Deena just shared a video with me featuring Ryan Walters, the Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction where he vowed “immediate and strict compliance” with a state order to teach the Bible in Oklahoma public schools. In an interview with NPR, he said “Every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom.” Those who refused could lose their job and their teaching license.
“In 2010, the Oklahoma Legislature passed and then Gov. Brad Henry signed a bill allowing public high schools to offer students elective courses on the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible, to teach students
“knowledge of biblical content, characters, poetry, and narratives that are prerequisites to understanding contemporary society and culture, including literature, art, music, mores, oratory, and public policy.”
Originally, the bill for 55,000 Bibles purchased at tax-payers expense was written to describe specifically the Bible that was published and endorsed by Donald J. Trump. Trump’s God Bless the USA Bible and Donald Trump, Junior’s We the People Bible may be the only two Bibles that met the original specifications (King James Version with Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights included and bound in leather or leather-like material.) Donald Trump would profit from each Bible Oklahoma purchased of his Bible. It is not known how much if anything Junior would receive on his. Once the public became aware of this, the bill was quietly revised somewhat to make it less partisan and parochial. Obviously, some teachers, students and families would object to compulsory education from the Bible. Because I would object were my children forced to read from the Quran, the Book of Morman, the Satanic Bible, the Vedanta, or some other religious work, I must also object to forcing Muslim children, Hindu children, atheist children, et al. to read the Holy Bible. Students who would refuse to read the Bible in class would obviously be sanctioned. A failing grade. Perhaps a trip to the office. There would have to be a punishment. There would obviously be lawsuits and the Supreme Court might well get drawn into the fray. And, while Walters is confident the conservatives on the bench would support him (Clarence Thomas certainly would), I would expect a few other literalists would side with the liberals.
Currently, the Courts allow limited instruction from the Bible if the subject matter deals narrowly with an academic topic, such as with literature. In that case, perhaps Genesis would be appropriate. If poetry, perhaps Psalms. If history, maybe Maccabees (though that is not in the King James version and probably few Protestant Bible thumpers ever heard of it because it is primarily in approved Catholic and Anglican Bibles.) But then, many Protestants probably wonder whether Catholics are Christians in the first place, so you can see where this is headed.
The second point is that Walters believes that the U.S. was constitutionally established as a Christian nation, despite no mention of God, Jesus, etc. in the Constitution, itself. In fact, during the four months that it took to write the Constitution, there was not one occasion when the Framers began or ended a session with prayer. Halfway through the Convention, Benjamin Franklin of all people proposed a prayer, but he was shouted down and there was none. This did not stop people two centuries later from insisting the Framers were Trinitarian Christians (and not deist as Washington was, Unitarian as John Adams was, and those with no religious affiliation at all as Alexander Hamilton. In fact, it was only after Aaron Burr mortally wounded Hamilton that Hamilton made a profession of faith and was baptized on his death bed. That did not stop these self-proclaimed historians from putting out bogus quotes from our founding fathers to support their equally bogus claims and offering a rosy, but historically inaccurate account of how the U.S. came to be.
The Bible says in II Corinthians 3:17 “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” But where is this liberty if we are leading children into bondage over it? God’s grace is freely offered to us and must be freely received. The medieval practice of forcing Jews or Muslims to become Christians was wrong. Those law-abiding, God and country gentle people would be tortured into renouncing their Jewish, Muslim or Lutheran faith in favor of Christianity as Catholics practiced it. Who among us would not protest if our children to receive a failing grade because their child would not pray to Allah with their teacher, or pray to Mary, or read about Lord Krishna?
Like democracy, Christianity competes in the marketplace of ideas. If we as Americans (and assuming we still have a democracy four years from now) cannot convince the people in the world that democracy is better than what they have, then we must re-evaluate our political system. And if the only was to win converts to our faith is to force them to participate as children in thinly veiled attempts against their will at reading the Bible while in school, then we cannot expect them to embrace our faith as adults, either.
The Gospel message should be bursting chains from people, not fettering them in chains.