Critics fear elective Bible classes in public schools erode line between church and state

ODESSA, Texas - (KRT) - This hardscrabble town of 90,000 on the West Texas oil patch famous for its obsession with high school football is becoming the new ground zero in a culture war.

The Ector County Independent School District unanimously approved an elective course in biblical literacy in April, an action underscoring the marked increase of such "Bible study" classes nationally. Constitutional scholars are concerned that these classes constitute a subtle erosion of what they see as the traditional and necessary wall of separation between church and state.

More than 300 school districts in 35 states use course material offered by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, said its president, Elizabeth Ridenour.

The North Carolina-based organization offers courses in biblical study in public schools as part of its commitment to restore religious and civil liberties in the nation. The council's board of directors and advisers draws heavily on such religious conservatives as evangelist Ben Kinchloe of television's "The 700 Club" and David Barton, a prominent conservative author and speaker on church-state separation.

"The world is watching to see if we will be motivated to impact our culture, to deal with the moral crises in our society, and reclaim our families and children," Ridenour wrote in a welcoming message on the organization's Web site.

Odessa school officials say they are walking a narrow path to ensure the proposed course meets educational and constitutional requirements.

"This will be an academic elective on biblical literacy, not a devotional," said Odessa Superintendent Wendell Sollis. "We have no intention of proselytizing. ... You really have to educate people about what you can and can't do."

But assurances that the course will be voluntary and non-devotional have done little to allay the fears of non-Christians and religious moderates that the class may evolve into the covert preaching of God's word.

"There's an awful lot of people in this town convinced that they're going to get Jesus taught in the classroom, a tool for evangelism. And that concerns people like me," said David Newman, an English professor at Odessa College who opposes the new Bible course. He is Jewish.

"If they want to teach the biblical influences on culture and art, why not make it a traditional humanities course that examines all the influences on Western culture?" he asked. "If I see this thing becoming more of an advocacy course, I can assure you there will certainly be legal action taken."

While relations between Odessa's 150 Christian churches and its non-Christian minority are good, Newman said his 12-year-old daughter has been subjected to some anti-Jewish statements from classmates.

"They'll ask her why 'your people' killed Jesus. Or if she knows that Jesus is her savior," Newman said. "I don't think it's hate. It's just kids being kids. But I worry what will happen if a pronounced Christian viewpoint is taught in the class."

Alfred Brophy, a University of Alabama law professor who teaches American legal history, said Odessa may reflect a new battleground for religious conservatives who complain God has been taken out of the nation's public schools.

"This is ground zero in the next culture war," Brophy said. "They're introducing a religious curriculum into the schoolhouse, but it's subtle. It's the camel's nose poking under the tent."

John Waggoner began organizing a petition drive in Odessa this year to develop a high school Bible course. He said he was not prepared for the results. By April, his group had obtained more than 6,000 signatures.

Waggoner said he and two friends began the drive out of a grass-roots interest in bringing legal Bible study to the classroom. Once they went public, they were supported by a cross-section of the community. "We just tapped into something people are very passionate about," he said.

"I don't mean to be flippant, but when people ask why we want a Bible course in the schools, I ask, 'Why not?'" Waggoner said. "The Bible is such a foundation of all that we have in this country, it just makes sense to educate our children about it."

"Sure, we understand their concerns. We know these are good people who just disagree with what we're doing. I just think they're wrong," he said. "This will be the most heavily moderated course in the school's history. There will be no proselytizing. We don't want to subject this school district to a constitutional conflict.

Though no course curriculum has been picked, Waggoner said his group favors the curriculum designed by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools.

"We invited the council's lawyer to speak to the school board on the constitutionality of the issue, and we know the council's curriculum has already been approved in Texas," he said. "Our hope is that ... we'll continue to have a seat at the table as the board picks a curriculum."

Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh told his radio listeners he'd stand with Odessa schools against the American Civil Liberties Union - even though the ACLU hasn't joined the fray. School officials have been swamped with interview requests and hundreds of phone calls and e-mails - some accusing them of violating the Constitution and others thanking them for putting the Bible back in the classroom.

Roughly 80 percent of the schools using the national council's Bible course are small or rural districts, according to Ridenour, the group's president.

"It's not just gone into the Bible Belt states. It's gone into Alaska, Pennsylvania, California," Ridenour said. "We've already had over 170,000 students take the course nationwide. It's never been legally challenged."

Ridenour stressed that the curriculum is designed to help students understand the Bible in the context of its influence on culture and the arts. She emphasized it is not a course in Bible devotion.

"You wouldn't learn this in Sunday school class," she said. "How in the world could you understand what's going on in the Middle East today without introducing the Bible and understanding the background? How can they understand Michelangelo's Moses or Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper without knowing about the figures that inspired those works of art?"

Ridenour said supporters of non-Christian faiths could approach a school board and go through the same process as the council.

"Now the Quran has not had the influence on our society, of course, that the Bible has and our founding fathers didn't base things on the Quran," she said. "But it's a free country if anyone would like to approach the school board."

Judith Schaeffer, deputy legal director of the People for the American Way Foundation, said her group plans to monitor the case to see if the curriculum Odessa adopts is constitutional.

"We have no problem with the board's vote the other night," she said. "It puts it on our radar screen in the sense that we hope they will do this the right way."

Schaeffer said her organization is aware that the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools is "running around the country trying to get school boards to adopt their material for these courses."

Ridenour said her organization does not solicit school districts to carry their curriculum. "If people in the district, if it's on their hearts to do this, they'll call us."

Schaeffer said another potential problem for school districts is finding instructors that are "academically competent" to teach what is often a lightning-rod topic.

"You really shouldn't be teaching the Bible in public schools," she said, "unless you have teachers who are qualified to do so."

Earlier this year, schools in Michigan decided not to use the council's Bible curriculum.

In January, the school board in Frankenmuth, Mich., ended a yearlong debate by turning down the council curriculum as "not academically rigorous enough." Frankenmuth Superintendent Michael Murphy told board members, "It goes beyond talking about religion and becomes faith-based."

K.K. Brannies, assistant superintendent of the Brady Independent School District in Texas, said her district has offered the council curriculum since the late 1990s as an elective and has had no complaints.

She is surprised that the course is offered in 49 districts in Texas and that more are considering it because the opportunity to offer electives is dwindling as course requirements increase.

However, she said she does not see the course "as something that will really continue heavily just because of the fact there are so few opportunities for any elective classes," Brannies said. "When we get to the new science requirements, the chances of us having to do away with it are probably good at some point just because kids won't have room for as many electives in their schedule."

Kathy Miller, President of the Texas Freedom Network, a statewide nonprofit group formed to protect religious freedom and individual liberties, said there is no inherent problem with studying religion in school.

She cautioned, however, that schools may unintentionally end up promoting a particular religion in the classroom and violate the principles of religious freedom.

"I think the danger here is that this Bible class could turn a public school classroom into a Sunday school classroom," Miller said. "Many school boards have rejected the curriculum because they feared the controversy around it, because they feared that it did possibly put them in an untenable position."

Angie, 17, a senior at Permian High School, won't benefit from the proposed Bible course. But she would take it if she could. "I don't think it would hurt anyone to study about God's word," she said.

Across the parking lot, Ray, a junior, is noncommittal. "It's OK, I guess. But there's already a lot we have to get done for graduation; there's not much room for electives. It's like we'd have to choose between football, more science or the Bible."

Their last names were not used because neither student would give a contact number for their parents.

Nearby, Patricia Clark waited outside Permian High to pick up her daughter, Natasha, 16. Clark supports the idea of a Bible class.

"It'll be a good thing, something positive," Clark said. "I'm glad to see it happen."

"She hasn't said she'd be interested in taking it," Clark said. "We've talked about it, and she just rolls her eyes."

When I was in public school in the 1950's we had voluntary religious education. The class visited local churches, temples and religious schools where one of their personnel gave a lecture on some aspect of that denomination's beliefs, rituals, etc. It was presented strictly as information -- no discussion, role playing or asking us how we "felt" about our and other people's religions. This was without a doubt one of the most useful and informative classes I ever took in secondary school. I learned a lot and have often been able to amaze my friends by knowing more about their religions than they do.

It's the public skoolz, I would be afraid they would screw it up.

Example: the scholarship coming out at the university level on the origins of the New Testament where "scholars" try to divine (no pun intended) the exact words of Jesus based on what little real evidence we have. How can they say definitively? And this is at the university level, not high school.

.......based on what little real evidence we have.

sounds like all the chemestry courses I have taken....sounds like the bilogy courses I have taken.....sounds like the archaeology courses I have taken .....sounds like the ancient history courses i have taken.

take a little fact and build a theory around it. That's the way it works

It's an elective course, for crying out loud.

"They'll ask her why 'your people' killed Jesus. Or if she knows that Jesus is her savior," Newman said.

It's possible that some misguided soul asked her about Jesus, but it's no problem to say, "I'm Jewish, why don't we talk about Moses or David instead? Wanna go to synagogue with me?" She might be amazed just how interested her classmates would be to attend as guests a Jewish service. I like visiting synagogues, the rabbis sound so much like Protestant pastors when they get into fund-raising and all that.:)

I was going to say the same thing.

"Schaeffer said another potential problem for school districts is finding instructors that are "academically competent" to teach what is often a lightning-rod topic.

"You really shouldn't be teaching the Bible in public schools," she said, "unless you have teachers who are qualified to do so."

Yet we have history teachers teaching history when it wasn't their major, chemistry, biology, English. Why should the Bible class be any different?

I have never heard anyone use the 'Christ-killer' term except Jewish Americans claiming to be persecuted.

I think "Christ-Killer" has been used, but like so many other issues that the left brings up - this issue has been LARGELY (not totally) tossed into the burn barrel as more stupid garbage. This type of scapegoating passed through American society more than 50 years ago. It partners with the idea that slavery has Biblical support

"take a little fact and build a theory around it. That's the way it works"

Yes, but... Virtually no research is done at the secondary school level. And chemistry, biology, et. al., are hard sciences subject to repeatability in experiment.

What you are going to end up with here, much of the time, is brain-dead lefty teachers like my high school economics teacher who taught the class as an op-ed piece for the Democratic Party before he went downstate to work as a staffer for a lefty pol. IMHO.

I don't believe him, because in all my Southern life I have never heard anyone use the 'Christ-killer' term except Jewish Americans claiming to be persecuted. Never in any private church group or non-Jewish conservations have I ever heard that term. It's possible that some misguided soul asked her about Jesus, but it's no problem to say, "I'm Jewish, why don't we talk about Moses or David instead? Wanna go to synagogue with me?" She might be amazed just how interested her classmates would be to attend as guests a Jewish service. I like visiting synagogues, the rabbis sound so much like Protestant pastors when they get into fund-raising and all that.:)

I agree. And in the event that someone did accuse this fellow's daughter of having her people kill Christ, it's likely that this person was a anti-semitic skinhead, not a Christian. It's also interesting to consider just what sort of Jew wants to see a religious text that is probably 60%-70% a book of his religion banned from public schools.

Unfortunately there are some Jews who are merely secular humanists under another name.

Newman said his 12-year-old daughter has been subjected to some anti-Jewish statements from classmates.

Why do I suspect that this guy does not belong to any synagogue, unless it's one of those do-nothing and believe-in-nothing reform temples.

Yeah, sure, Newman (/Seinfeld).
Let's hear from you first about all the MANDATORY "multi-cultural" (ie., anti-American culture) and "tolerance" (ie., Kevin has two daddies) and condom-on-the-banana classes that are infecting the government schools and THEN somebody might give a rat's behind that you don't like ELECTIVE classes that might discuss decency, morality, and faith.

I'll bet it does, Mr. College English Perfesser.

Lemme see if I've got this straight...

Publik skolz can teach mandatory sex education (with empasis on "alternative" sexual lifestyles) to second graders and this is not proselytizing, but shouldn't offer an elective Bible study (light on theology, heavy on culture and art) to high schoolers because it is proselytizing?

On which side do I get off of this sinking ship, the far left or the even farther left?

George Will wrote recently that if all the atheists got together in one state it would be second only to California.
I can understand why California doesn't want the bible read
in public schools would disrupt the doings in Sodom(oops
Freudian slip- I meant San Francisco ) and LA ( opps there's
another one es verdad LA is now Mexico del Norte.)And as reminded by an earlier post -it would be cultural education-not unlike teaching the little buggers Islam as
they did Johnny Walker Lindh.

The Monterey Herald is a Communist newspaper...

It is no coincidence Islamist pagans hate Israel, Jews, Christians and Western Civilization. The entire basis of Western Civilization is Mosaic Law; something both the Neo-Pagan Left and the pagan Islamist thugs cannot abide and wish to destroy.

The Old Testament in Catholic Bibles contains seven more books than are found in Protestant Bibles (46 and 39, respectively). Protestants call these seven books the Apocrypha and Catholics know them as the deuterocanonical books. These seven books are: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus (or, Sirach), and Baruch. Also, Catholic Bibles contain an additional six chapters (107 verses) in the book of Esther and another three in the book of Daniel (174 verses).

"Are they going to use the Protestant Bible or the Catholic Bible?"

More importantly what are they going to do when some other religion wants to set up their own elective class - like Bhagavad Gita study, or Talmud study, or get-naked-and-worship-the-trees study. (Actually, that last might be very popular - leading to an explosion of Wicca).

It's one thing to survive a court challenge to voluntary Bible study. It's another to survive an establishment clause challenge when the issue is other religions coming in. In fact, I wonder if this is they very reason why the ACLU is standing outside the fray right now.

If I were the legal director for the ACLU (perish the thought, I'd have to take a pay cut for that job), that's about what I would do. Rent some students to request a Hindu study course. You could even include yoga and sell it as a PE credit. Then if the district refuses, bring an establishment clause suit. That way, you don't argue separation of church and state, you argue that a preference is being given to Christianity.

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