Trump Endorses Teaching Religion in the Public Schools. What Can He Be Thinking?
In the Washington Post, John Wagner reports that legislators in six states—North Dakota, Missouri, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia, and Florida—have introduced bills to permit public schools to teach the Bible as literature. President Donald Trump endorsed this effort last week in a tweet: “Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible. Starting to make a turn back? Great!”
The President advocates teaching about the Bible to “make a turn back”—to Make America Great Again. He wants to appeal to his base.
I suspect the promoters of teaching “about the Bible” also have something else in mind. Their purpose is obscured by some vague language that very likely tries to hide a violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Some promoters of the “teach about the Bible” movement describe wanting their schools to teach Biblical literacy, and some say they are interested in “teaching about the historical significance of the Bible.” What is implied here can mean very different things to different people.
For 12 years before my retirement, when I worked as an advocate for public education in the setting of the national office of a Protestant denomination, the United Church of Christ, I chaired the Committee on Public Education and Literacy of the National Council of Churches. The National Council of Churches is an ecumenical partnership of 38 Christian communions in the United States.
During those 12 years, I remember only one intense, heated discussion that ran our committee’s meeting long past the time we were supposed to have concluded. We had been asked to read and review a lavishly illustrated and expensively produced textbook, supposedly to be used in public schools to teach about the Bible as literature. The book also covered what its authors considered “the historical significance of the Bible.”
The amazing thing about that long and very heated meeting was that we all agreed. Every one of us believed that the textbook in question should never be used in a public school. And, as CONTINUE READING: Trump Endorses Teaching Religion in the Public Schools. What Can He Be Thinking? | janresseger
