This past summer State Superintendent Ryan Walters made national headlines for directing schools to incorporate the Bible as an instructional support across core subjects in grades 5–12. In this feature, William Jeynes and Luke Anderson debate this directive.
It Is Wise and Logical to Teach the Bible as Literature in Public Schools
William Jeynes
In late June, State Superintendent of Instruction Ryan Walters declared that the Bible would return to be included in Oklahoma’s public-school curriculum for grades 5-12. Walters asserted, “The Bible is indispensable in understanding the development of Western civilization and American history. To ensure our students are equipped to understand and contextualize our nation, its culture, and its founding, every student in Oklahoma will be taught the Bible in its historical, cultural, and literary context.” This announcement is essentially an extension of the 2010 Oklahoma bill, signed by then Governor Brad Henry, allowing public schools to teach the Old and New Testaments in the public schools. Oklahoma’s directive to teach the Bible in public schools is wise and logical for the following reasons.
It is hard to imagine that a person could be educated unless they have a working knowledge of the Bible. Every year of recorded history, the Bible has been the most published book in the world. And if one is to be regarded as knowledgeable, the Bible is clearly one piece of literature with which a person needs to be familiar. For many centuries, the authors of books from most of the world’s inhabited continents, Europe, North America, South America, and Oceania, wrote with the assumption that the reader would have a working knowledge of the Bible. As a result, many of the great books of the world have themes, titles, and references to the Bible. William Shakespeare alone cited the Bible about 1,300 times. Such books as Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, War and Peace, and a host of others cannot be fully comprehended unless one has a solid knowledge of the Bible. Authors such as Dickens, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Hemingway are also difficult to fathom without a thorough understanding of Biblical concepts and stories.
In fact, for hundreds of different languages, the Bible emerged as the first book ever to be published in that language, and today, at least some portion of the Bible has been published in about 3,658 languages. Many prominent scholars believe that the Bible possesses an unfathomable degree of wisdom and guidance for life. About 65% of the world’s population regards the Bible as a holy book. It the central holy book of the world’s largest religion, Christianity – a religion of about 2.3 billion people.
It is clear that a working knowledge of the Bible is vital if one is to understand American history. Christians, led by the Puritans and Quakers, were some of the largest groups to settle the New England and Mid-Atlantic states, which helped make the corridor from northern New England to Washington D.C. the nation’s Bible-belt from the early 1600s until about 1920. Unless one has a working knowledge of the Bible, one cannot truly understand the fight against slavery, the Underground Railroad so faithfully supported by the Quakers, the effort to educate African Americans by the Puritans and Quakers, the women’s suffrage movement, and the Civil Rights movement. As well-known journalist David Van Biema explains in Time magazine, “the ‘new consensus’ for secular Bible study argues that knowledge of it is essential to be a full-fledged, well-rounded citizen.”
The U.S. Supreme Court has declared that the teaching of the Bible as literature in public schools is constitutional. In Abbington v. Schempp (1963), the Court ruled that the teaching of the Bible as literature and history is acceptable as long as it is “presented objectively as part of a secular program of education”. Even the ACLU has acknowledged this fact, as states have increasingly initiated public-school programs covering the Bible as literature and history. In McCollum v. Board of Education, Justice Robert Jackson stated “one can hardly respect the system of education that would leave the student wholly ignorant of the currents of religious thought that move the world society for…which he is being prepared.” Jackson warned that making faith off limits in the classroom would leave public education “in shreds.” Reanalysis of these decisions has sparked an effort to reintroduce the Bible back into the schools for its historical value and as a book of great literary importance. If one dismisses the significance of knowing the Bible, then one is marginalizing much of human history and implying that only certain secular aspects of history are worthy of teaching.
The Bible enhances one’s understanding of world history and culture. The Bible gives one a deeper knowledge of all six inhabited continents while allowing one to become more cognizant of the meaning of truths expressed in Western history and literature. The influence of the Bible on world history is incalculable, even including recent history. For example, the collapse of the atheistic regime of the Soviet Communist bloc was immensely influenced by religion. This should not come as a surprise when one remembers that it was largely a religious movement supported by the Pope, a religious American president who believed God’s mission for him in life was to help bring down communism, and other religious leaders who were primarily responsible for bringing down Communism in Soviet satellite nations. Many consecutive nights of peaceful candlelight demonstrations by tens of thousands of East German Christians is ultimately what, on the final night of the marches, brought down the Berlin Wall.
The Bible also expands one’s understanding of people of faith generally, including those of other religions. This is particularly important because the United States has recently developed fractious relationships with nations who highly value religious faith. This also should come as no surprise because as the United States has become increasingly secularized, it is difficult for it to relate to peoples who take their faith seriously.
Peer-reviewed quantitative studies suggest that Biblical literacy confers substantial benefits to students. In a meta-analysis published in a well-known academic journal, students high in Bible literacy had average GPAs that were 1.00 or more points higher than their less Bible-literate counterparts (see Figure 1 below). These positive results are notable – a meta-analysis is among the most popular types of academic articles because it provides aggregated results on the overall body of research.
In another study, a random sample of students in grades 7-12 indicated that those with high levels of Bible literacy had higher GPAs (see Figure 2 below).
The nation’s students must have a solid knowledge of the Bible. Evidence suggests that too many are paying a high academic price for not having at least a working knowledge of the most published and influential book in American history. While I respect opposing views on this issue, those who are against the use of the Bible in schools should consider the historical and legal facts as well as the quantitative evidence indicating the benefits of Biblical literacy for students.
Ryan Walters’s Bible Mandate is Unlawful, Unhelpful, and Undemocratic
Luke Anderson
State Superintendent Ryan Walters wants to spend $6 million to put a Bible in every fifth- through twelfth-grade classroom in Oklahoma. And he’s trying to force teachers to incorporate the Bible into their everyday lesson plans. Walters has tried to dress this Bible mandate in the trappings of neutral legitimacy. According to recent guidelines from his office, teachers should incorporate the Bible in classroom lessons “in a manner that emphasizes only its historical, literary and secular benefits.” Walters, however, cannot help but betray his Bible mandate’s true purpose. “This is not merely an educational directive,” he wrote in an official directive. Rather, he describes his mandate as “a crucial step in ensuring our students grasp the core values and historical context of our country” (Emphasis added).
As several court cases show, it’s difficult enough to teach about the Bible in public schools without running afoul of the Constitution. It’s impossible to do so when the end goal is noneducational. Walters’s mandate raises a host of legal problems, and it threatens to inflict grave harm on Oklahoma’s students.
In 1963, the United States Supreme Court struck down school-sponsored devotional Bible reading as an unconstitutional establishment of religion by the government. Since then, Christian Nationalists and their allies have searched for new ways to artificially inject Bible teaching into public-school curricula. Constitutional challenges to such efforts have regularly succeeded because public-school teachers find it difficult to avoid teaching the Bible from a religious perspective. Take, for example, a very basic question confronted by a United States district court in Mississippi: Which Bible should teachers use? As that court pointed out, “The books that comprise the Bible depend on the religious faith to which one adheres.” The number of books differ across Protestant, Catholic, and Hebrew versions of the Bible. And there are hundreds of translations within those traditions.
Walters, for his part, has glazed over this thorny, sectarian choice. In a recent State Board of Education meeting, he explained his plan to provide commentary-free New King James Bibles to classrooms (he used “New King James” and “King James” interchangeably, apparently not aware that those are two different versions). But Walters failed to grapple with the fact that the New King James Bible is a Protestant translation, that many Catholics believe the Bible should be read alongside official Church commentary, that Jews and Catholics use a different set of Biblical books, or that there are problems with picking one Bible as the official state version.
The constitutional problems don’t end with this initial dilemma. Consider Walters’s instruction that students “analyze biblical texts as they would any other historical or literary document.” On the surface, that statement might sound innocuous enough. But teachers are sure to confront constitutional land mines while guiding students through these ostensibly objective analyses. After all, scholarly questions of biblical authorship and historicity are complex and deeply rooted in theological debates. Mark Chancey—a religious-studies professor who has researched Bible courses in public schools across the country—observes, “If Protestant inerrantists regard the Bible as a completely reliable historical source, most other Jewish and Christian groups and most secular scholars regard it as an important resource for historical reconstruction, but one that must be analyzed critically like other sources.” Chancey’s 2007 case study of Texas determined that many Bible courses problematically treated the Bible as “straightforward history.” But a more basic problem lies in forcing teachers to make these choices in the first place: Treat biblical texts as straightforward history, and teachers alienate nonreligious students, along with many Christians, Jews, and others; study the Bible through a historical-critical lens, and teachers alienate Protestant inerrantists and similar faith groups. By artificially injecting the Bible into Oklahoma’s classrooms, Walters would force teachers and students to confront a thorny set of questions best left to families and faith communities.
To be sure, the U.S. Supreme Court has said that “the Bible may constitutionally be used in an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like.” But these intersections between the Bible and secular curricula should be treated in the natural course of education by teachers and school districts taking care to comply with constitutional requirements. Walters’s mandate would instead force teachers to take educational detours to satisfy a Christian Nationalist agenda. These detours will further burden school systems that are already underfunded and struggling to keep pace. Ryan Walters seems to care more about imposing his religious views on impressionable children than protecting students’ basic right to receive a decent education.
The Bible mandate isn’t just unwise and constitutionally problematic. It also violates Oklahoma law by stripping school districts of their right to make curricular decisions. Oklahoma school districts work closely with parents to ensure that students are introduced to complex topics with sufficient sensitivity to local concerns. An Oklahoma statute explicitly creates this arrangement, stating “School districts shall exclusively determine the instruction, curriculum, reading lists and instructional materials and textbooks.” While Walters’s Bible mandate purportedly relies on Oklahoma’s academic standards approved by the state legislature, these standards make no mention of the Bible. Rather, the academic standards set out broad educational goals and leave the specifics to local school districts.
Oklahoma has an ugly history of oppressive proselytization in schools. From 1880 through 1965, boarding schools for Native Americans systematically extinguished native culture, language, and religion. Oklahoman educators have worked hard to turn the page from this demeaning, hierarchical education system. Now, Ryan Walters wants to bring religious coercion back to the schools and reinstate the “core values” of Christian Nationalists. Oklahoman students—of all faiths and none—deserve better. They deserve an education system that supports them in their exploration of big ideas, that includes them no matter their faith community, and that promotes academic humility and respect for others. Oklahoma’s teachers want to provide their students that kind of education.
Author Bios
William Jeynes is Professor of Education California State University – Long Beach. The opinions he expresses here are his own.
Luke Anderson is a Constitutional Litigation Fellow with Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The opinions he expresses here are his own.