry, and Lucas Scanlon, who brazenly ran as Republicans and Christians. In what is supposed to be a non-partisan race, and one would assume a religiously neutral race, the residents of Cy-Fair were bombarded with partisan and Christian Nationalist propaganda that will only further divide the community and introduce hostility into the relationship between parents and the school board. Their campaign literature, sent to me by the “Conservative Republicans of Harris County,” declares that, “We must take back the school boards that are controlled by the radical pro-Communist, anti-American leftists who are indoctrinating our children in Critical Race Theory and sexual perversion.” The piece then says, “We can change the direction of public education by electing conservative American Patriots to the school boards.”
The campaign literature then encourages the reader to “sign the Christian Patriot Declaration” at www.crtpac.com, which states, “Stouthearted Christian Patriots must rise up to boldly oppose and defeat the domestic enemy forces of evil, the atheistic pro-Communist Democrats, the despicable baby killers, pornographers, pedophiles, sodomites, transgenders, Antifa, and the BLM that have infiltrated our civil government and threaten to destroy all vestiges of Biblical morality and U.S. Constitutional principles. These domestic enemies are traitors to God and country.” The statement concludes: “Patriots, let’s press this battle to restore our nation to its Christian heritage to its successful conclusion!” Three members of the Cy-Fair ISD school board accepted the endorsement of this group and willingly sent campaign literature to voters expressing these beliefs. Let that sink in.
The candidates’ Christian Nationalism was on full display in a recorded group interview a few days before the election. You can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwGaGspAYjg. The video literally begins with Christian praise music. During the discussion, the candidates make statements about gender based on their religious worldview that are demonstrably false. They claim that Critical Race Theory was developed by Karl Marx, but it is an approach to legal scholarship developed by civil rights activists in the 1960s. They suggest that Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream that people be “judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin” has been achieved. They all agree with the idea that teachers and administrators should not have to “check their faith” at the door. They state that educators “shouldn’t have to pander to agendas” by using a student’s preferred pronouns. One candidate said he would recommend “never wearing a mask” and called it “child abuse” to have a child wear a mask. Every topic seemed to come back to “parental choice,” as if the children themselves don’t have rights or the ability to make their own decisions. These are parents who resent public schools that equip children and young people to think for themselves.
They accused the current Cy-Fair school board of engaging in “political theater” instead of focusing on student learning outcomes. In truth, the Cy-Fair school board has been singularly focused on student learning and responding to the COVID-19 challenge, while the only “political theater” has been the “mob rule” of these candidates’ supporters denouncing common sense public health measures and phantom threats like CRT. These candidates and their “Faux News” controversies turned polite school board meetings into a circus and brought shame to the election process. They rode an anti-CRT wave into office, but Critical Race Theory isn’t being taught in our schools. Perhaps, as trustees, they will launch an investigation to uncover all the indoctrination apparently taking place in Cy-Fair ISD schools. I predict that after these new board members invade Cy-Fair ISD classrooms to neutralize the threat of CRT, they will, like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld looking for WMDs in Iraq, be empty-handed. The election of Natalie Blasingame, Scott Henry, and Lucas Scanlon to the Cy-Fair ISD school board may have been a joke, but their service on the school board doesn’t have to be. They may, in the end, do some good for our students, staff, and schools if they can remember that this is “our school district, not their church.” I pray that they will.
