Texas officials set to vote on adding Bible lessons for K-5 classes as some states push Christianity in public schools

By Zoe Sottile, CNN

(CNN) — Officials in Texas are set to vote this week on a controversial new public school curriculum that incorporates Christian lessons from the Bible as early as kindergarten while putting less focus on other faiths.

The state Board of Education is expected to take a preliminary vote Tuesday on revisions to K-5 reading and English language arts materials that are part of Bluebonnet Learning, an optional, state-owned and Texas Education Agency-developed open education resource that can earn schools $40 per student annually for adopting it. A final board vote is expected Friday.

The teaching materials have been criticized as disproportionate, focusing on Christianity much more than other religions, a conflict reflected in prior debates in Texas and in other states led largely by Republicans.

Texas last year allowed public schools to hire uncertified religious chaplains as counselors, and the legislature has pushed to require public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. A similar law in Louisiana was temporarily blocked this month by a federal judge as likely unconstitutional, while Oklahoma public school parents, teachers and ministers have sued to stop a similar mandate.

Under Texas’ proposed revised curriculum, a kindergarten lesson about the “Golden Rule,” for instance, would prompt instructors to teach students about Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, from the Bible’s New Testament; the teacher guide for that lesson briefly mentions Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and other faiths but is strongly focused on the Bible. Another kindergarten unit about art appreciation primarily would focus on the Bible’s Book of Genesis and artworks inspired by it while only briefly mentioning Islam and Judaism.

A first grade unit on “sharing stories” would teach The Parable of the Prodigal Son, from the Bible’s New Testament. The third grade unit on ancient Rome would feature a section dedicated to the life of Jesus and Christianity in the Roman Empire. And a poetry unit for fifth graders would include psalms from the Old Testament taught alongside poems from Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams. No other texts from religious books would be included in the unit.

The proposed materials “violate the separation of church and state and the academic freedom of our classroom, but also the sanctity of the teaching profession,” said Texas AFT, a union that represents over 60,000 public school educators and support staff across the state, in a news release.

The materials contain “an unwelcome and unnecessary quantity of Bible references,” said the union.

The Texas Education Agency, alternately, asserts the materials “were developed using the best evidence from cognitive science to ensure teachers have access to quality, on-grade-level materials that enable teachers to focus on delivering the highest-quality instruction and providing differentiated supports to students,” a May news release states.

A day ahead of Tuesday’s vote, over 100 people testified for more than seven hours for and against the materials. Mark Chancey, a professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University and a Sunday school teacher, described them as “fundamentally flawed.” The lessons “still clearly privilege Christianity over other traditions” and “make numerous claims that are erroneous, made up, or just plain strange,” he said.

Barbara Baruch, who is Jewish, testified in opposition to the materials, saying, “I believe my grandkids should share our family’s religion. I need help stopping the government from teaching them to be Christians.”

She urged officials: “Don’t let the government interfere with anyone’s religious choice.”

But Jonathan Covey, policy director at conservative group Texas Values, testified the Bluebonnet lessons are “grade level-appropriate instructional materials that include contextually relevant religious topics from a wide range of faiths,” adding, “it has always been understood that religion has a place in American civic society.”

Another supporter of the materials, Glenn Melvin, argued the proposals do not violate the “establishment clause” of the First Amendment, which stipulates “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The clause has been interpreted many times by the US Supreme Court, including in Engel v. Vitale, the 1960s case in which the high court ruled it unconstitutional for public schools to lead schoolchildren in prayer.

“Just reading some of the passages from the Bible will not cause someone to convert, as many Biblical scholars are not themselves Christian,” Melvin said.

‘Texas is a mosaic of faith’

In a report analyzing the proposed materials, the Texas Freedom Network, a grassroots organization advocating for “religious freedom, individual liberties and public education,” argued the curriculum “verges on Christian proselytism insofar as its extensive, lopsided coverage of Christianity and the Bible suggests that this is the only religious tradition of any importance.”

Many criticisms of an earlier version of the lessons are addressed in the revised version, the report notes. The state board revised the materials after versions proposed in May came under heavy criticism, the Texas Education Agency said.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott voiced his support for the original May materials, describing them as “high-quality instructional materials” that will “allow our students to better understand the connection of history, art, community, literature, and religion.”

Still, the revised plan up for a vote Tuesday “overemphasizes Christianity, offering very limited coverage of other major religions and faith traditions,” reads the Texas Freedom Network report. “The clear implication is that Christianity is more important and deserves more attention than other religions – a message public schools have no business conveying.”

“Without a major overhaul of its religion coverage, the Bluebonnet curriculum is inappropriate for Texas public schools,” David Brockman, a Christian theologian and professor of religion who wrote the Texas Freedom Network’s report, told CNN.

The materials’ focus on Christianity “threatens to make non-Christian and non-religious students, parents, and teachers – as well as those who are not evangelical Christians – outsiders in their own public schools.” It also undermines the country’s “venerable tradition of church-state separation,” Brockman said.

Indeed, “Texas is a mosaic of faith,” Shariq Ghani, executive director of the Minaret Foundation, an organization focused on multi-faith civic engagement in Texas, told CNN.

“Adults and children from every faith background contribute to the greatness of our state,” he said. “Focusing on just one without consideration of other faiths – it’s an example of a practice we just don’t do anymore here. We don’t leave Texans behind.”

Ghani also argued Texas public school teachers are already “overburdened” with the amount of material they’re expected to teach. Expecting them to teach the nuances of different world religions “in their schedule would really be unreasonable,” he said.

‘Religious indoctrination’

Public schools must walk a fine line in teaching about religion as a part of history and culture,” Charles Haynes, a senior fellow for religious liberty at the Freedom Forum, said.

“Of course, the Bible is an important part of history and American society. And of course, students should learn about the Bible as literature and history in the context of a secular curriculum,” he told CNN in an email. “But inserting faith-based lessons into public school classrooms, which sounds like what is intended here, is not the study of history or literature. It is religious indoctrination.”

The majority of Texans are Christian: 23.5% are evangelical Protestant, 20.3% Catholic, and 4.5% mainline Protestant, according to 2020 data from the Association of Religion Data Archives, which sources data from congregations across the country. Around 1.1% of Texans belong to Muslim congregations and 0.2% to Jewish congregations, says the association.

Supporters of the proposed curriculum have argued it’s important for students to learn about the Bible in public schools because of the impact the text – as well as Christianity broadly – have had on the world.

“Our language is redolent with concepts, phrases and allusions drawn directly from the Bible and other touchstones of Western thought and culture that speakers and writers assume their audiences know and understand,” wrote Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, in The74, a nonprofit education-focused news outlet.

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