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[This is the continuation of a series of posts beginning with "Should The Bible Be Taught In Public Schools?" about the decision by the Texas State Board of Education to authorize the teaching of an elective course on Bible in public high schools. It brings to the surface just about every question imaginable about the relationship between religion, politics, and the Bible.]

1. Comment. An individual expressed the belief that knowledge of Biblical stories would be advantageous to understanding allusions/archetypes of literature, but finds the course necessarily limited. The individual suggests a complementary course in Greek/Roman mythology.

Agency Response. The agency has maintained language as filed as proposed. State law and rule do not prohibit the teaching of a course on Greek/Roman mythology.

 2. Comment. An individual stated that mythologies of the Norse, Greeks, Romans, and Babylonians as well as the holy works of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam had an enormous impact on Western literature and should be included in this course as well.

Agency Response. The agency has maintained language as filed as proposed. State law and rule do not prohibit the teaching of suggested additional courses.  Comments

These two comments and the official responses to them point out how much our current rules, laws, and practices have complicated any effort to reach consensus about the place of the Bible in our shared public lives.

They point out the unintended consequences of efforts to restrict teaching the Bible in public schools. The Texas State Board of Education has no such restrictions for other religious books or mythologies.

This leads to all sorts of interesting and disturbing situations.

I used to live in the Bay Area of California. The local paper—the Contra Costa Times—published an article claiming that children in the Byron school district were being forced to adopt Muslim practices at the same time they were not allowed to wear crosses or say the name of Jesus.

You can read the original article that was republished in newspapers and on the internet as well as responses to the claims in the story in “Mandated Teaching of Islam in California Public Schools-Truth! & Fiction!”

I have made a few excerpts from the article.

The message says “Public Schools Embrace Islam – A Shocker.” It focuses on seventh graders in Byron, California, and says that although students in a growing number of public schools cannot wear crosses or utter the name of Jesus, they are being required to attend an intensive three-week course on Islam including mandated study of the tenets of Islam, the important people of Islam, wearing of a robe, adopting a Moslem name, and staging their own Jihad. It says that the California-required course uses a textbook that says a lot more about Islam than about Christianity and quotes a teacher who says she couldn’t teach Christianity like that and can’t even say the name of Jesus in the classroom, but the seventh graders are learning how to pray to Allah. Mandated Teaching of Islam in California Public Schools-Truth! & Fiction!

Tom Adams, the administrator for curriculum framework at the state education department, told the Contra Costa Times that state guidelines (for seventh grade) do include a unit on Islamic civilization in the medieval world, however, it should be an academic approach on the historical significance of the religion. It should not be construed as an endorsement of it. Mandated Teaching of Islam in California Public Schools-Truth! & Fiction!

How the guidelines are implemented in the classroom is largely up to the teacher and critics say that in many classrooms, Islam has been emphasized while other religions, such as Christianity and Judaism, have sometimes been hardly touched upon. In an article on WorldNetDaily.com, Diana Lynne said that other parents in California have reported Islam-related activities that have caused them concern. One parent says her daughter was indoctrinated about Islam for four months while in seventh grade in Elk Grove, California. She said one day, she arrived at school to find a banner in front that said “There is one God, Allah, and Mohammad is his prophet.” She says she had also seen children chanting from the Koran and praying. Mandated Teaching of Islam in California Public Schools-Truth! & Fiction!

Whatever the truth and fiction of this particular situation in Byron, it highlights some of the difficulties involved in teaching religion in public schools.

What is particularly ironic in the comments and responses in the Texas State Board of Education situation is that the rules and prohibitions against teaching the Bible in public schools do not apply to other religious sacred books, such as the Koran.

Although I don’t usually use the term “politically correct,” this is exactly the kind of situation in which the language of “political correctness” most applies, which complicates the whole effort to teach the Bible in public schools.

In the many years I subscribed to the Contra Costa Times, I noticed an evolution in how it treated Christian religious topics. I observed that Christmas and Easter—two major Christian holidays—were never mentioned on the front page. If they got any mention at all, it was about food drives to collect toys for poor children or meals served to the poor, but never on the front page.  The paper didn’t publish articles about Christian belief or practices at Christmas or Easter services. Meanwhile, the religious practices on holy days of Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and other non-Christian groups received prominent treatment.

As an observer of religion, I became aware of this bias against acknowledging the religion of the majority population. In an effort to be unbiased against minorities, the paper practiced bias against the majority.

The second commenter claims that “the mythologies of the Norse, Greeks, Romans, and Babylonians as well as the holy works of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam had an enormous impact on Western literature.” It’s true that these mythologies and holy works have had influence, of varying degrees, but none of them has impacted Western society as much as the Bible.

And so we have a situation in which the religion of the majority of the population—and the sacred book of that majority—are treated as topics that must be controlled carefully, while the beliefs and holy books of other religious groups have no such guidelines.

As I continue to ponder the effort by the Texas State Board of Education to set guidelines to teach the Bible in public schools, I see no simple solution to the multitude of problems involved in this effort.

I remain convinced that any education that does not include the Bible would be equivalent to teaching students to read English using only the consonants and not allowing anyone to teach the vowels. The vowels are part of the alphabet and part of the language. To leave them out is to leave out a significant part of teaching anyone to read English.

The Bible has been an integral part of Western history—far more than Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim scriptures. No one can be truly educated without it. But HOW to teach it in public schools in a way that respects freedom of religion—for Christians and non-Christians alike—remains the question. I don’t pretend to know the definitive answer. 

Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson

written by Kalinda \\ tags: Bible, Bible in public schools, Buddhist, Hindu, Islam, Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Koran, muslim, teach, teaching Islam in California public schools, Texas State Board Of Education

A recent decision by the United States Court Of Appeals Tenth Circuit raises significant questions about the relationship between religion and politics.

The question at issue was whether students at Colorado Christian College could receive scholarships from the State of Colorado.

In other words, should public money be used to fund private religious education?

This case raises the question: When does religious education stop being merely religious and start being “pervasively sectarian?”

The criterion in place has been the “pervasively sectarian” test. Students who attend private religious schools have qualified for public scholarships. However, the students at Colorado Christian College were denied public scholarship money because their college was deemed “pervasively sectarian.” As evidence, students are required to attend chapel and the faculty must sign a statement asserting the infallibility of the Bible.

On July 23, 2008, The Appeals Court ruled in favor of Colorado Christian College.

The State of Colorado provides scholarships to eligible students who attend any accredited college in the state–public or private, secular or religious–other than those the state deems “pervasively sectarian.” To determine whether a school is “pervasively sectarian,” state officials are directed, among other things, to examine whether the policies enacted by school trustees adhere too closely to religious doctrine, whether all students and faculty share a single “religious persuasion,” and whether the contents of college theology courses tend to” indoctrinate.” Applying these criteria, state officials have extended scholarships to students attending a Methodist university and a Roman Catholic university run by the Jesuit order. They have refused scholarships to otherwise eligible students attending a non-denominational evangelical Protestant university and a Buddhist university. Colorado Christian University, one of the two schools held pervasively sectarian by the State, contends that excluding its students on the basis of this inquiry violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The district court disagreed, and granted summary judgment in favor of the state defendants. We find the exclusion unconstitutional for two reasons: the program expressly discriminates among religions without constitutional justification, and its criteria for doing so involve unconstitutionally intrusive scrutiny of religious belief and practice. We reverse, and order that summary judgment be granted in favor of the university.

No. 07-1247, United State Court Of Appeals Tenth Circuit

Consider this decision in relationship to the decision by the Texas State Board of Education to offer elective classes in Bible in public high schools. “Should The Bible Be Taught In Public Schools?”

In each case, public authorities have attempted to make a distinction between instruction and indoctrination.  According to the State of Colorado, state officials were supposed to:

• Examine whether the policies enacted by school trustees adhere too closely to religious doctrine.
• Whether all students and faculty share a single “religious persuasion.”
• Whether the contents of college theology courses tend to” indoctrinate.”

Notice the language. “Adhere too closely.” “Share a single religious persuasion.” “Tend to indoctrinate.”

How do public officials make such decisions? The court ruled that officials of the state of Colorado cannot use such questions to deny scholarship money.

The decisions in Texas and Colorado make clear that these are not simply interesting questions to debate. They are questions of public policy.

The ruling in favor of Colorado Christian College is just one more ruling in favor of religious schools to receive public money.

Last year, California’s Supreme Court upheld the rights of “pervasively sectarian” institutions to benefit from government programs that issue bonds on their behalf. Another federal appeals court, the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Va., sided with Columbia Union College in Maryland, a school affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church that had been denied access to a state bond finance program. The 6th Circuit in Cincinnati upheld bonds issued on behalf of Lipscomb University, a school in Tennessee affiliated with the Churches of Christ where students attend daily Bible classes. In 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the state of Washington against a student who claimed discrimination because he couldn’t use a publicly funded scholarship to pursue a degree in theology. Religious Schools Win Again

Why does any of this matter? These are two current decisions, which are themselves part of a growing trend to blur the line between religion and politics. Any line between secular and sectarian is being slowly erased. 

Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson

written by Kalinda \\ tags: Colorado Christian College, Federal Appeals Court, indoctrinate, indoctrination, pervasively sectarian, public money, religious, religious colleges, Texas State Board Of Education

[This is the continuation of a series of posts beginning with "Should The Bible Be Taught In Public Schools?" about the decision by the Texas State Board of Education to authorize the teaching of an elective course on Bible in public high schools. This decision brings to the surface just about every question imaginable about the relationship between religion, politics, and the Bible.]

“A professor of comparative literature at The University of Texas at San Antonio and an individual expressed concern that the guidelines for teaching of the Bible in public schools are too vague and allow for the possibility of indoctrination rather than instruction.”  Comments

This comment exposes the core dilemma behind the attempt by the Texas State Board of Education to teach the religious book called the Bible without teaching it as a religious book.

The unnamed professor of comparative literature assumes that it is possible to instruct without indoctrinating. This is the false dichotomy that complicates the effort to teach the Bible in public schools.

The line between instruction and indoctrination might seem clear enough at first, but when you begin to ponder what these words actually mean, the line blurs. The truth is that teaching is never neutral and the best teachers are the ones who are most aware that they themselves are not neutral about any aspect of their subject matter.

This idea that any teacher can instruct without being doctrinal is the false dilemma behind this effort to teach a foundational religious document as something other than a religious book.The only way that this effort can succeed is by acknowledging at the outset that it is impossible to teach the Bible neutrally.

Bobby: “Psssst. Don’t tell anyone. It’s our secret! There’s an elephant in the living room, but we’re pretending it’s not really there and it’s not really an elephant.”
Billy: “But it smells and it’s enormous!”
Bobby: “Just ignore it. Maybe it will go away.”
http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/info2/a/aa061197.htm

In various 12-Step recovery programs, the “elephant in the living room” is a metaphor for denial. As I ponder long and hard about the task of teaching the Bible in public schools, I can think of no better metaphor for the effort to teach the Bible for its history and literature while attempting to ignore that it is a religious book.

The beginning of a solution for the conundrum the Texas State Board Of Education has created is to stop pretending that the elephant will go away.

In fact, the Bible is a religious book. It is sacred to Jews, to Christians, and Muslims. Every religious group has its own doctrines about the book, but that is exactly the point. The Bible is as doctrinal a book as books can be.

So then the question becomes: How can anyone teach a religious book in public schools in a way that does not attempt to indoctrinate students into any specific religious understanding of the book?

Now we are getting into the tricky stuff. And this is where the quality of teaching becomes so critical.

Before we can consider the problems of teaching the Bible, we need to consider the problems of teaching anything. Let’s go back to the words “indoctrinate” and “instruct.”

In common speech, “instruction” sounds neutral and “indoctrinate” sounds biased, but when you go deeper, you realize that it is impossible to teach anything without being “doctrinal.” 

Let’s start with the words themselves.

• “Instruction” comes from the word “structure.” Instruction teaches something about the structure of a topic.
• “Indoctrination” comes from the word “doctrine.” It has the same root as the word doctor. A doctor teaches doctrine. Usually, “doctrine” refers to a body of teachings representing a specific set of beliefs.

As a teacher and student of language, I am fascinated by the concept of “in” as the prefix for both of these words.

• When you are “in-structed,” you enter “into” a specific structure of knowledge about a topic at the same time the structure of knowledge of that topic becomes part of you.
• When you are “in-doctrinated,” you enter “into” into a specific set of teachings (doctrines) at the same time the doctrines become part of you.

When you master a topic, the merging has become complete. The knowledge has become part of your “structure” and the “structure” of knowledge has become part of you. The set of teachings has become part of you and you have become part of the teachings. 

To put it another way, the set of doctrines has become part of your structure. “Instruction” has become “indoctrination.”

Even though this might be a bit too “woo-woo” here, my point is that the line between instruction and indoctrination is not as distinct as the professor of comparative literature implies. 

The Germanic root of the word “learn” is “to follow in the tracks of.” When you learn, you follow the tracks of a teacher who lays down a set of tracks for you. This means that there is nothing neutral about the teaching process. Every teacher has biases, points of view, and intentions as the teacher leads students “in” the way of mastery.

The major difference between good teachers and bad teachers is that the best teachers don’t pretend they are neutral and they are honest with their students about their lack of neutrality. They identity their own biases and they teach their students to recognize biases in themselves and others.

This is the art and science of teaching, whether the subject matter is the Bible, algebra, or English literature. And this is why the effort by the Texas State Board of Education is off track. It is trying to ignore the religious elephant in the living room that will not go away.

It is possible for good teachers to teach the Bible as a religious book without indoctrinating anyone into a particular religious point of view.

This will be the topic of my next post on this subject.

Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson

written by Kalinda \\ tags: indoctrination, instruction, Kalinda Rose Stevenson, teaching bible in public schools, Texas State Board Of Education

This is the continuation of a series of posts beginning with “Should The Bible Be Taught In Public Schools?” about the decision by the Texas State Board of Education to authorize the teaching of an elective course on Bible in public high schools. It brings to the surface just about every question imaginable about the relationship between religion, politics, and the Bible.

Although my crystal ball is a bit clouded right now, I predict that the effects of this decision will echo throughout the land in courts and school boards for years to come.

In these posts, I will raise questions, objections, and suggestions for the problems involved in teaching what I am going to call, “The Public Bible” in public schools.

The Board has chosen to name the courses:

“Requirements for Elective Courses in the Bible’s Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) and New Testament and Their Impact on the History and Literature of Western Civilization.”

Let’s start with the name.

Nothing about language is ever neutral, and this decision to refer to Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament is a demonstration of language that is attempting to tiptoe through a minefield.

What are we going to call the portion of the Bible that is not explicitly Christian, and is the whole Bible for Jews? The Board has chosen to divide the Bible into two parts named the “Hebrew Scriptures, with “Old Testament” in quotations, and “New Testament.”

Already we have tripped the first mine.

At this point, I have a story to tell about the first time I stepped on a landmine about the name of this portion of the Bible.

During my doctoral work, I met regularly with a woman who was both a Professor of Political Science with a Ph.D. from University of California at Berkeley, and a Roman Catholic nun, who lived in community with other nuns at the private Catholic university where she taught.

Sister Barbara not only taught college level political science, she also offered spiritual direction. And so, I met with Sister Barbara for almost two years. She was without doubt the most radiant, happiest, and wisest person I have ever met, and I loved her dearly.

At one point, she invited me to spend a weekend on a mini-retreat in the convent, which was part of the college. I slept in a room that reminded me of my college dorm room, took showers down the hall, and ate meals with Sister Barbara in the nuns’ section of the cafeteria.

Sister Barbara had told me that very few young women were entering the convent.  During one of the meals, I met a young woman who was the only new member to join the order in recent years. The new member turned out to be a Jew who had converted to Christianity and decided to become a nun. Not very far into the meal, I told her that I was a doctoral student in Bible at the Graduate Theological Union, with an Old Testament emphasis.

I was completely unprepared for the explosion that followed. The new nun became irate and began to lecture me. “It is not Old Testament. It is the Hebrew Bible.” And she declared that she was “sick and tired of Christians who call it Old Testament.”  As I sat there, pulling out the shrapnel, I mused over a converted Jew in a convent who lost her temper when I mentioned the “Old Testament.”

Since then, I have heard many people argue for one name or another. Although I have never attended a meeting of the Texas State Board of Education, I can imagine many heated discussions over precisely this question.

“What do we call this section of the Bible?  If we call it “Old Testament,” we will offend many Jews. If we call it “Hebrew Bible,” we will offend many Christians.”

Let’s just look at the traditional Christian designations of “Old Testament” and “New Testament.” What does this mean?  Why old and new?  The simple answer is the old has been superseded because it was somehow deficient. If we add this to the idea that is prevalent in Christian churches that the Jews are part of the old covenant, this means that the old law that has been replaced by the new covenant, defined by grace instead of law.

So, out with the old!  In with the new!  They have the old stuff. We have the new stuff. But we really don’t want to offend Jews with the idea that their sacred book is “old” and needs to be replaced by something “new.”   

All of a sudden, “Old Testament” and “New Testament” are no longer simple historical designations. They are theologically loaded categories.

So, what do we do? One solution is to use the name, “Hebrew scriptures.” This seems like a good solution. Now we are not using a value judgment to identify this portion of the Bible

Since all of the books were written in Hebrew (with a few words and sections in Aramaic here and there,) let’s call the Bible the “Hebrew Scriptures” so that Jews will not be offended.

But then logic asks, is “Hebrew scriptures” really a parallel construction to “New Testament?” And if we are going to keep using the term “New Testament,” aren’t we still claiming that somehow this is the new and better covenant?

Here is another question–which I doubt came up in the discussions. If we are going to use language to designate the first part of the Bible, why not use language to designate the second part? Why not “Hebrew Scriptures” and “Greek Scriptures?” Now there is no value judgment about which is better. Both are simply referring to the original language. Yet, somehow, most Christians would probably ask, “Where is the idea of new covenant?  What happened to the “new” testament?”

And here’s another question. Why are they “Hebrew scriptures” in the plural, but the Christian portion is a singular “testament?”

I haven’t even asked all the relevant questions yet, but I will end for now with this suggestion.  As Bob–my friend from doctoral work who always started every conversion with a joke–put it, “What we have is the “Bible” (Old Testament) and the “Appendix” (The New Testament.)  By the way, Bob is now a New Testament Professor at a public university. This tongue-in-cheek suggestion acknowledges that there is a whole more Hebrew Bible than Greek Bible.

Here we are, not even past the name of the course, and we have already hit the first minefield. What shall we call the “The Public Bible?”

So far, the efforts of the Texas State Board of Education to name the course have raised more questions than answers.

Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson

written by Kalinda \\ tags: Hebrew Scriptures, Kalinda Rose Stevenson, New Testament, Old Testament, public bible, teaching bible in public schools, Texas State Board Of Education