The Bible is back!

On March 8th, the Georgia Board of Education voted to add two more classes to the state’s curriculum: “Literature and History of the Old Testament Era” and “Literature and History of the New Testament Era.” They are now set to appear in Georgia classrooms next year.

During the 2006 Legislative session, the Georgia State Legislature passed and the governor signed into law Senate Bill 79. This bill introduced a law that would allow the public school system to teach a Bible curriculum as an elective course.

Some of this curriculum’s primary requirements are that the Bible must be the main textbook, the course be taught in an unbiased, non-sectarian method, and teaching not include religious doctrine or sectarian interpretation of the Bible or of the texts of other religious traditions. The content of the course has to be limited to the Bible itself and how it is related to history and literature.

I agree with State Senator Tommie Williams (the author of S.B. 79) who said that the Bible is not just “the Good Book” it’s also “a good book.” It is a book that played a major role in U.S. and world history.

To have the Bible restricted from being used as a textbook in our public schools is nothing less than censorship. And that is basically what we have had for the last forty years; censorship of the truth about the Bible’s role in the founding of our country.

It is hard to explain why the pilgrims came to America without including a discussion on religious freedom! How can one teach on the abolitionist movement, women’s suffrage, and civil rights without including the religious motivations from the Bible?

The Bible has never been legally removed from our public schools. Most citizens do not realize that in the Supreme Court case that dealt with the use of the Bible as a ‘devotional’ study, the Bible never was banned all together!

In the Supreme Court case, School Dist. Of Arlington v. Schumpp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963), the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged that the Bible may be taught in public schools, saying “[nothing] we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.”

In another case heard in the Supreme Court in 1980 (Stone vs. Graham, 449 U.S. 39), the court once again reaffirmed the use of the Bible in public schools stating “the Bible may be used in an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like.”

President Clinton’s Secretary of Education in 1995, Richard Riley, said in a statement regarding religion in the public schools, “students may be taught about religion, but public schools may not teach religion.” He continued saying, “the history of religion, comparative religion, the Bible (or other scriptures) as literature (either as a separate course or within some other existing course) are all permissible public school subjects.”

Riley’s statement echoes Chief Justice Warren Berger’s when he said the Constitution does not require complete separation of church and state. It mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions and forbids hostility toward any.

These facts settle the question of whether or not constitutionally the Bible can be taught in public schools. Therefore, the law passed in S.B. 79 clearly paves the way for local school boards to decide on offering an elective course such as “The Bible in History and Literature.” More than 375 school districts in 37 states are already doing this!

The Bible is back! Let’s make sure that our students have all the facts about what has made and continues to make our country great. But, if we never tell them all the facts they will be left to the manipulation of the “secular progressives” who want to hide the truth of the Bible in the founding influence upon our country.

President Woodrow Wilson said, “a nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about.”

Contact your school superintendent and county school board member and encourage them to bring the Bible back to your school!