Education officials in Texas to vote on curriculum that would add Bible lessons to reading and language arts teachings

By Zoe Sottile, CNN

(CNN) — Officials in Texas are set to vote Tuesday on a new public school curriculum that incorporates lessons from the Bible as early as kindergarten, that provoked criticism from advocacy groups and families across the state.

The state Board of Education will vote on revisions to its K-5 reading and English language arts materials, part of Bluebonnet Learning, the Texas Education Agency-developed open education resources. The state-owned curriculum is optional. It stems from House Bill 1605, which offers a $40 per student annual incentive to schools that adopt the materials.

The revised materials have been criticized as disproportionate, focusing on Christianity much more than other religions. In a kindergarten lesson about the “Golden Rule,” for instance, instructors are told to teach students about Jesus and his Sermon on the Mount from the Bible’s New Testament. The teacher guide for that lesson briefly mentions Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and other faiths but is strongly focused on the Christian Bible. A kindergarten unit about art appreciation also includes a section dedicated to the book of Genesis and artworks inspired by it. The unit briefly mentions Islam and Judaism but primarily focuses on the story from the Christian Bible.

A first grade unit on “sharing stories” teaches “The Parable of the Prodigal Son,” from the New Testament in the Christian Bible. The third grade unit on ancient Rome features a section dedicated to the life of Jesus and Christianity in the Roman Empire. And a poetry unit for fifth graders includes psalms from the Old Testament taught alongside poems from Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams. No other texts from religious books are included in the unit.

The proposed materials “violate the separation of church and state and the academic freedom of our classroom, but also the sanctity of the teaching profession,” said Texas AFT, a union that represents over 60,000 public school educators and support staff across the state, in a news release.

The materials contain “an unwelcome and unnecessary quantity of Bible references,” said the union.

The Texas Education Agency, alternately, said in a May news release that the materials “were developed using the best evidence from cognitive science to ensure teachers have access to quality, on-grade-level materials that enable teachers to focus on delivering the highest-quality instruction and providing differentiated supports to students.”

Over 100 people testified for more than seven hours on Monday ahead of the vote, both for and against the materials. Mark Chancey, a professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University and a Sunday school teacher, described the materials as “fundamentally flawed.” The lessons “still clearly privilege Christianity over other traditions” and “make numerous claims that are erroneous, made up, or just plain strange,” he said.

Barbara Baruch, who is Jewish, testified against the materials, saying, “I believe my grandkids should share our family’s religion. I need help stopping the government from teaching them to be Christians.”

She urged officials, “Don’t let the government interfere with anyone’s religious choice.”

‘A wide range of faiths’

But Jonathan Covey, policy director at conservative group Texas Values, testified that the Bluebonnet lessons are “grade level-appropriate instructional materials that include contextually relevant religious topics from a wide range of faiths.” He added that “it has always been understood that religion has a place in American civic society.”

Another supporter of the materials, Glenn Melvin, argued that the proposals do not violate the “establishment clause” of the First Amendment, which stipulates that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The clause has been interpreted many times by the US Supreme Court, including in Engel v. Vitale, the 1960s case in which the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional for public schools to lead schoolchildren in prayer.

“Just reading some of the passages from the Bible will not cause someone to convert, as many Biblical scholars are not themselves Christian,” Melvin said.

In a report analyzing the proposed materials, the Texas Freedom Network, a grassroots organization advocating for “religious freedom, individual liberties and public education,” argued that the curriculum “verges on Christian proselytism insofar as its extensive, lopsided coverage of Christianity and the Bible suggests that this is the only religious tradition of any importance.”

The state board revised the materials, according to the Texas Education Agency, after versions proposed in May 2024 came under heavy criticism. The Texas Freedom Network report notes that many of the criticisms of the May 2024 version are addressed in the revised version.

Still, the revised plan “overemphasizes Christianity, offering very limited coverage of other major religions and faith traditions,” reads the report. “The clear implication is that Christianity is more important and deserves more attention than other religions—a message public schools have no business conveying.”

David Brockman, a Christian theologian and professor of religion who wrote the Texas Freedom Network’s report, told CNN, “Without a major overhaul of its religion coverage, the Bluebonnet curriculum is inappropriate for Texas public schools.”

The materials’ focus on Christianity “threatens to make non-Christian and non-religious students, parents, and teachers – as well as those who are not evangelical Christians –outsiders in their own public schools.” It also undermines the country’s “venerable tradition of church-state separation,” Brockman said.

Shariq Ghani, executive director of the Minaret Foundation, an organization focused on multi-faith civic engagement in Texas, told CNN, “Texas is a mosaic of faith.”

“Adults and children from every faith background contribute to the greatness of our state,” he said. “Focusing on just one without consideration of other faiths – it’s an example of a practice we just don’t do anymore here. We don’t leave Texans behind.”

Ghani also argued that Texas public school teachers are already “overburdened” with the amount of material they’re expected to teach. Expecting them to teach the nuances of different world religions “in their schedule would really be unreasonable,” he said.

‘Religious indoctrination’

Charles Haynes, a senior fellow for religious liberty at the Freedom Forum, told CNN that public schools must walk a fine line in teaching about religion as a part of history and culture.

“Of course, the Bible is an important part of history and American society. And of course, students should learn about the Bible as literature and history in the context of a secular curriculum,” he told CNN in an email. “But inserting faith-based lessons into public school classrooms, which sounds like what is intended here, is not the study of history or literature. It is religious indoctrination.”

The majority of Texas’ population are Christian: 23.5% are evangelical Protestant, 20.3% Catholic, and 4.5% mainline Protestant, according to 2020 data from the Association of Religion Data Archives, which sources data from congregations across the country. Around 1.1% of Texans belong to Muslim congregations and 0.2% to Jewish congregations, says the association.

Supporters of the curriculum have argued that it’s important for students to learn about the Bible in public schools because of the impact the text – as well as Christianity broadly – have had on the world. “Our language is redolent with concepts, phrases and allusions drawn directly from the Bible and other touchstones of Western thought and culture that speakers and writers assume their audiences know and understand,” wrote Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, in The74, a nonprofit education-focused news outlet.

Governor Greg Abbott voiced his support for the original May 2024 materials in a news release, describing them as “high-quality instructional materials” that will “allow our students to better understand the connection of history, art, community, literature, and religion.”

Not just Texas

The vote comes as Texas has implemented other measures that incorporate Christianity into public school classrooms, like allowing schools to hire religious chaplains as counselors. The legislature has also pushed to require that public school classrooms display the Ten Commandments.

Other Republican-controlled states have also pushed to make Christianity a part of public school classrooms. In Oklahoma, a group of parents of public school students, teachers, and ministers have filed a lawsuit seeking to stop the state’s top education official from requiring public school classrooms to incorporate the Bible and display the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

And in Louisiana, a federal judge has temporarily blocked a law that would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms, saying the law is likely unconstitutional.

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