Monday, March 1, 2010

A Christian argues against teaching the Bible in schools

Before becoming a journalist, Betty Winston Baye spent 20 years working for national denominations and faith-based civil rights and community organizations. She is “unabashedly and unashamedly Christian.”

But she does not believe the Bible should be taught in taxpayer-funded schools.

Baye rightfully argues that the United States is not a theocracy and that to claim that God has been taken out of the schools runs counter to a very basic Christian premise that God is never absent. He’s everywhere.

A bill is moving through the Kentucky Senate that would require the state Board of Education to establish guidelines for an elective course in Bible literacy.

The course “shall follow applicable law and all federal and state guidelines in maintaining and accommodating the diverse religious views, traditions and perspective of students in the school. A course under this section shall not endorse, favor, or promote, or disfavor or show hostility toward any particular religion or nonreligious faith or religious perspective.”

But the Bible is not religiously neutral. Moreover, here in Kentucky, religious neutrality and tolerance for diverse religious views are often viewed as controversial, weak-minded, “liberal,” even un-American. . . . Young people are not only highly susceptible to being proselytized, but may lack the tools to react to a teacher who teaches the Bible from a perspective that hardly can be considered neutral.


There were good reasons why America's founders, after fleeing religious persecution, pointedly sought a separation between church and state. Mixing the two, history shows, is a potion for disaster and conflict.

Brian Willis, who focused his doctorial studies on church and society, is vice president for academic affairs at Simmons College in Kentucky.

If the purpose of the bill, he said, “is to educate students from a social science perspective on biblical texts, then the five major world religions' sacred writings (Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam) should be incorporated into the curriculum.”

Wells' broader view, however, is that “religious communities and private faith-based institutions are better equipped to teach courses like these without violating religious freedom rights.”

On a more practical level Baye suggests that “when so many Kentucky public schools are performing poorly in the basics and are being beaten down by the state's budget crisis, it doesn't make sense to spend time and money developing guidelines for “elective” Bible literacy courses. These are readily available in private institutions — churches, mosques, temples and schools of theology — that have the history, the experts, the expertise and the desire to teach a knowledge-thirsty public.”


Betty Winston Baye is a Louisville Courier-Journal editorial writer and columnist.

12 comments:

  1. I certainly don't trust Kentucky schools to teach "Biblical literacy" without a heavy dose of proselytizing, whether there are state guidelines or not.

    BUT on the other hand I don't necessarily have a problem with Biblical Literacy classes because there is SO much Biblical IL-literacy out there right now, it makes it easier for right wing corporatist nutjobs like Andy Schlafly to use their twisted religion to justify their politics. I really do think there are far worse things than a little Biblical Literacy.

    Even people who *aren't* religious end up buying the "greed is good" argument when some GOP corporatist convinces them that Free Market Jesus thought social welfare was evil. They don't read the Bible or have any religious life so how are they to know any better? All they know is that they heard it on O'Reilly.

    The good part about having some state guidelines is that if a teacher does go off the curriculum and starts asking students to give testimonies or something parents have an avenue to complain.

    Just my .01.

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  2. I will trust them as I trust "an adder fanged" -- wouldn't have a problem at all with comparative religion being taught (I think the Gita is timeless in its wisdom; it rivals the Great Book of the Dinosaur Gods), but somehow I suspect that "bible literacy" is a cover phrase for preaching the Good Book in what should be a secular setting.

    It's true, too, that an awful lot of people who go around thumping the Bible pretty clearly haven't read more than the odd phrase from it here and there. Why, anybody who has read it knows that Jesus was a communist hippie who hung around with publicans and sinners, and said suspicious things about "the lilies of the field."

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  3. I'm sure there's an ulterior motive here and I wouldn't trust those guys in KY anymore than I do the ones here in TN.

    If we're going to teach the Bible, then we should teach the Koran and all other religious texts - like public school systems have the money for all that these days. Parents can send their kids to a faith-based school of their choice, if that's what they're most interested in, but not to a "tax-supported" school.

    b-dino: I took Religious History and Comparative Religion in college - and thoroughly enjoyed them - but for third grade? Zzzzz

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  4. I notice as I drive around my little piece of Kentucky that everywhere you turn their is a church....

    Big Ones, Little Ones, Ones with funny names, some are Christian, others Mormon, ones a mosque, a couple are jewish temples, and now we even have a Burmese buddhist temple.

    If all of these places cannot find the time or make the effort to teach the Bible, the Koran, or the Torah, then what in the HELL do they expect to accomplish by pawning off their responsibility to the public school system?

    I am sorry, but the school system could not get this one right no matter how hard they tried! There is no way a school system could please anyone with this subject matter.

    Lets be realistic, this is a stunt by some politician to earn a few points with the citizens.

    I think its time to let the churches do what churches are supposed to do...and I think that parents need to step in a teach bible literacy IF THEY BELIEVE it is important.

    Schools around here even have 'parenting classes' and I think if you are going to allow your daughter to carry a baby to term then the least you can do as their parent is to teach them to be a parent...

    But then again that is obviously like the blind leading the blind...

    Which probably explains, why with all the churches in this state our legislature believes it is necessary to demand bible literacy....

    Just teach the little ones to READ and then let them pick the material....

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  5. Sounds like it should be a college level elective course and certainly not an appropriate subject for a public school.
    There is no end to the shady yet so obviously transparent subterfuge of the rabidly religious.

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  6. tnlib - I'm sure there's an ulterior motive here ...

    An understatement. The inevitable camel's nose sneaking under the tent. All that mumbo jumbo about including Hindu, Buddhist, Judaic, and Islamic texts into the curriculum is just political cover.

    Speaking of third grade, I had one of those teachers. During the Christmas holidays, all non-Christian children were segregated to the back of the classroom and ostracized. There are certainly reasons why religion and public schools are an oppressive mix.

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  7. A story to puncture the arrogance of Bible Thumpers everywhere (except north of the border):

    A traveler on vacation was inside a church taking pictures when he noticed a golden telephone mounted on the wall with a sign that read '$10,000 per call'.

    The American, being intrigued, asked a pastor who was strolling by what the telephone was used for.

    The pastor replied that it was a direct line to heaven and that for $10,000 you could talk to God.

    The American thanked the pastor and went along his way.

    Next stop was in Louisville, Kentucky. There, at a very large church, he saw the same golden telephone with the same sign under it.

    He wondered if this was the same kind of telephone he saw previously and he asked a parishioner what the purpose was.

    She told him that it was a direct line to heaven and that for $10,000 he could talk to God.

    'Thank you,' said the American.

    He then travelled to Atlanta, Birmingham, Nashville, Philadelphia, Boston, and New York.

    In every church he saw the same golden telephone with the same '$10,000 per call' sign under it.

    The American decided to travel up to Canada to see if Canadians had the same phone.

    He arrived in Canada, and again, in the first church he entered, there was the same telephone, but this time the sign under it read '50 cents per call.'

    The American was surprised so he asked the minister about the sign. 'Father, I've travelled all over America and I've seen this same golden telephone in many churches. I'm told that it is a direct line to heaven, but in the US the price was $10,000 per call. Why is it so cheap here?'

    The minister smiled and answered, 'You're in Canada now, son ... it's a local call.'

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  8. 'You're in Canada now, son ... it's a local call.'

    LOL

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  9. "All that mumbo jumbo about including Hindu, Buddhist, Judaic, and Islamic texts into the curriculum is just political cover."

    I clearly remember watching Pat Robertson denounce the Buddha as being overweight and not the "natural" god of the Christians because after all, one doesn't say "Buddha dammit" when one stubs a toe.

    I suspect that would be the intellectual level and content of the comparative religion exercise.

    No, I've seen "bible study" and it's reading stories and being told what they mean without questioning the highly questionable sources, the very tendentious translations and without mentioning the dozens of equally authentic Gospels rejected by a Roman Emperor for political reasons; without mentioning the history or the political situation in Israel and Judea or the places and times the various gospels originated in or who actually wrote them. I'll bet the big bucks the kids will just be told the standard fare about the gospels being written by Jesus' disciples with the glaring contradictions glossed over; will not analyze the progressively anti-Jewish polemics in light of the increasing alienation between the foreign churches and Judean Jews who had begun to seek and find other saviors or indeed any of the pursuits of legitimate and historical biblical scholarship.

    I have shelves and shelves full of books on the subject and have studied comparative religion formally and informally and am quite sure that the vast bulk of scholarship will be absolutely ignored by what will be publicly funded preachers.

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  10. I think they would have to use certified teachers but, given the religious fervor in this part of the world, that doesn't offer much protection.

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  11. Certified to teach doesn't mean one is fit to teach ancient history or to be fluent in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Coptic and Latin and conversant with egyptian and babylonian literature. It doesn't mean you don't have an unbiased objective and it does mean that if it were taught the way it is in a secular university, there would be a witch hunt and that teacher would have to find a new job.

    Look, take Old Testament 101 in College and the first thing you'll learn is Documentary theory, the J source, the E source, the Priestly source and the Deuteronomist. You'll read how Noah loaded animals 6 by 6 or two by two and it rained for 100 days but also 40 days and God was called El or YHWH and you'll see how the two stories are interleaved with every second line in most of the Bible contradicting the previous line and in two or three different dialects from two or three different times. You'll find stories cribbed from older Egyptian popular novels and Babylonian folk tales, psalms to Isis rewritten and Judaised and far more. You'll learn about entire doctrines based on mistranslations. You'll learn the historical errors and gross misrepresentations of history in the NT. You'll have a hard time retaining silly ideas about biblical inerrancy, divine origin and you'll come to understand Reimarus in saying it's all political propaganda.

    You won't find the part where God says he wrote the damned thing either.

    I guarantee you you won't hear this in the proposed curriculum, from any Sunday School teacher or in any Church "bible study" class.

    We know damned well that it's only more of the "founded on Christian principles" lie and that they're only looking for recruits to take over the country for Christ.

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  12. Glad there are a few sane Christians left.

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