Since the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools introduced their elective bible curriculum, The Bible in History and Literature, in 2000, at least 346 school districts in 37 states have offered it as a high school elective course. Georgia and Alabama are among those 37 states.
During a teleconference call on April 13, 2006, Chuck Norris, a supporter of the NCBCPS curriculum, said studying the Bible does not mean someone has to become Christian. Nonetheless, it is valuable for students to study the Bible, Norris argued.
Norris stars in the hit television series, Walker, Texas Ranger. He said, “I like the direction they [the NCBCPS] are going because they are teaching right out of the Bible.”
“If you are going to study the Bible you should study the Bible and not someone’s interpretation of the text,” Norris said.
The current controversy over introducing bible curriculum into public schools has switched from a debate over the definition of separation of church and state to a battle of political parties and ideologies.
According to an article by David D. Kirkpatrick of The New York Times, January 27, 2006, Democrats in Georgia and Alabama are proposing bills to have bible classes taught in schools based not on a bible curriculum which uses the Bible as the textbook, but on the Bible Literacy Project’s textbook, The Bible and Its Influence.
Kirkpatrick said, “The Democrats who introduced the bills said they hoped to compete with Republicans for conservative Christian voters.”
State Senator Eric Johnson of Georgia, the Republican leader from Savannah said the action “makes them modern-day Pharisees.” He said, “This is election-year pandering using voters’ deepest beliefs as a tool.”
Kirkpatrick also reported that “[Johnson] found a ‘little irony’ in the fact that the Democratic sponsors had voted against a Republican proposal for a Bible course six years ago.”
On its website, the BLP said that since its textbook was released last September, “nearly 500 schools in all 50 states are reviewing The Bible and Its Influence for potential release next fall.”
Barbara Novovitch in a December 2005 The New York Times article reported that the Texas Freedom Network asked Mark A. Chancey, a bible scholar at Southern Methodist University to review the NCBCPS bible curriculum, “Dr. Chancey said it had factual errors, promoted creationism and taught that the Constitution was based on Scripture.”
A December 2005 report by Jennifer Siegel for the Forward, an online American Jewish newspaper, said “The new textbook, The Bible and Its Influence, has been endorsed by the American Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League, as well as Catholic leaders and a wide range of liberal and conservative Protestants.”
The Forward said, “officials at both the AJ Congress and the ADL acknowledged some problems with the textbook they endorsed and said that they preferred comparative religion courses to classes focused solely on the Bible. But, officials at both organizations said, despite these misgivings, they felt compelled to offer an alternative to The Bible in History and Literature, which they described as a blatant attempt to push a right-wing Christian agenda in public schools.”
Dr. D.L. Cuddy, a former Senior Associate with the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, DC, said in a press release for Christian Communication Network’s Christian Newswire on March 2006, “The BLP textbook contains factual error, for example a contradiction of what Jesus actually said about parables (p. 215 in textbook). Plus, it asks students to question traditional Bible teaching. For example, it asks ‘If God allows evil things to happen, can God honestly be described as good?’ And the text states that ‘This puzzle remains essentially unsolved’ (p. 156). …The Bible and Its Influence advises students that ‘It is always good to remember not to try to apply current standards on biblical accounts’ (p. 50). But why shouldn’t biblical accounts of honesty, for example, be used to teach students the standard that they should be honest today?”
Chenoa McKnight is an intern at Accuracy in Media, Accuracy in Academia’s parent group.
