Bible courses take hold in Georgia public schools

April 21, 2006

To follow up on an item from last month, Gov. [tag]Sonny Perdue[/tag] (R) yesterday made [tag]Georgia[/tag] the first state in the country to offer government-sanctioned [tag]elective[/tag] [tag]class[/tag]es on the Bible.

The Bible is already incorporated into classes in Georgia and other states, and some local school districts have passed measures permitting classes devoted solely to the Bible. But education analysts say the law in Georgia is the first time a state government has endorsed such courses.

The new law allows elective classes on the Bible to be taught to high school students. Local school systems will decide whether to teach the courses.

The state Education Department has until February to craft curriculums. The law requires that the courses be taught “in an objective and nondevotional manner with no attempt made to indoctrinate students.”

The measure passed the state legislature easily and appears to have broad public support. I’m just not sure Georgia appreciates what it’s getting itself into. Mandating that the electives remain academic and religiously neutral is a) a good idea; and b) necessary to make the courses constitutional, but it also creates a risky situation.

On the one hand, if the course isn’t objective enough, it becomes a state-sponsored Sunday-school class, which is unconstitutional. On the other hand, if the course remains neutral, it would inevitably lead to observations about the Bible’s errors, contradictions, and historical inconsistencies. Purdue and lawmakers who voted for this probably hope the courses will help expose young people to the Bible, which in turn will make them more religious. Academic analysis of the book doesn’t always turn out that way.

We can look forward to lawsuits from supporters of church-state separation or complaints from Biblical literalists. We’ll see how well Georgia walks the fine line.

If Georgia doesn’t watch out their Pandoa’s Box is going to yield as many religious elective classes as Virginia has license plates (they have 180 – not including personalized).

http://www.dmv.state.va.us/webdoc/citizen/vehicles/plates.asp

  • If the Bible is such a correct and right thing to be taught in schools, and the whole perpose is to expose kids to it so they will become easily lead, then why make it an elective class? I mean we should make this mandatory.

  • If you want to teach the Bible, I would suggest including Issac Asimov’s two books on the subject in the curriculum. While I have only read the one on the Old Testiment, I found it terribly enlightening.

    Or more recently, one could discuss ‘the Gospel of Judas’ which suggests that Judas was in a conspiracy with Jesus to see the Christ was martyred or Bart D. Ehrman’s book ‘Misquoting Jesus’ which explains how later editors of the New Testiment changed or added stories (for instance, the “Let he who is without Sin” story is a later invention).

    Really, there are lots of options šŸ˜‰

  • Like those who commented befor me, I wonder what the class curricula will look like in order to keep the class objective. I’m glad this class will only(?) be taught to highschool students, who are generally able to begin thinking for themselves and challenging what is said to them. I do wonder if teaching an elective bible class at this level leaves the door open to teaching the class to younger, more impressionable students. I also wonder what other ‘elective’ classes the school is teaching. If students choose not to take the bible class, what are their other options? And, of course, the question everyone involved needs to ask themselves, how would they feel about their children taking an elective class on another religion?

  • There is a whole “wink wink, nudge nudge” dynamic going on here, just like between Republicans and racist segregationists. You [i]know[/i] this is going to get abused, teachers and school districts will use this to indoctrinate, and the state will look the other way.

  • EDIT: Crap, I always mix up my tags between foruming and using this site. Fix, anyone?

  • I think the whole idea of the ‘born again’ story is critical for any bible study course.

    The only way anyone could be confused about the story is if Jesus were speaking GREEK. There is no play on words in Hebrew or Arimaic. So, it is virtually impossible for Jesus to have told the story the way we read about it in English.

    In short, ‘born again’ ain’t what people think. They SHOULD teach that in school

  • I think this is a great idea. Knowledge of the bible is an important part of a liberal arts education. So much literature assumes that the reader understands biblical references. If it had been offered when I was in high school I would have taken it because as an atheist I don’t really know most bible stories. I’ve tried to read it on my own a few times and frankly the God of the Old Testament is so hateful and capricious that I simply had to stop reading.

  • NeilS,
    Did you know that theology was once an important part of the liberal arts curriculum–it was there at the beginning in the Middle Ages. Of course, back in those days the universities existed primarily as a service organization to train people for the clergy.

    For the record, I tend to share the suspicions of others here that there will be sufficient lack of oversight that the course would resemble a Sunday School. I’d be less inclined to think this if the proposal came from the teachers themselves (perhaps it did, but somehow I doubt it).

    Anyway, isn’t Georgia 49/50 in education?

  • Theology course – no problem.

    State sponsored Bible indoctrination – problem.

    Then again, I’m a godless liberal scientist.

  • I was given the bible to read in my high school english class, in a public school in Virginia. I generally consider myself an atheist, and this really didn’t bother me in the least. It was taught as any other book, and for the reasons NeilS gave above–understanding the allusions and meaning of a large chunk of English and American literature requires an understanding of biblical stories. It’s an important book in the culture, and it definitely can give a necessary background in that sense. So, it can be taught in a public school in a fair, non-indoctrinal way.

    That said, I seriously doubt that the proponents of this idea had that goal in mind. An English teacher that thought the bible was important to be taught for literature reasons would just add it to the curriculum, not ask for a new class to be created solely for that purpose. And I doubt the parents were clamoring for background in order to better educate their children in the liberal arts.

  • Saw on TV (don’t remember which show) that a couple of high schools in California already offer Bible study classes. No problems. Also a local western Washington teacher has one a national teacher award for his teaching of the bible as literature.

    This is just not an issue if the class is an elective and taught as an academic course. Actually a very good idea in my liberal opinion.

  • #12 Correction:
    the teacher was in Long Beach, CA not Washington. Click on my name if you want to see the class website.

  • I can’t wait for the parents to get all fundie on teachers that don’t teach the ‘right’ passages of the bible or stress the ‘right’ content.

  • My question, that no one seems to have addressed thus far is this, which version of these testaments are they going to teach? Somehow I just don’t see the Morman version, for instance, being the text used for the new testament. The other question that begs to be answered is, why just these books, what about the other religions, such as the Jewish Torah or the Koran both of which predate and influenced the books that are being so casually called the old and new testaments, why are these not being suggested? Personally I think this passed simply because, Georgia being the buckle of the bible belt, this makes politicians look good to their local voters when they can say “I voted for the bible in school”. Of course voting against it would automatically cost you votes. I also see lots of lawsuits coming down the road from this bill and it’s going to get ugly quick.

  • Yes, the Bible being offered in school again is awesome. The main reason I think it’s great is because it has many good moral principles in it. If you really study the history of our country it has steadily declined morally since the 1960’s when prayer and Bible were eliminated from Public School. Before the 1960’s were there school shootings? Were there drugs and rape? Was there such disrespect of teachers and authority figures? The kids since 1960 haven’t been hearing “do to others as you’d have them do to you”. Generations have really grown up with no knowledge of the Bible or real understanding that it’s a great Book. For those of you who say well what about the Old Testament, it’s all about war etc. The Old Testament gives us the Ten Commandments which follow into the New Testament. These are the moral principles that our schools have been without for the last 40+ years which is one reason why the schools are what they are. We live under grace now because Jesus paid the ultimate price for our sin. Since believers try to imitate our live as Jesus did ,albeit we fail miserably sometimes, Jesus never killed anyone. Jesus lived the Ten Commandments perfectly. Jesus said “you who are without sin throw the first stone” and since Jesus was the only perfect sinless man to ever live, He would have been the only one able to pick up the stone and throw it yet He didn’t. That’s huge. The new testament and the 10 commandments are the lifestyle that the church and believers try live by. The Old Testament is an historical factual history lesson of the Jews. It should be taught as history. The Old T shows God the Father’s faithfulness to His children in the midst of their sin and unfaithfulness to Him. It is encouraging for us because it shows us that once we’ve accepted Jesus as our Savior and asked for forgiveness of sins, no matter how far we stray if we’ve given our heart to the Lord, we can be forgiven if we ask and repent which means turn our back to the sin we’ve been committing. GOD IS GOOD.

  • Yes, I just read up above the comment, “Iā€™m glad this class will only(?) be taught to highschool students, who are generally able to begin thinking for themselves and challenging what is said to them. ” what about teaching evolution/darwinism in elementary school to young impressionable minds”? The world is “millions and billions of years old”? Life began by a “big bang” or we were “seeded” via alien type creatures from another planet? Darwinism is not a proven fact and yet it’s taught as fact “to young impressionable minds”. At least the historical parts of the Bible that don’t deal with doctrine can be completely backed by history/fact. Although I believe the entire Bible as truth. The Bible even explains what happened to create a “world” that “looks like it’s millions of years old.” Why is it so hard to believe that if it rained for forty days and nights continuously non-stop that the earth would fill up with water and therefore just the weight of that much force would create all kinds of layers? As all the animals/people decomposed why wouldn’t the flood waters and the recession of the water have made the earth look like it does? Why wouldn’t there by fossils many layers down as all the setiment settled after forty days and nights of rain? If it rains for two days anywhere in our country it floods. Look at 12hrs of rain from a hurricane ie Katrina and all the flooding that came because of that? Tsunami? You mean you would rather believe that life began as molecules on the back of a crystal which got struck by lightning? or that “aliens” came to earth and seeded the human race? Than to believe that Life began in the Garden of Eden after God made Adam and Eve, 2,000 or so years later a flood came and destroyed all life except that of Noah and his family and two of every species(male and female by the way not two males or two females) on earth, the waters receded and life began again? Really which one takes more faith..molecules getting struck by lightning, aliens seeding, or GOD being able to make man and woman in a garden? Now really, come on?

  • I had a great laugh on this, “Darwinism is not a proven fact ” – boy are you wrong.

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