Bible Course Becomes
a Test
for Public Schools in
Texas
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
and BARBARA NOVOVITCH, NYTimes on the web, August 1, 2005
HOUSTON -- When the school
board in Odessa, the West Texas oil town, voted unanimously in April to add an
elective Bible study course to the 2006 high school curriculum, some parents
dropped to their knees in prayerful thanks that God would be returned to the
classroom, while others assailed it as an effort to instill religious training
in the public schools.
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Luc Novovitch for The New York Times
Prof. David
Newman of Odessa College, whose daughter attends an Odessa school, said he
found the Bible course's curriculum unacceptably sectarian. "Someone is
being disingenuous; I'd like to know who," he says. |
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Luc Novovitch for The New York Times
John Waggoner,
at the county school board's administrative building on Friday, has
presented petitions in support of a Bible course to the board.
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Hundreds of miles away, leaders of
the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools notched another
victory. A religious advocacy group based in Greensboro, N.C., the council
has been pressing a 12-year campaign to get school boards across the country to
accept its Bible curriculum.
The council calls its course a nonsectarian historical and literary survey class
within constitutional guidelines requiring the separation of church and state.
But a growing chorus of critics says the course, taught by local teachers
trained by the council, conceals a religious agenda. The critics say it
ignores evolution in favor of creationism and gives credence to dubious
assertions that the Constitution is based on the Scriptures, and that
"documented research through NASA" backs the biblical account of the sun
standing still.
In the latest salvo, the Texas Freedom Network, an advocacy group for religious
freedom, has called a news conference for Monday to release a study that finds
the national council's course to be "an error-riddled Bible curriculum that
attempts to persuade students and teachers to adopt views that are held
primarily within conservative Protestant circles."
The dispute has made the curriculum,
which the national council says is used by more than 175,000 students in 312
school districts in 37 states, the latest flashpoint in the continuing culture
wars over religious influences in the public domain.
The national council says its course
is the only one offered nationwide. Another organization, the Bible
Literacy Project, supported by a broad range of religious groups, expects to
release its own textbook in September.
According to Charles Haynes of the Freedom Forum, which published "The Bible and
Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide" five years ago, "The distinction
is between teaching the Bible and teaching about the Bible -- it has to be
taught academically, not devotionally."
The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools says its course "is
concerned with education rather than indoctrination of students."
"The central approach of the class is simply to study the Bible as a foundation
document of society, and that approach is altogether appropriate in a
comprehensive program of secular education," it says.
Elizabeth Ridenour, a commercial real estate broker who said she formed the
nonprofit organization in 1993 after deciding that she had long been "duped"
into believing the Bible could not be taught in public schools, said the course
has stayed within legal limits. "Our teachers are not to say, 'This is the
truth,' or that the Bible is infallible," she said. "They are to say,
'This is what the Bible says; draw your own conclusions.' "
But in Odessa, where the school board has not decided on a curriculum, a parent
said he found the course's syllabus unacceptably sectarian. He has been
waging his own campaign for additional information on where it is being taught.
"Someone is being disingenuous; I'd like to know who," said the parent, David
Newman, an associate professor of English at Odessa College who has made a
page-by-page analysis of the 270-page syllabus and sent e-mail messages to
nearly all 1,034 school districts in Texas.
The Texas Freedom Network, which commissioned its study after the vote in
Odessa, is sharp in its criticism. "As many as 52 Texas public school
districts and 1,000 high schools across the country are using an aggressively
marketed, blatantly sectarian Bible curriculum that interferes with the freedom
of all families to pass on their own religious values to their children," it
said.
In one teaching unit, students are told, "Throughout most of the last 2,000
years, the majority of men living in the Western world have accepted the
statements of the Scriptures as genuine." The words are taken from the Web
site of Grant R. Jeffrey Ministries' Prophecy on Line.
The national council's efforts are endorsed by the Center for Reclaiming
America, Phyllis Schlafly's group the Eagle Forum, Concerned Women for America
and the Family Research Council, among others.
But Americans United for Separation of Church and State and other groups have
warned school districts against using the curriculum because of constitutional
concerns.
Mike Johnson, a lawyer for the national council, cited a 1999 legal opinion by
four lawyers calling the course permissible under constitutional guidelines.
Apart from a showcase school in
Brady, Tex., the national council does not disclose the schools using its course
because it wants to spare them the disruption of news media inquiries, Ms.
Ridenour said.
Only a summary of the course is available on the Internet, and printed copies
cost $150.
A highly critical article in The Journal of Law and Education in 2003 said the
course "suffers from a number of constitutional infirmities" and "fails to
present the Bible in the objective manner required."
The journal said that even supplementary materials were heavily slanted toward
sectarian organizations; 83 percent of the books and articles recommended had
strong ties to sectarian organizations, 60 percent had ties to Protestant
organizations, and 53 percent had ties to conservative Protestant organizations,
it said.
Among those included are books by David Barton, on the council's advisory board
and the vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party, who favors "biblical
inerrancy," said William Martin, a Rice University historian and the author of
the book "With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in
America."
Ms. Ridenour said the course was revised six months ago. But the freedom
network's study concludes that the curriculum's section on science teaches
creationism with no mention of evolution.
The course's broad statements about the Bible being the blueprint for the nation
are askew, said Mr. Haynes of the Freedom Forum, part of a nonpartisan
ecumenical group promoting the Bible Literacy Project textbook. "If the
Bible is a blueprint for the Constitution," he said, "I guess they haven't read
it," referring to the Constitution.
Some of the claims made in the national council's curriculum are laughable, said
Mark A. Chancey, professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University
in Dallas, who spent seven weeks studying the syllabus for the freedom network.
Mr. Chancey said he found it "riddled with errors" of facts, dates, definitions
and incorrect spellings. It cites supposed NASA findings to suggest that
the earth stopped twice in its orbit, in support of the literal truth of the
biblical text that the sun stood still in Joshua and II Kings.
"When the type of urban legend that normally circulates by e-mail ends up in a
textbook, that's a problem," Mr. Chancey said.
Tracey Kiesling, the national council's national teacher trainer, said the
course offered "scientific documentation" on the flood and cites as a scientific
authority Carl Baugh, described by Mrs. Kiesling as "an internationally known
creation scientist who founded the Creation Evidence Museum in Glen Rose, Tex."
The battle of the Bible course is not over in Odessa, where John Waggoner, a
real estate appraiser, presented petitions with 6,000 signatures in support of
the Bible class -- many of them on printed forms of the National Council on
Bible Curriculum in Public Schools -- to the school board of Ector County at its
April meeting.
The assistant superintendent, Raymond Starnes, said he wanted to examine the
Bible Literacy Project's textbook before recommending one for the 2006 school
year.
Ralph Blumenthal
reported from Houston for this article, and Barbara Novovitch from Odessa, Tex.
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