Teaching the Bible in the Public Schools

I think it’s a great idea IF safeguards are taken to insure that it doesn’t become religious instruction. I read the bible in high school English class. We read it as literature. Good old Mr. Searcy (actually a youngish black man) didn’t use it as an excuse to try and turn us into model Christians though.

Actually, I think a comparative religion course, or a literary influences course which would include Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Greek Mythology, would be better than a course focusing strictly on the bible.

Why you ask? It’s because I don’t trust those organizations that put together bible study curriculums.

Let’s consider The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS) which pushes its bible curriculum very heavily and claims that some 400 school districts in 37 states are using it. The NCBCPS also claims that its curriculum is non-sectarian, follows constitutional guidelines and is appropriate for use in the public schools.

The first warning sign goes up when one visits their web site and sees a heading called “liberal attacks on bible curriculum.”

The eyebrows continue to arch when the first sentence under this heading is “Of course, liberal groups are fighting at great expense to keep the Bible from being taught in public classrooms.”

When this “liberal group” is identified as the Texas Freedom Network (TFN) which is supposedly “requesting five unnecessary changes,” to a Texas bill that would mandate a bible studies elective in high schools, my radar goes on full power. What exactly is it that TFN is requesting? Let’s take a look see shall we?

“Mandate that teachers have appropriate academic qualifications and sufficient training on legal and constitutional issues surrounding instruction about the Bible in public schools.”

Sounds like basic common sense to me if only for the protection of the teacher. This is a tricky area fraught with peril for the unwary and we all know too well that there are lots of folks out there with too much money, and strange ideas, willing to make everyone’s life miserable at the slightest provocation. So why is this safeguard unnecessary?

"Require rigorous, scholarly reviewed textbooks and other curriculum materials for all courses."

You do want the course to be accurate don’t you? Again, this strikes me as a given. This doesn’t necessarily mean carting in your own expert; it can be a simple statement from a qualified peer review panel attesting to the accuracy of the text.

Isn’t this something you would expect for all textbooks?

"Include strong and specific language that protects the religious freedom of students and their families by barring the use of Bible classes to evangelize or promote personal religious perspectives."

This is simply the law of the land. Why would anyone object to such a stipulation as unnecessary?

"Require the Texas Education Agency to regularly monitor and report on the content of public school Bible courses to ensure that they are academically and legally appropriate."

Again, isn’t this something that is done as a matter of course for all high school courses in terms of being academically appropriate? The legal wrinkle is sort of unique but, because of the complexity of the issue, sounds like more common sense.

"Continue to allow districts the option to offer – or not offer – such courses."

Some school districts may simply not feel they’re up to the challenge or the expense. Again this sounds like simple common sense rather than an attack on bible curriculum.

Note that the TFN is not trying to prevent the course from being offered, they’re just trying to insure that it doesn’t deteriorate into a sectarian pitch for one particular religion. Isn’t this non-sectarian approach precisely what the NCBCPS claims for their curriculum? In that case they should be supporting the TFN safeguards.

So why aren’t they? To answer that question you have to go to a report on the NCBCPS curriculum put together by Dr. Mark A. Chancey at the request of the TFN in 2005. Dr. Chancey teaches biblical studies in the Department of Religious Studies in Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences at Southern Methodist University in Dallas so I think it is safe to say that he is qualified to review the accuracy and appropriateness, from a non-sectarian viewpoint, of the NCBCPS curriculum.

Let’s go to the report summary.

“In my professional judgment as a biblical scholar,… this curriculum on the whole is a sectarian document, and I cannot recommend it for usage in a public school setting. It attempts to persuade students to adopt views that are held primarily within certain conservative Protestant circles but not within the scholarly community, and it presents Christian faith claims as history:

The Bible is explicitly characterized as inspired by God.

Discussions of science are based on the claims of biblical creationists.

Jesus is presented as fulfilling 'Old Testament' prophecy.

Archaeological findings are cited as support for claims of the Bible’s complete historical accuracy.”

In other words the thing was about as non-sectarian as last Sunday’s sermon. Accident? When one considers the NCBCPS’s Board of Advisors, a litany of Right Wing religious organizations and individuals, including some that challenge the concept of the separation of church and state, one has to sort of suspect that the answer might be NO.

Now granted, one should never attribute to malice or dishonesty what can be explained by simple stupidity, but when one combines the blatant sectarian slant with objections to requirements for “scholarly reviewed textbooks,” one has no choice but to arrive at the conclusion that it’s not an accident, it’s an attempt to push their religious opinion as fact in the public schools.

Where I come from this is called lying.

To make matters worse, according to Dr. Chancey:

“…the curriculum contains numerous factual errors and vastly oversimplified (some might say misleading) presentations of complex issues.”

“It would be unreasonable to expect teachers without advanced training in biblical studies to recognize all of this curriculum’s errors — but it is not unreasonable to expect a curriculum to be free of them.”

Actually it would be trivial to get rid of the errors. Simply put together a peer review panel of distinguished experts to review and comment on the text. I can think of any number of scholars who would be more than pleased to participate in such an undertaking. If the NCBCPS were really interested in non-sectarianism and accuracy, this is exactly what it would do.

Now this all happened in 2005 and, despite vigorous denials by the NCBCPS including a press release claiming that “the TFN report was erroneous and had been produced by ‘far left, anti-religion extremists’ who were promoting ‘totalitarianism,’ within a month NCBCPS was circulating a revision that addressed many of the most blatant problems identified by Dr. Chancey.

While the new edition is indeed an improvement, another review by Dr. Chancey found that many problems still remain including non-identification of any full time biblical scholar as a reviewer, the continued reliance on right wing internet sources with claims or positions frowned upon in scholarly circles including one bloke who claims to have identified the biblical Mt. Sinai in Saudi Arabia, and a continued political agenda which “…seems to Christianize America and Americanize the Bible” by continuing to recommend the resources of “an organization devoted to the opposition of church-state separation.”

In other words NCBCPS is still pushing their religious opinions as fact, they’ve just used the Chancey report to camouflage it a bit better.

I find this dishonest. This is the same thing that happened with creationism. When the court said you can’t teach Genesis as an alternative to evolution, Fundamentalist Christians wrapped it in pseudo-scientific jargon and called it “Creation Science.” When “Creation Science” was accurately identified as religion rather than science, the emphasis got shifted to “Intelligent Design” (although I will admit that ID is a lot more sophisticated than “Creation Science”).

There is also the habit of repeating assertions despite those assertions being repeatedly shown to be untrue. I can only assume that the hope is some people in the audience aren’t aware they’re untrue and might be fooled. Repeating the assertion that evolution violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is one example. There are so many examples that they have their own acronym. They’re called PRATTS for Points Refuted a Thousand Times.

The Eusebius approach to evangelicalism is alive and well in the United States.

Whenever any doubt creeps into my mind about my conclusion that Christianity is a lie, which happens less and less often these days, I remember all the lies and misleading semi-truths told by the so-called Apologists, and people like the folks at NCBCPS, and those doubts evaporate like early morning mist when the sun comes up.

As Carl Sagan used to say, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts. If you know the “truth,” then why are you afraid to put it on the table along with everyone else’s “truth” and see which “truth” best stands up under the light of reason and intellect?