Reading, writing, and the Ten Commandments? Why some public schools teach the Bible.
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Jackie Valley Staff writer
Religious conservatives have for decades rejected the idea of the “separation of church and state.”
And in many ways, the election of Donald Trump to another term has validated that rejection. The U.S. Supreme Court, with three Trump appointees, is also poised to continue to revise previous jurisprudence surrounding the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onAs U.S. states mandate study of the Bible and the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools, the idea of separation of church and state enters a new era.
As a result, conservative states are eager to push boundaries. Oklahoma unveiled a bold new plan in June requiring all public schools to incorporate the Bible across the curriculum. It also plans to put 55,000 Bibles in every public school classroom. (The first 500 Bibles it purchased were the “Trump Bible,” for which the president-elect will receive a licensing fee.)
Texas has also approved optional Bible-infused lesson plans. Louisiana is requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom. Lawmakers in Florida and Texas allowed chaplains to provide religious counseling to public school students. Montana permitted public schools to begin each day with prayer as other states try to pass similar measures.
“I think that if we want to have a well-informed and knowledgeable citizenry in the United States, then teaching tomorrow’s educators, lawyers, politicians, doctors, scholars about the Bible, and its foundations in Western civilization and American heritage, is indispensable,” says Nicole Hunt, spokesperson for Focus on the Family, a Christian ministry.
For the past few months, Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters has been very busy.
He unveiled a bold new plan in June: “Effective immediately, all Oklahoma schools are required to incorporate the Bible, which includes the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support into the curriculum,” he wrote in a memo to district superintendents.
As part of this plan, Oklahoma would be purchasing 55,000 Bibles, one for every public school classroom. (There were just over 42,000 teachers in Oklahoma’s K-12 public schools in 2022.)
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onAs U.S. states mandate study of the Bible and the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools, the idea of separation of church and state enters a new era.
“The Bible is one of the most historically significant books and a cornerstone of Western civilization,” Superintendent Walters reasoned.
The proposal was met with waves of controversy. But his plan was just one of a number of efforts across the United States to incorporate more Christian-centered materials into public school classrooms.
A week earlier, Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed a new law requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom. In November, the Texas State Board of Education approved optional Bible-infused lesson plans.
Lawmakers in Florida and Texas also allowed chaplains to provide religious counseling to public school students last year. Montana permitted public schools to begin each day with prayer. And at least seven other states have been trying to incorporate such mandates in public schools, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In some respects, these state-led efforts are designed as constitutional test cases. For the past two decades, the U.S. Supreme Court, under Chief Justice John Roberts, has made protecting religious liberty one of its defining legacies.
“I think that if we want to have a well-informed and knowledgeable citizenry in the United States, then teaching tomorrow’s educators, lawyers, politicians, doctors, scholars about the Bible, and its foundations in Western civilization and American heritage, is indispensable,” says Nicole Hunt, spokesperson for Focus on the Family, a Christian ministry.
Public education has long been a focus of religious conservatives. And from trying to get taxpayer-funded vouchers for religious schools to allowing prayer and other acts of personal devotion on public school grounds, the Supreme Court has given the go-ahead.
The current efforts have often been labeled “Christian nationalism,” which is generally defined as the belief that the United States is, and always has been, a Christian nation. Many who hold this belief think there is an urgent need to preserve that identity with the authority of the government.
President-elect Donald Trump has long been their full-throated champion.
“I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER PLACES, FOR THAT MATTER. READ IT,” he posted on his Truth Social platform June 21. “THIS MAY BE, IN FACT, THE FIRST MAJOR STEP IN THE REVIVAL OF RELIGION, WHICH IS DESPERATELY NEEDED, IN OUR COUNTRY. BRING BACK TTC!!!”
Oklahoma orders “Trump Bible” for public school classrooms
After Superintendent Walters announced Oklahoma would purchase 55,000 Bibles, the state issued a request for proposals.
A potential vendor “must provide only the King James Version Bible for historical accuracy.” It also “must include copies of The United States Pledge of Allegiance, The U.S. Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Constitution, and The U.S. Bill of Rights.” Lastly, the Bible “must be bound in leather or leather-like material for durability.”
These specifications were oddly specific. In fact, there were only two Bibles in publication that appeared to meet such criteria.
One of them was the “God Bless the USA Bible,” published by the popular singer Lee Greenwood and sold for $59.99. According to The Associated Press, the Bibles are printed in China at a cost of less than $3 each.
Mr. Greenwood also pays President-elect Trump a licensing fee to use his name, image, and likeness in the faux-leather-bound Bible.
According to Mr. Trump’s August financial disclosure, the president-elect has already made $300,000 from copies sold. During the campaign, he advertised and sold it as “the only Bible endorsed by President Trump!” This is why it is more commonly known as the “Trump Bible.”
The only other Bible to meet Superintendent Walters’ criteria was the “We the People Bible.” It is sold by Donald Trump Jr.
At the advice of other state agencies, however, the bidding criteria were altered. Now, bids would be open to publishers that bound the U.S. historical documents separately from the required KJV Bible.
On Nov. 14, Superintendent Walters announced the state had purchased the first 500 Bibles. These would be placed in the classrooms of Oklahoma’s Advanced Placement government classes, he said.
“It’s very clear that the radical left has driven the Bible out of the classroom, which leads to a lack of understanding of American history,” he said in a video posted on the social media platform X announcing the purchase. “We will not stop until we’ve brought the Bible back to every classroom in the state.”
His department, it turned out, had chosen to purchase the Trump Bible.
Oklahoma’s Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, was not very impressed with Superintendent Walters’ plan.
“Oklahoma law already explicitly allows Bibles in the classroom and enables teachers to use them in instruction,” his spokesperson Phil Bacharach told reporters.
In fact, while the Supreme Court has consistently forbidden officially sponsored devotional or religious uses of the Bible in public schools since the 1960s, it has always ruled that the Bible could be used for educationally appropriate purposes.
In a July memo, Superintendent Walters issued guidance on how teachers should integrate the Bible. They could show its influence on Western concepts of justice, for example. The Bible could also be used to explore literary techniques, or its influences on art and music.
In math or science classes, students could explore how thinkers were influenced by the Bible to explore “God’s creation,” the superintendent said to reporters.
None of this is unconstitutional if it maintains a secular purpose. But as Superintendent Walters told Oklahoma educators, “Adherence to this mandate is compulsory. ... Immediate and strict compliance is expected.”
The forcefulness of this mandate has troubled many Oklahoma residents skeptical of the plan’s stated secular purpose.
Michelle Lara, whose sixth grade son attends public school in Tulsa, says the plan seems to be motivated by politics rather than by academics.
“If that’s really what you want your children to learn, there are so many places that already exist,” says Ms. Lara, a parent organizer for Padres Unidos de Tulsa. “Why are we overburdening our already burdened and very overworked public education system to do something that the church exists to do?”
Within many Christian communities, the directive has been met with hesitation. Barbara Price, a retired theology professor who lives in Edmond, Oklahoma, harbors concerns about the specifically Protestant focus implied by the state’s mandate.
She wonders who, exactly, would be creating that curriculum. And if the Bible has a presence in classrooms, so, too, should the Quran, the Book of Mormon, and sacred texts of other religions, she says. “I would not have wanted some random teacher in school teaching the Bible to my kids. I would have wanted to have seen what they were teaching.”
In October, a group of parents, teachers, and faith leaders filed a lawsuit to block the new curriculum requirement. The litigants represented a range of traditions, including some with Indigenous heritage. Family members who are part of the LGBTQ+ community and those with children with disabilities also joined.
The Rev. Lori Walke, one of the plaintiffs, is senior minister at Mayflower Congregational United Church of Christ in Oklahoma City. She describes Oklahoma as a deeply religious and spiritual place, where “You can’t throw a stick without hitting a church.”
It’s in those houses of worship where she believes religion should stay. Otherwise, she says, it amounts to the indoctrination of children – even those of other Christian traditions with different theologies.
Yet Ms. Walke also sees the Bible mandate as part of a wider effort that threatens the nation’s church-state separation.
“Christian nationalism is not a good look for our state,” she says. “People do not want to move to a place that is known for discrimination and bigotry.”
Frank Ravitch, a law professor at Michigan State University, also views these efforts as appeals to Christian nationalism. But he adds that people should be careful with this label.
“Not everyone who favors these kinds of things, whether citizens or legislators, is necessarily a Christian nationalist,” he says. “But they’re definitely playing right into the hands of Christian nationalists.”
Religious conservatives, Supreme Court, challenge “separation of church and state”
Religious conservatives have for decades rejected the idea of the “separation of church and state.”
And in many ways, the election of Mr. Trump to another term has validated that rejection. The Supreme Court, with three Trump appointees, is also poised to continue to revise previous jurisprudence surrounding the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
“For too long, we’ve imagined the perceived separation of church and state mandated that these two cornerstones of our national life must be distinct and unrelated. But is that true?” asked Ian Rowe, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, during an event in September called Church and State: Reimagining Faith Communities’ Role in K-12 Education. “The actual words ‘separation of church and state’ never appear in the Constitution.”
The Roberts court has ruled that religious institutions be included when taxpayer funds are offered to private nonreligious groups. In that same vein, it has permitted vouchers and other state funding for private religious education.
Advocates and legal scholars, however, point to a Supreme Court case in 2022 that sparked the current movement to make more room for religion in public schools.
The school district in Bremerton, Washington, warned a coach, Joseph Kennedy, that his postgame prayers violated its policy regarding religious activities.
Mr. Kennedy filed a lawsuit against the school district in August 2016, saying his First Amendment rights had been violated. The case made its way to the Supreme Court, which agreed with him, ruling 6-3 in his favor in June 2022.
“In truth, there is no conflict between the constitutional commands before us. There is only the ‘mere shadow’ of a conflict, a false choice premised on a misconstruction of the Establishment Clause,” wrote Justice Neil Gorsuch in his majority decision. “The Constitution neither mandates nor permits the government to suppress such religious expression.”
At the same time, Justice Gorsuch also reaffirmed that such expression could not be “pursuant to [his or her] official duties.”
Religious conservatives see this as a major victory. Critics, however, say the recent efforts are part of a long-term legal project.
“I think interest groups see this as kind of a carpe diem moment with the current court,” says Mr. Ravitch. “And they know that this court doesn’t really seem to take long-standing precedent very seriously.”
Leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State say current efforts are part of an orchestrated Christian nationalist agenda, driven by a “shadow network” of conservative organizations, wealthy individuals, and powerful politicians.
“They have been working – and tirelessly – to target a lot of different things, including schools, and really to impose their worldview, again, on public students, but also all Americans,” says Rebecca Markert, the organization’s legal director. “We saw them do it with the right to abortion a few years ago.”
Still, opponents of the mandates have had their own legal victories.
Louisiana’s law required that all public school classrooms display the Ten Commandments in a frame or poster that’s at least 11 by 14 inches, by Jan. 1, 2025.
But after a group of Louisiana parents filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s Ten Commandments mandate, Governor Landry didn’t mince words: “Tell your child not to look at them,” he said during an August press conference.
In November, U.S. District Judge John deGravelles, nominated to the court in 2014 by President Barack Obama, said the Louisiana law had an “overtly religious” purpose, and was “unconstitutional on its face.”
“Our founders weren’t using the Quran when they were founding our country”
As the battle over church-state separation unfolds in courts, opponents of the mandates in public schools are trying to direct attention back to the needs of students.
Heather Weaver, a senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, says these state efforts amount to an attack on the fundamental purpose of public schools.
“The students who don’t follow the states’ religious dictates will feel ostracized from their school community, undermining [both] their ability to learn and the states’ legal obligation to provide an equal education to all students, regardless of their faith.”
After Mr. Trump won the election, Americans United was one of the many advocacy organizations that shifted gears toward this focus on students. “Public schools are, in some ways, the most crucial bastion of church-state separation, and we will fight for every child,” wrote Rachel Laser, president of the advocacy group.
Those who support bringing Bibles and the Ten Commandments into the classroom say they are ready for the challenge. They believe a fuller understanding of the Bible’s influence across public school curriculum will only enrich students.
Ms. Hunt with Focus on the Family says her children attending public charter schools in Colorado have been exposed to teachings from a variety of world religions. When it’s done in a neutral way that doesn’t cross into devotional territory, she considers it an enhancement to their education.
But if the Supreme Court hears a case about the Bible’s inclusion in classrooms, she expects justices to view the issue through the lens of “historical practices and understandings,” and not of the separation of church and state. “Our founders weren’t using the Quran when they were founding our country,” she says.
Ultimately, Ms. Hunt suspects many of these cases will wind up in the nation’s highest court. “I welcome the day when it’s not so controversial to say that the Bible as a foundation for Western civilization should be taught in the classroom,” she says.
