Here’s a controversy that’s been bugging me for two weeks, but I’ve held off on it because I wanted to wait until some of my friends in DC were back to work and could maybe do something about it.
According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a national alliance of local, state and federal resource professionals working to protect the environment, the National Park Service has approved a multifaceted religious display at the Grand Canyon. The NPS is protecting plaques inscribed with Bible verses at public viewing areas on the Canyon’s South Rim and allowing the sale of creationist propaganda at the Canyon’s bookstore that seeks to explain that the Grand Canyon was caused by Noah’s flood a few thousand years ago.
“The Park Service leadership now caters exclusively to conservative Christian fundamentalist groups,” PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch said. “The Bush administration appears to be sponsoring a program of faith-based parks.”
Clever sound bite, which has the added benefit of apparently being true.
In July, officials at the Grand Canyon returned three bronze plaques featuring biblical verses (Psalms 68:4, 66:4 and 104:24), donated to the park by to the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, on advice from attorneys at the Interior Department, who apparently appreciated the church-state implications. With remarkable efficiency, the National Service Director Donald Murphy immediately intervened and reversed the decision, ordering the staff at the Grand Canyon National Park to return the plaques to their original public viewing areas.
A couple of months later, the National Park Service approved a creationist text, “Grand Canyon: A Different View,” for sale in park bookstores and museums. Naturally, this “different view” means an unscientific approach touting a literal reading of scripture to explain the Canyon’s formation. The book argues, for example, “[A]ccording to a biblical time scale, [the Canyon] can’t possibly be more than about a few thousand years old.”
Making matters slightly worse, Park Service leaders blocked publication of guidance for park rangers and other interpretative staff that labeled creationism as lacking any scientific basis.
This is lunacy and it’s entirely inconsistent with the principle of church-state separation. If the First Amendment requires government neutrality on religion, allowing one faith tradition to sell books — or erect plaques — with its theological perspective at the Grand Canyon is inconsistent with the Constitution.
It’s not about whether one thinks the Canyon was created over millions of years or created 6,000 years — though common sense and modern science obviously point to the correct conclusion. This scenario is about the appropriateness of the government offering its imprimatur to religious texts in a public setting.
And I’m not just picking on fundamentalist Christian creationist texts, though they obviously have no place in a NPS bookstore. I would oppose the government selling any books at a Park bookstore that contradict basic science.