Monday, August 01, 2005

Bible Course Becomes a Test for Public Schools in Texas. A religious advocacy group based in Greensboro, N.C., has been pressing a 12-year campaign to get school boards across the country to accept its Bible curriculum. By RALPH BLUMENTHAL and BARBARA NOVOVITCH. [NYT > Education] According to the NY Times, the school board of Odessa, Texas has voted to add a Biblecourse to their high school curriculum. As an educator, I advocate schools teaching  courses on the Bible as a collection of  literary, historical, and religious texts from a strictly objective point of view.  As a Christian who holds the Biblical texts as sacred, I am concerned lesss about the Scriptures being presented strictly as literature than about them being presented from a narrow sectarian point of view which might be someone's bad theology. My perception is that the movement behind this course may in fact come from such a point of view. Here are some quotes from the article and my initial reactions. "The council calls its course a nonsectarian historical and literary survey class within constitutional guidelines requiring the separation of church and state." If this is the case then neither faithful Christians nor secular scholars, nor the Constitution, should have a problem with it. "The central approach of the class is simply to study the Bible as a foundation document of society, and that approach is altogether appropriate in a comprehensive program of secular education," it [The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools] says. This sounds good at first but behind that statement "as a foundation document of society" is an implication that those pushing this curriculum may be interested in using this course to fight the culture wars, pushing the idea that the United States is and should be a "Christian Nation," whatever that means. (Personally I think the culture wars are the wrong battle for Christians to be waging. But that's another topic for another day.) "Ms. Ridenour said the course was revised six months ago. But the freedom network's study concludes that the curriculum's section on science teaches creationism with no mention of evolution." The Bible makes absolutely no mention or our modern discussion of Creationism vs. Evolution. If the creation story in Genesis is studied in such a course, it must be studied strictly from a literary point of view. In fact, a study of the historical context in which the Biblical creation story was written will reveal a powerful understaning of why it was written and what purpose this text served for the ancient Isrealites. It would make for a fascinating study if done correctly. "Mr. Chancey said he found it [the National Council's Curriculum] "riddled with errors" of facts, dates, definitions and incorrect spellings. It cites supposed NASA findings to suggest that the earth stopped twice in its orbit, in support of the literal truth of the biblical text that the sun stood still in Joshua and II Kings." Now the intelligent Christian's worst fears about this curriculum begin to come out. It looks like not only is this course a front for the culture wars, but is in fact written by morons.  Not only is this urban legend, which has been circulated through spam email, false, but what it purports is impossible, that NASA could find evidence that the earth had stopped rotating at some point centuries ago. I am utterly disappointed to hear that something so completely unscholarly could be included in any curriculum, secular or religious. Anyway, I hope that sound, scholarly Bible-as-literature, -history, -influential-religious-document courses pop up not only in public schoools, but in churches as well. We would do well to be a society literate in the sacred texts of all major religions. This would help us better understand history, as well as the many diverse societies that exist in the world today. 11:38:20 AM    comment []trackback []