Teaching Civics, Not Dogma — Some Actual GOOD News May 18, 2026 RELIGION* Heather Cox Richardson: Thousands of people gathered today on the National Mall to engage in an eight-hour taxpayer-funded evangelical worship event to “rededicate” the nation to Christianity. . . . Rather than basing the United States on religion, the nation’s founders and framers, as well as Americans of later generations, sought to instill in Americans reverence for the nation’s core political values, especially the right of self-government and the checks and balances that made that self-government possible. . . . That civic religion unified the nation, but it did more than that. It also instructed Americans on the rights and duties of citizens who live in a nation that rests on “We the People.” They must think for themselves, question elected officials, and take an active role in their government. Replacing Americans’ civic identity with Christian nationalism destroys that vitally important understanding of the role of citizens in a democracy. Instead, it demands that Americans do as they are told, turning them into subjects. The theme of obeying the leader runs deep in Trump’s politics, and in MAGA more generally. The Bible passage Trump read on video today emphasizes obedience, warning the chosen people that if they “forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you,” then they will be destroyed. Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin read the same passage at the January 6, 2021, insurrection, suggesting that overturning democracy for Trump was obeying the Lord. Laura Jedeed of Firewalled Media reported that vendors at today’s event handed out buttons that said: “WIVES SUBMIT, HUSBANDS LOVE, CHILDREN OBEY.” But blindly obeying authority has never been the story of America. As with anything HCR writes — and even more so than most — it’s worth reading in full. (And as with almost anything Trump touches, it’s worse than you think.) CIVICS The solution to our problems, a wise friend noted upon reading Ms. Richardson’s column, is that we should teach civics! So true. And, as if on cue, the New York Times offered this yesterday: Nothing Beats Polarization Like Civics Education . . . Frequently, when people decry the state of our politics, the conversation always lands in the same place: a lament that we just don’t have civic education any more. I want people to know that this is no longer true. The decline of civic education hit bottom about a decade ago and is at last on the rebound. That fact brings me hope. . . . Most shocking to me: my students had never previously encountered the Declaration of Independence. When I saw the power of that text for them and registered that their inheritance had been withheld from them, I made it a crusade to change that for others. After I subsequently published a book about the Declaration, educators all over the country began reaching out asking me to make resources for their classrooms. That is what showed me the hunger for renewal in civic learning. Eventually I set up an organization to develop civic education curricular materials. . . . Also so worth reading in full. Not least to see how the left and the right in their group found common ground on what to teach and how to teach it. Reflective patriotism (as opposed to reflexive — “my country right or wrong”). Successful civic education teaches students to defeat polarization not by teaching nonpolarizing answers to hard questions, but by teaching how to form relationships with people who may disagree with them, to identify shared values despite difference, and then to wrestle their way to new solutions and, when necessary, compromises. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor liked to note that democracy is not “passed down through the gene pool.” Rather, “it must be taught and learned anew by each generation.” . . . The arc of civic education data indicates that in 2016 this country hit a low in our failure to transmit love of democracy to the next generation. Now we’re on the rebound. Hats off to you for being involved. *Have you found time to listen to (or read) Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds? As oft-noted: it’s so interesting and informative.