{"id":7203,"date":"2006-04-21T12:23:16","date_gmt":"2006-04-21T16:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7203"},"modified":"2006-04-21T12:23:16","modified_gmt":"2006-04-21T16:23:16","slug":"bible-courses-take-hold-in-georgia-public-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bible-courses-take-hold-in-georgia-public-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"Bible courses take hold in Georgia public schools"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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 <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20060420\/ap_on_re_us\/bible_bills\">on the Bible<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The state Education Department has until February to craft curriculums. The law requires that the courses be taught &#8220;in an objective and nondevotional manner with no attempt made to indoctrinate students.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The measure passed the state legislature easily and appears to have broad public support. I&#8217;m just not sure Georgia appreciates what it&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>On the one hand, if the course isn&#8217;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&#8217;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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/03\/04\/AR2006030401369.html\">doesn&#8217;t always<\/a> turn out that way.<\/p>\n<p>We can look forward to lawsuits from supporters of church-state separation or complaints from Biblical literalists. We&#8217;ll see how well Georgia walks the fine line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}