Some public schools offer courses on the Bible

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Some public schools offer courses on the Bible

By Tim Townsend, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 4, 2006

Deep in southwestern Missouri, just 25 miles from the Arkansas border, lies Christian County, where billboards along Interstate 44 advertise Bible factory outlets and public high schools have long taught students about the Good Book.

Wedge Crouch, an English teacher at Ozark High School, has been teaching Bible electives since the early 1990s. Nearby Springfield public schools have offered similar courses for 30 years.

U.S. law allows the Bible to be taught in public schools as long as the schools offer the courses as electives, and as long as teachers teach about the Bible rather than teaching the text as Scripture. For most public schools, this means teaching the Bible as literature in an English or history class.

To make sure he stays on the about side of teaching the Bible, Crouch said he prefaces any statements he makes about Biblical stories by using the phrase "according to the account," as in "According to the account, Noah and his ark survived rain for 40 days and nights." In 14 years of teaching the course, Crouch said, he's never had a complaint from a student or a parent about the content, structure or teaching of the course.

Despite its constitutional protection and the absence of complaints or lawsuits challenging Bible electives in other Missouri public high schools, Sen. Jason Crowell, R-Cape Girardeau, is sponsoring legislation that would allow public school districts to "offer classes in which the Bible is taught."

Crowell's bill states, "The Bible may be taught in multiple circumstances, including, but not limited to, history, literature or comparative religion courses."

Conservative Christian religious leaders support the bill.

"Our courts are founded on a Judeo-Christian worldview, and with that kind of influence on our country, people need to be exposed to (the Bible)," said David Clippard, executive director of the Missouri Baptist Convention. "It's silly to go back to the Dark Ages and only read it when it's chained to the pulpit."

The American Civil Liberties Union smells something fishy in Crowell's bill.

"Schools already have the right to use the Bible when it's used not as a religious text but when it's taught as history or in a comparative religions course," said Anthony Rothert, legal director of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri. "We're concerned that this is really an effort to get the Bible in classrooms for religious purposes."

Crowell says he wrote his bill after conversations with school officials in his district who wanted to introduce an elective Bible class, but who were "a little skittish because they don't want a lawsuit brought . . . they wanted a little security blanket and a clear declaration that the Bible can be taught in public schools."

Crowell said he realizes his bill would not necessarily stop a lawsuit. "But it may help in the early stages, in a motion to dismiss, if they could clearly cite this statute."

A question of 'influence'
R. Randolph Brinson, chairman of Redeem the Vote, an evangelical Christian organization in Alabama that focuses on youth issues, said he was helping Crowell craft the bill's language to protect it from critics and lawsuits. Crowell said he'd never heard of Redeem the Vote or Brinson and that he had not amended the language of the bill, and that he had no plans to do so.

Redeem the Vote promotes a new public school Bible textbook, "The Bible and Its Influence," created by the Bible Literacy Project to fulfill standards set by the First Amendment Center's "The Bible & Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide."

The text was reviewed and endorsed by leaders of such ideologically disparate organizations as the National Association of Evangelicals, the American Jewish Congress, the First Amendment Center and the Catholic Biblical Association.

Last week, a school district in New Hampshire overcame initial skepticism after reading "The Bible and Its Influence" and approved a Bible elective for the coming school year, according to the Union Leader of Manchester.

A bill submitted in January by Democrats in the Alabama legislature would authorize local school boards to use the text in elective Bible classes. Republicans recently introduced a rival bill that would establish an elective course called "The Bible." "The textbook for the course shall be "The Bible, New King James Version," reads part of the Republican bill.

In Georgia, Republican legislators opposed a bill submitted by Democrats that would consist of "a nonsectarian, nonreligious academic study of the Bible" with an "associated text book," by introducing a rival bill that would mandate that the Bible itself be used as the primary text for such electives.

The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, a North Carolina-based organization, has criticized the Bible Literacy Project and Alabama legislators for naming "The Bible and Its Influence" as the textbook in its bill.

In a statement about "The Bible and Its Influence," the group said, "The book . . . has come under fire from conservative scholars and Christian organizations because many passages are critical of Christian doctrines and encourage students to question their faith and God's character, rather than remaining neutral."

The National Council on Bible Curriculum is endorsed by Phyllis Schlafly's Alton-based Eagle Forum, and its advisory board includes Joyce Meyer of Fenton-based Joyce Meyer Ministries. The group says its curriculum has been voted into 344 school districts in 37 states, including nine school districts in Missouri. The organization would not name the Missouri school districts where it says its curriculum is being used. The organization also refused to provide a copy of the curriculum.

Elizabeth Ridenour, president of The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, said she had "great concern" about "The Bible and Its Influence" and "the people behind it."

Clayton includes a unit
Clayton High School has included a unit on the Bible in its required English II curriculum for sophomores since 1983. The unit's length can vary, according to Jim Lockhart, an English teacher at Clayton High who has taught English II on and off for 13 years. Lockhart, who is also the district's literary curriculum coordinator, said that while the school gets one or two questions from parents each year, there has never been a complaint about the Bible unit.

Clayton uses an older textbook called "The Bible as/in Literature" which Charles C. Haynes, senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, calls the "last national Bible textbook," and describes it as bending over backwards - to a fault - to avoid controversy.

Lockhart, who teaches the Bible unit in about 3 1/2 weeks, said Clayton's English teachers concentrate on the literary aspects of the book.

Wedge Crouch, who teaches the Bible at Ozark High School, asks his students to bring their own Bibles to class - whatever version they want. The first day of the course begins with a lesson in the 1971 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Lemon v. Kurtzman, which has since determined whether an action violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

Crouch said he uses biblical literature to provoke his students to think critically. He teaches the story of Noah and asks them to imagine being notified that the rains are going to come and destroy everyone but them - what would they do? He also uses the "Bible as/in Literature" text, and his syllabus for the class starts out with a sentence that reads, "Students must understand that his course is in no way a 'religion course.'"

Crouch has a masters degree in Christian education, a doctoral degree in law and has taught the Jewish Scriptures at the college level. This makes him better prepared than most high school teachers who attempt to tackle a Bible elective, said Haynes. "You could have the best text book in the world and if you don't have academic training in religious studies tackling the Bible is a difficult assignment," said Haynes. "It's not proper preparation because you know a lot about Christianity and you've been to church."

Doctrine is avoided
That is exactly the preparation that Pam Hankins had when she began teaching Bible at Kickapoo High School in Springfield, Mo. in the mid 1990s. Hankins said she felt prepared to teach a course in the Bible because "I've just studied the Bible all my life and I'm deeply, deeply familiar with it." She said that as an experienced English teacher, she felt she met the scholarly requirements to teach such a course in literature.

Hankins, who is now a staff development specialist for Springfield Public Schools, said in her eight years teaching the class, she never had a parent or student question her. "One thing I established right up front was that there was one thing we would not discuss in class, and that was doctrine," she said. "That made students nervous, but I'd tell them not to worry, that if we step into doctrine, because I know it, I'll guide us out."

The U.S. Department of Education's "Student Religious Expression in Public Schools" guidelines are murky about whether the moral values inherent in religious literature - not just the stories, but the lessons behind them - can cross the line into proselytization.

"Though schools must be neutral with respect to religion, they may play an active role with respect to teaching civic values and virtue and the moral code that holds us together as a community," read the guidelines. "The fact that some of these values are held also by religions does not make it unlawful to teach them in school."

That's a lesson Hankins seems to have taken to heart when she taught her Bible electives. "I told students at the beginning of the class that just as I would not change the themes of Shakespeare, Steinbeck or Faulkner, I would not change the theme of the Bible. And the theme of the Bible is God's redemptive love for man."

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