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The Daily Signal
How
Bible Literacy Classes Could Help Heal Our Bitter Divisions
Daniel Davis
January 30, 2019
A good teacher of history knows that you don’t just stick with the
textbook.
To really understand an event like the Battle of Gettysburg or Martin
Luther King’s March on Washington, you have to read the primary
sources—the speeches, handwritten letters, and firsthand accounts of
the people who were there.
Otherwise, all we’re left with are far-removed accounts written by
people who were never there, and who might not be interested in giving
a faithful account.
Religion is the same way. To really understand a religion and its
impact on the world, it’s critical to read the primary source
documents—the Scriptures.
So it’s odd that over the last 50-plus years, our public schools have
by and large expelled religious texts from the classroom, even though
understanding religion is hugely important to being an educated person.
President Donald Trump brought light to this issue Monday when he
tweeted, “Numerous states introducing Bible literacy classes, giving
students the option of studying the Bible. Starting to make a turn
back? Great!”
I’m with the president on this. It would be fantastic to see these
classes offered, both to help students better grasp American history,
as well as to create better understanding between secular and religious
Americans.
The State Proposals
Several states are now looking to introduce Bible literacy classes into
public schools—not for the purpose of proselytization, but simply to
educate students about religion.
The idea is pretty basic: If students are going to understand the
Jewish and Christian religions, they need access to the primary source
documents.
Kentucky passed a law along these lines in 2017, setting up guidelines
for public schools to offer electives on the literature of the Old and
New Testament Scriptures.
Now, six other states are considering similar bills—Florida, Indiana,
Missouri, North Dakota, Virginia, and West Virginia, according to the
ACLU. Similar laws already exist in seven states: Arizona, Arkansas,
Georgia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas.
But this is making some people uncomfortable. Scriptures, they say,
should be kept out of school because of the “wall of separation”
between church and state.
That’s a common sentiment, but it’s just not correct. The “wall of
separation” was a phrase Thomas Jefferson once used in a private
letter—it was never written into the Constitution. And for nearly 200
years after the First Amendment was passed, public schools throughout
America held daily prayers. Clearly, the Founders didn’t see that as a
problem.
Of course, the Supreme Court eventually struck down school prayer in
the 1960s—and many Americans protested. A year later, any Bible
instruction whatsoever in public schools was struck down as
unconstitutional.
But these rulings are not relevant to the new Bible literacy push. The
proposals are clear: The biblical text would be taught only from a
literary and historical perspective, not as holy writ.
Still, some are terrified by these state efforts.
The ACLU has lined up against them, as has Americans United for
Separation of Church and State. Rachel Laser, president and CEO of the
latter group, dismissed the bills as “[nothing] more than part of a
scheme to impose Christian beliefs on public schoolchildren.”
But if Laser really opposed pushing beliefs on children, she would
actually embrace the Bible literacy cause. This may in fact be the most
promising proposal in years for restoring cultural understanding and
national unity.
Here’s why.
50 Years of Alienation
Ever since the early 1960s, when the Supreme Court kicked religion out
of public schools, we’ve seen an increasing privatization of religion
in America.
Many Americans now assume that religion is a private matter, something
you do within the four walls of your church and your home. It has no
part in politics, government, and certainly no part in public schools.
This arrangement was intended to make schools a more welcoming place
for people who dissented from the majority religion, Christianity. Yet
more than 50 years on, the result has not been more pluralism in our
schools, but instead a functional embrace of secularism in the
classroom and the public square more broadly.
There are many causes for this, but we cannot ignore the role of the
classroom. The religion-free classroom has trained too many Americans
to think of religion as an aberration from reason, a private option
that doesn’t really make claims on the world around us. So religion has
been ghettoized, and secularism has filled the void once occupied by a
Judeo-Christian worldview.
That’s probably why biblical language in speeches by Abraham Lincoln or
Martin Luther King sound so foreign to us, even quaint. To secular
ears, religious language speaks of a time gone by, not of the world we
live and act in now.
But this mindset didn’t come naturally. Rather, it had to be
cultivated. Religion and religious texts were intentionally pushed out
of public schools. This may have achieved some legitimate ends, but it
has come at a higher cost than we bargained for.
Religion-free public school has left generations of kids without any
exposure to religious worldviews, and this has sowed the seeds of
alienation and misunderstanding between secular and religious Americans.
Consider, for instance, the media’s often tone-deaf coverage of
religious people. When news broke that Karen Pence, wife of Vice
President Mike Pence, had decided to teach at a Christian school that
upholds traditional Christian sexual morality, the media responded as
if she were teaching a class in flag-burning. The idea of a Christian
school holding to traditional Christian teaching was considered
abominable. Inconceivable.
Yet anyone with a passing familiarity with Christian teachings would
have understood this school to be par for the course. The existence of
a conservative Christian school shouldn’t be shocking. It’s actually
old news. (Very old news, when you think of Harvard and Yale
Universities—two of our oldest universities, both of which were founded
as Christian institutions to educate ministers.)
Or consider how the media refers to evangelical Christians more in
terms of a voting bloc than a theological camp. The New York Times
writes of how evangelicals have reshaped American politics, but a
recent study by Ligonier Ministries and Lifeway Research found that 52
percent of self-described evangelicals believe that most people are
good by nature—a denial of one of the most basic evangelical teachings.
So are the “evangelicals” cited by the Times truly evangelical? It’s
not so clear.
As these examples show, the media have a hard time reporting on
religion. One likely reason for this is that generations of Americans
who were not brought up as religious have been completely cut off from
the religious ideas that govern and motivate large sections of the
country.
But in contrast, most religious young Americans will easily find
themselves aware of the motivations and thinking of secular men and
women, which dominate the media and our public school system, not to
mention the universities.
Restoring Our Bonds
The state bills currently under consideration that would make Bible
literacy classes available are an encouraging step forward—not just for
religious education, but ultimately for national healing.
The ACLU and similar group have nothing to worry about. Under these
bills, the Bible would not be taught as authoritative or normative for
life, as one would expect in a church. It would simply be used as
primary source material to aid in education.
Knowing the Bible would actually be an incredible help to students
studying American history. It’s really impossible to appreciate
American history without a working knowledge of Christianity’s core
teachings, since Christianity informed America’s self-understanding
going all the way back to the Mayflower.
But perhaps even more than knowing history, studying the Bible would
give students a window into the belief systems of their fellow
citizens—and this, in turn, could help restore a sense of mutual
understanding. The alienation would begin to end.
This is no silver bullet for national harmony, but it just might
facilitate the kind of mutual awareness and engagement that secularism
has always promised us, yet always failed to deliver.
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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