The Ector County school board in the West Texas town of Odessa decided Tuesday to allow its high schools to offer an elective class on the Bible starting in August 2006, according to the Associated Press and NBC News. The last time the school district offered any similar class offered was 26 years ago. Ector County joins several other school districts in West Texas that also offer the course, some of which have offered it for many years with no controversy.
But there should be controversy, for one simple reason: No matter how the course is framed – current plans are for the course to be either a literature or history elective that would focus on the Bible’s impact on art, culture and early American politics – this class violates the separation of church and state. Why? Because there do not appear to be plans to offer courses that would consider any other important religious texts in any academic way. Thus, it would appear these school boards are tacitly telling students the only religious text with any legitimate value, academic or otherwise, is the Bible.
The Lantern is not saying the Bible has no academic value. The English and Hebrew departments at Ohio State regularly offer courses on the Bible as literature. But other religious texts are studied at OSU as well. The Arabic department offers a class on the Quran in translation. The Department of History of Art offers a course on Hindu iconography that, according to OSU’s course bulletin, emphasizes “the development and meaning of specific deities.” And, of course, the Department of Comparative Studies offers classes that cover many of the world’s main religions, big or small. By offering a wide variety of classes on a wide variety of faiths, OSU avoids violating the separation of church and state, despite its status as a public university. Offering only a Bible class is not good enough.
In the Associated Press article, Mike Johnson, a representative from an organization that designs Bible curricula for schools, said Bible studies provide important context to art. “How can students understand Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’ or Handel’s ‘Messiah’ if they don’t understand the reference from which they came?” he said. Well, teachers should be able to explain the reference and context without tossing a Bible at students and saying “Read this, it explains everything.”
Religion was important to the nation’s founders, but so was freedom of religion. That’s why the first words in the First Amendment are, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” That’s why politicians and judges have strongly defended the idea of separation of church and state. The Ector County school board’s actions violate this important principle.
