On a 9-5 vote last week, the Texas State Board of Education approved curriculum changes that include mandatory readings from the Bible, Old and New Testaments. The required readings will go into effect in 2030 for younger grades and will be gradually implemented in upper grades in the following years.
Liberals are outraged, citing worries about the Constitution’s Establishment Clause and the separation of Church and State. Some nominal conservatives have joined them, saying that they do not want their own Christianity imposed on public school students. Besides, some argue, how can we trust public school teachers to teach our sacred text?
The answer to all those concerned is that knowledge of the Bible is important for every single American, regardless of their own personal faith or lack thereof. While there are no doubt worries about how such lessons will be handled by public school teachers, this is true of every subject educators are entrusted to teach.
Of course, to hear the left-wing mob screaming, one might assume that every Texas public school student will be in a Baptist Bible study for 12 years. But, the reading standards, which can be found in a publicly available PDF, show that the required biblical readings are few.
From first through third grades, Texas children will only learn retellings of one biblical tale per year: Noah’s Ark in first, David and Goliath in second, and Daniel and the Lion’s Den in third. It isn’t until fourth grade that students read any actual biblical passages.
While that fourth-grade reading is from the New Testament (in the New International Reader’s Version: New Testament), it amounts to just five verses on humility from Luke’s Gospel. Fifth graders read two chapters: Exodus 3 (The Burning Bush) and Exodus 14 (The Parting of the Red Sea) in that same version.
If that oh-so-heavy fifth-grade indoctrination was too much, fear not! Sixth graders read a mere ten verses from the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:25-34, from the English Standard Version) about not having anxiety. Seventh graders read the 23rd Psalm and the Beatitudes, as given by Matthew. Eighth graders read the very short Book of Lamentations.
The good part about these junior high readings is that they are taken from the King James Version in the seventh grade, which is the Bible that was most popular in the United States until very recently. Eighth-grade instruction uses an older Jewish translation, helping students gain a deeper appreciation for the history of the text.
Total high school English requirements include: Genesis 2-3 (Adam and Eve in the Garden), I Corinthians 13 (the “Love Chapter”), Luke 15:11-32 (the Prodigal Son), and a selection of chapters from Job.
As far as a “Bible study” goes, it’s not much. But, then again, that’s not the point here. In this 250th anniversary of American independence, anybody who has looked back at any of the writings of the Founders knows that, whatever their particular theological beliefs, they all referred to and made arguments from the Bible in support of their political positions. Even the infamous Deist Thomas Paine made plentiful arguments from the political history of the people of Israel in his famous tract Common Sense.
This is no mere quirk of founding-era thinkers and leaders. Read speeches of Lincoln and the 19th-century presidents, 20th-century presidents, and even, yes, the 21st-century presidents who were Democrats, and you’ll find biblical references and allusions aplenty. A 2015 article in the journal Political Theology detailed Barack Obama’s use of biblical citations and allusions, citing especially his repeated calls to be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers and his reference to contemporary black Americans as “the Joshua Generation.”
Texas’s scanty biblical curriculum isn’t even enough to understand an Obama speech since “my brother’s keeper” is from Genesis 4, and there are no readings from the Book of Joshua.
Of course, political speeches aren’t the only thing for which one needs biblical literacy. Even understanding something as simple as a “David vs. Goliath” matchup in sports requires a basic level of biblical literacy. (Thankfully, Texan children will at least learn this story.) Common names and phrases that permeate our daily language also come from the Bible – “Charisma,” “talent,” “Jezebel,” “scapegoat,” “go the extra mile,” “the powers that be,” “the writing on the wall,” and “forbidden fruit,” just to name a few.
A friend of mine even suggests, ironically using the typical language of the left, that because of the immense impact of the Bible on black Americans, the intentional ignorance of Scripture amounts to white supremacy! Indeed, it is impossible to tell the story of the abolitionist movement and later the Civil Rights Movement without first understanding their biblical roots. The most noteworthy black civil rights leader of the 20th century was, after all, a reverend.
Books by black writers such as James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time join the rest of literature in this regard. The entirety of the English and, more broadly, Western tradition in literature is riddled with biblical images, words, and allusions. In a 2016 blog post, fantasy author R. A. Denny noted that biblical allusions are, of course, littered throughout Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Dickens, Lewis, and Tolkien. They are also in the Harry Potter and Divergent series.
Even modern music is filled with biblical allusions. From Johnny Cash to Lady Gaga, from Bob Dylan to Coolio, from Lana Del Rey to Sade, the Bible is everywhere. Ignorance about the Bible is ignorance about America itself.
While some complain about the lack of selections from other religious texts in the Texas curriculum, the reality is that the Bible is the only one essential to understanding American culture from its beginnings until now. To not be teaching the Bible is to cut off American students from understanding the past, the present, politics, literature, music, and culture more broadly.
It’s no stretch to assume that many American leftists oppose this because they are trying to cut young people from their roots. They need a Year Zero to impose their will and indoctrinate the youth in the secular religion of progressivism.
Liberals sounding the alarm claim teachers will be evangelizing or proselytizing. Anybody doing so, however, will be easily caught. Conservatives who object say that they can’t trust teachers to handle Scripture even on a literary level. That, however, is not an argument against biblical readings; it’s an argument against our current public school system.
If there is a real complaint to be made, it’s that even after this change, Texas still won’t be teaching enough of the Bible. If a student can’t even follow a Barack Obama speech with 12 years of study, how will they handle Paine, Lincoln, or James Baldwin?
This particular curricular step in Texas isn’t perfect. It is too little for one thing. It is, however, in the right direction.
David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. A past Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute, he is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative. Follow him on X (Twitter) @davidpdeavel.
