What–you may ask–is the Phoenix Declaration, recently adopted by Florida educators?
The Declaration is a product of the Heritage Foundation, and a recent post in Lincoln Square pretty much summed it up.
The Phoenix Declaration smuggles a theocratic worldview through pleasant, familiar vocabulary—turning words like “truth,” “freedom,” and “the good life” into vehicles for a single religious ideology. Once you decode that language, the stakes clarify fast: a public education system where scientific method is replaced with biblical literalism, where civic history is rewritten through a sectarian lens, and where moral autonomy is redefined as submission to someone else’s theology. The danger isn’t just Florida’s adoption of the document—it’s how easy it would be for unsuspecting school boards in other states to nod along…
The Declaration is firmly rooted in Heritage’s Project 2025, which probably tells us all we need to know. Both documents are products of Christian nationalism. Both explicitly frame education as a process of eliciting a student’s “God-given potential,” and inculcating (their version of) virtue, moral formation, and the “Judeo-Christian tradition.” The Declaration says its educational mission is “helping children achieve their full, God-given potential,” by educating them in “truth and goodness,” civic virtue, character formation, and a love of country– echoing the Christian-nationalist belief that America is a “Christian nation,” and that public life should reflect that Christian “heritage.”
The Declaration appears to be part of Project 2025’s effort to institutionalize its worldview through a takeover of public education. That certainly is the view of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which has noted that several of the declaration’s principles echo those of Project 2025–for example, proposals to expand school vouchers, promote religious instruction with public funds, and curtail diversity and civil rights efforts.
The declaration includes several statements that appear benign on their face but reveal a deeper ideological agenda when read in context.
On “objective truth” and morality, the document states: “Students should learn that there is objective truth and that it is knowable. Science courses must be grounded in reality, not ideological fads. Students should learn that good and evil exist, and that human beings have the capacity and duty to choose good.”
Language like this has been routinely used by Christian nationalist groups to cast evidence-based teaching about gender, sexuality and modern science as “ideological fads,” while elevating religious beliefs about morality as neutral “truth.”
On cultural transmission, the declaration asserts: “True progress comes only by building on what has been learned and achieved in the past. Students should therefore learn about America’s founding principles and roots in the broader Western and Judeo-Christian traditions.”
This explicitly frames public education through a sectarian lens. The United States is not founded on “Judeo-Christian traditions” as a governing principle, and public schools cannot privilege one religious heritage over the nation’s actual pluralistic history.
FFRF points out that several members of the Declaration’s drafting committee and signatories are representatives of organizations openly committed to religious education, Christian nationalism or the dismantling of secular public institutions. (Moms for Liberty is a signatory. Need I say more?)
It isn’t surprising that Florida would adopt the Declaration–Governor Ron DeSantis has made his war on “liberal” education a high priority, in the process destroying the academic integrity of Florida universities. 10 Tampa Bay News has reported on responses to adoption of the Declaration, including that of the Florida Educational Association,
“This political campaign disguised as a declaration seeks to hand over control of our classrooms to political operatives and shift blame, pointing fingers rather than offering real solutions,” FEA stated. “Instead of chasing ideological agendas, the State Board of Education members should focus on what truly helps students: Making sure public schools are fully funded, addressing the critical teacher and staff shortage, and guaranteeing that every child has access to a strong, neighborhood public school.”
FEA was not the only organization to see past the Declaration’s ambiguous language. Julie Kent, the president of Florida National Organization for Women, pointed out that the Declaration’s standards “impose an ideology under the guise of neutrality, marginalize diverse perspectives, undermine public education and politicize curriculum reviews.”
The Declaration’s standards reveal the accuracy of the criticisms. That standard on “Truth and Goodness,” declares students must learn that there is “objective truth” –truth which the Declaration finds rooted in a particular version of Christianity.
I guess it’s not enough to send tax dollars to religious schools via vouchers. The Right wants to Christianize our public schools too.
As a Christian, and someone who knows a bit of history, this is so much bunk. That this Declaration represents not Christianity, but a splinter group, is true. The Puritans viewed science as explaining God’s world. That the Founders included Deists, if not outright religious skeptics, do not seem to be included in their Declaration. If gender is the issue, some Christian traditions see no gender in souls. Worse, they do not seem to include any emphasis on the Christian values of humility, patience, or love. At least, I do not see them even hinted at in their “civic values”. If we look at the state Bills of Rights, there is even more evidence of Jefferson’s wall between church and state. Of particular interest should be the Massachusetts’s original Bill of Rights, which I recall John Adams having a hand in drawing up. Bad history results in bad politics.
Ah, another P-2025 propaganda scam being played on the minds of impressionable children … What could possibly go wrong?
If this was happening on a street corner, one could hear the walnut shells sliding across the table while hiding the pea. Except with the Heritage Foundation, there is no pea, just lust for power.
Embedded in the document is what wealthy oligarchs want: to pay less in taxes so they can keep more. And, what they do pay, they want it to go only to the services they want us to have. When writers used the comment, “welcome to serfdom,” we used to laugh, but not anymore.
Once the document includes passable language for the oligarchy, it is then handed to the “religious division” to sprinkle it with their version of creation and morality.
I can see where this would be an interesting declaration in Indiana or a Bible Belt state, but Florida is a melting pot. A vast melting pot. I don’t remember seeing churches every 5 minutes as I do in Indiana or the Southeast.
Here’s the problem with the “good and bad” morality debate: Who gets to fill in the columns? Do government leaders become leaders of morality? Is resisting the government and your employer considered “bad?”
Religion is a tool for manipulation. Always has been. It’s even worse when the Chamber of Commerce and religious zealots work together to tell us what a “good person” should do or be like.
What’s ironic is that at the same time religion is being shoved down people’s throats, we are getting ready to spend a fortune on AI research at the public level while bailing out AI at the private level. We are building a replica healthcare system for AI where we socialize the cost of research and then privatize the profits.
Meanwhile, the richest of the Tech Titans is a traveling lecturer of doomsday prophecy and the Antichrist. LOL
A Fascist by any other name…yadda, yadda, yadda! The Phoenix Declaration has overridden the Declaration of Independence and we are being buried alive as their powers and control increase with no stopping them in sight.
The Trump, Musk and MAGA dog an pony show hasn’t been slowed by identifying their Project 2025 foundation by any other name as he continues murdering “suspected” boat people while pardoning and freeing one of the hugest Drug Lords in history from his 45 year prison sentence to be free to well and sin again. That one issue should be enough to bring Trump’s THIRD impeachment and and actually remove him from office for the rest of his evil life.
I just finished Nobody’s Girl, and started rereading A Hand Maidens Tale.
Both lead to the actions or Plans buy both some religion beliefs and the would be Oligarchs. The religious view my many it that those that God has made them wealthy and there fore should be granted the right to rule over our and many other nation because they have been truly blessed buy god. The other conclusion I draw it that with extramarital wealth comes extreme entitlements one of many is the Devine Right of Kings where even virginity is owned by the Kings who gets first choice of his subjects to do with as he wishes. When those are considered rights and religion is willing to except those action as gods blessing the entire social construct is destroyed and the rules of Oligarch/Kings and their Commanders enforcers the rules by what ever means necessary.
THANKS. Too sad to comment.
How the Grinch Stole Public Education in Florida!
Good old Governor DeMentis led the assault on DEI. He was rewarded by the MAGA faithful by laughter at his attempt to defeat Orange Jesus in the primaries. He’s determined to be a hero for the Christian Nationalists. He can’t be governor again and it looks like his plan to get his wife elected to that office is on life support.
What’s a short, stubby go go booted politician to do? Take over the school systems in the state, of course! His anti-woke work has already run off some of the best medical researchers in the state. Now he can turn his efforts to the little kids, whose minds are ripe for indoctrination. I’m betting that he will be overjoyed when that first child turns in his or her parents for their Anti Christian behavior.
Truth is elusive; That’s why expanding our knowledge of it requires diligent, disciplined, expensive research, the propagation of facts from a few minds into many, and time. Cultural change is also slow, but it doesn’t start with expensive research; it begins with the propagation of stories from a few minds into many, and takes time.
Project 2025 hopes to propagate a new culture more quickly by arming it with political power, but that’s by nature partisan, and the spread is therefore limited to a minority position. So Project 2025 has become MAGAculture, but Trump and the clown cabinet became temporarily popular enough to hold power by extensively lying to us, and that’s our past problem, not our present reality.
In the meantime, we have to build resistance to spreading the underlying MAGA beliefs, and we are. Now it’s a race between the decline of our Republic and the recovery of democratic values.
oh hell,i dont believe in god or its whatevers. now what? i guess ill just use the morals ive been using for my entire life, with a coat of empathy. seeing the less fortunate,and helping someone else get a grip. 2025. seems like a bleak look at power installed without asking for it. my bumper sticker.i printed prior to the 2024 election.
trump/putin project 2025
its not a joke. and few if any here in NoDak ever had a clue what project 2025 is. they only care about kicking someone for their own pleasures.and that is what project 2025 is all about..
AMEN TODD!
Jack Smith do you live in North Dakota?? So glad you are following Indiana as well! Thanks for being hrre!!
And so many of of us twiddle while Rome burns. If it doesn’t affect them individually, it is ignored, demeaned or dismissed as TDS.
We have seen this play out in the Indiana General Assembly when a legislator took umbrage at dump’s using a pejorative to describe Gov. Walz of MN who has a child with a disability. That GOP legislator also has a child with a similar condition. Suddenly, it becomes personal when your child is denigrated by a man you helped elect, a man who made it clear while campaigning that he was a bigot and bully. His actions are not new, but a continuation of his malignant narcissism, getting worse as dementia reveals his uninhibited viciousness against the most vulnerable among us.
The destruction of true public education and its replacement with whitewashed propaganda is nothing new. It has been in place since the Lost Cause movement arose right after the Civil War. It has always been about the righteous entitlement of those straight, white males to rule by right of birth over all others judged to be beneath them. Religious schools act as a front for patriarchy and misogyny with racism, xenophobia and homophobia thrown in as well. It is and has always been about those who believe they are better than all others.
HRC’s letter today is revelatory and a call to arms.
RESIST.
With only about one in four parents finding the education system as worthy, 50 high ranking educators with a conservative mind frame put this together.
7 core principles putting parents in charge of their education goals. It doesn’t have any legislative goals it appears, so it’s adoption means nothing
The right wing crowd has managed to effectively control the narrative on too many counts and this, Sheila, is a prime example. You mention that once one ‘decodes the language, the stakes clarify fast.’ Yes, but one problem remains, of course, how many even attempt to ‘decode?’ Too many, I fear, don’t.