Texas Bible Class

In 2007, the Texas legislature passed House Bill 1287 into law. The law, which goes into effect this fall, requires all public schools in the state of Texas to offer elective courses on the Bible. While most of us will easily recognize this as thinly disguised religious indoctrination, there are those who will undoubtedly feel that this law is purely secular, especially when the following language from the bill is considered:

[The course] must be taught in an objective and nondevotional manner that does not attempt to indoctrinate students as to either the truth or falsity of the Judeo-Christian biblical materials or of texts from other religious or cultural traditions other than the Judeo-Christian tradition...[and] may not include teaching of a religious doctrine or a sectarian interpretation of the Old or New Testament or of texts from other religious or cultural traditions other than the Judeo-Christian tradition; and...may not disparage or encourage a commitment to a set of religious beliefs.

Isn't that nice? A school, while teaching a course on the Bible, won't be encouraging "commitment" to a particular religious belief system. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Teach the Bible without promoting a particular set of religious beliefs? You might as well try to teach the Magna Carta without mentioning English history. It can't be done. And to mandate Bible classes alone, without any regard or attention to the sacred texts of other religions, is the establishment, through favor, or a particular religious belief by a state government. And that, my dear readers, is unconstitutional.

But why stop there? Let's dig a little deeper into this little piece of legislation. The stated purposes of this class are to:

(1) accommodate the rights and desires of teachers who wish to teach and students who wish to study, as applicable, the Old or New Testament; and (2) familiarize students with: the contents of the Old or New Testament; the history recorded by the Old or New Testament; the literary style and structure of the Old or New Testament; the customs and cultures of the peoples and societies recorded in the Old or New Testament; and the influence of the Old or New Testament on law, history, government, literature, art, music, customs, morals, values, and culture.

Now the authors of the bill have done a couple of things here. First, they try to pass off this gross violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution by stating they are simply trying to accommodate the "rights" of students and teachers. Then they give a nicely detailed hierarchy of what students should learn from the class. By the time you read through that list, you're left with the impression that the courses purpose is purely secular: a chance to study the historical, sociological, and literary impact of the most popular book in history. As one teacher puts it:

"By the end of the year, what they begin to realize is that it is pervasive. You can't get away from it. The kids came back and were like 'It's everywhere,'" said John Keeling, the social studies chair at Whitehouse High School. Whitehouse already offers a Bible elective. "The purpose of a course like this isn't even really to get kids to believe it, per se, it is just to appreciate the profound impact that it has had on our history and on our government."

But if you look back at the list of what sorts of things a student would "familiarize" themselves with, you see the true intent:
1. The content of the Old or New Testament: Students will learn the content of the Bible. There's not much secular about that.
2. The history recorded by the Old or New Testament: Notice that they don't say the history OF the Old or New Testament, but the history RECORDED BY the Old or New Testament.

The other objectives are, admittedly, more secular. But it's hard to ignore the religious implications of the first two. And even harder to ignore that the law goes on to mandate that the Bible itself will be the primary textbook used in the course. Never mind the wealth of good, scholarly literature that speaks directly to the historical and cultural context in which the Bible was written, or the sociological and cultural impacts of the Old and New Testaments over the past two millenia (in all fairness the law does allow for other "supplemental" readings to be used), this mandate simply takes for granted that a student will learn everything that they need to know about the Bible by simply...reading the Bible.

This is fundamentalism. And this is state sponsored religious indoctrination. And to disguise it as something else is even worse...its brainwashing. It blatantly flies in the face of one of the freedoms that we hold dearest. It makes a mockery of public education. And in trying to fit religion through a secular loophole, it comes dangerously close to being sacrilegious.