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Difficult Faith-based History in the Classroom

 The Kentucky Faith and Public History Education Project exists to create and disseminate resources for use in public schools and elsewhere about Kentucky's Christian history. We started by articulating facts about Christianity using secular, objective and non-devotional language to introduce and explain what the Christian message is, how Christians practice their faith and what Christians believe. Interpretive text panels with that information, illustrated with historic images from the public domain like the Library of Congress Collection, are on display at the project's walking trail in Paris, Kentucky. Additional text panels contain information about the history of Christianity worldwide, in Kentucky and in Bourbon County. The walking trail also includes an eye-spy game that introduces thirty famous Kentucky Christians with short biographies spread out over seven sets of clues. Some of these individuals are also featured in our easy-reader chapter books. (Books 1-4 are available now at Amazon.com; Books 5-8 will be available by the end of 2021). Besides providing the stories of people whose lives and legacies were rooted in their Christian faith, we are producing a puppet show series about places in Kentucky where events related to the Christian faith happened. The series is being written for primary grade students and it will be delivered on YouTube Kids starting in 2022. These resources concentrate on positive stories of faith.

However, it would be short-sighted for us not to also produce and provide resources about things done in the name of Christianity that are/were abusive, self-serving, manipulative and hurtful. From the perspective of American history such things as the displacement, mistreatment, massacres and betrayal of Native American tribes and individuals; the generational slavery we protected and defended over several hundred years perpetrated against people of African decent; and the entitlement we displayed towards Hispanics, Asians and Pacific Islanders are often rooted in, legitimized by, and have been promoted through Christian religious language and theological ideas. They have become embedded in national and international law and policy and include such things as: the Doctrine of Discovery, the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny, the American and [then] the Kentucky Colonization Society, and more.

Museum experts call these "difficult heritage". Sharon Macdonald may have coined the phrase in her book about the controversies associated with preserving or repurposing the Nazi Nuremberg parade grounds (Sharon MacDonald. Difficult Heritage: Negotiating the Nazi Past in Nuremberg and Beyond. Routledge. 2008). The issues are complex and uncomfortable. They are difficult to talk about in the classroom or in the museum where the students and the visitors may come from backgrounds that include both sides of the history. When speaking of faith, there are theological issues to unpack that go beyond the history itself but that illustrate how religion was employed to reach a national, often imperialistic end. There are at least three questions to be considered: who did what when and where and to whom is the first question. It asks for the history. The next question, when the event has been motivated and legitimized by appealing to some religious dogma, is theological. It probes the cultural, philosophical and doctrinal context for the behavior and the belief that undergirds it. The third question is interpretive and consequential. It asks what should be done to rectify a past abuse in its present context. 

It takes humility, courage, and a willingness to think critically about whether our individual biases are based in broad lies that have been perpetrated in God's name to benefit or to disadvantage us. It takes a commitment to listen, research, entertain, and gain empathy for perspectives other than what we have been brought up or educated to believe. It takes wisdom to know how to bring these things into the public school classroom. Sometimes the best course is to lay out the facts from as many historical perspectives as can be collected so as to pose and leave uncomfortable, yet to be answered, questions of what should be done now on the table.

The Kentucky Faith and Public History Project is committed to such a course as we prepare resources and programs designed to help public school teachers think about and discuss the State's Christian history. This blog is where we will be exploring these ideas. These conversations will inform the programs, lectures, performances, and teacher open houses etcetera that we provide at our headquarters in Paris and when we are invited to address groups, schools and churches.

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