Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
The Tennessee State Board of Education has approved guidelines for an elective Bible course that, at least on the surface, appear to make for an academic, non-religious course in the Bible as history and literature. Unlike Texas, they had serious people involved in the process:
Kent Richards, Old Testament professor at Emory University and executive director of the Society for Biblical Literature, has spent the past five years developing guides for teaching the Bible in public schools. He worked with Tennessee on this course.Richards and other state officials agree that the focus must shift to properly training educators who will teach the course.
"One of the important things is that teachers are teaching about the Bible and not professing some religion or professing that the Bible is the only road to take," Richards said. "That's what every school and every school attorney is concerned about, not crossing that line."
But here's the problem:
Before the state-approved curriculum, school districts could develop and offer their own courses on the Bible, and some of those still do. State social studies specialist Brenda Ables said the legislation actually complicates the issue because it doesn't require districts with existing Bible courses to convert to the state's curriculum."We think we've gotten this curriculum written to meet all guidelines that would uphold court challenges," she said. "Those schools who had their own curriculum and were already teaching it will continue to do so until somebody tells them they can't."...
Hedy Weinberg, the state's ACLU director, told The Tennessean that the state seemed sensitive to concerns that the classes could be used to try to convert individuals. However, there are few details on how the classes will be run.
"Whether these classes are constitutional depends on who teaches them and how they are taught," she said. "The devil is in the details."
And indeed they are. The state may have reasonable standards, but if they're not enforced they do little good. And inevitably, some local school district is going to go for the NCBCPS curriculum, which is a hardcore religious right indoctrination program of lies and distortions.
Politics
Comments
You're really cranking those posts out this morning!
Why do we need a course just for the bible though? I can appreciate it as literature, but...
Posted by: Rutee | February 3, 2010 9:28 AM
Agreed, they should turn this into a comparative religions class.
Posted by: MartyM | February 3, 2010 9:44 AM
I can understand the concern that schools may use this as precedent for more religious courses, but I don't see the problem with this course as written. In college I took a couple electives on eastern philosophies and Islamic law: should those be redesigned as comparative studies courses as well?
Posted by: Granis | February 3, 2010 9:50 AM
Yeah, comparative religion would be more helpful. You could study the bible academically in that course, but better understand how it relates to other religions.
Posted by: paul kavicky | February 3, 2010 9:52 AM
As long as it remain elective, truly a matter of choice, they can have their bible class. I guess it'll be an easy A class for all the slackers and maybe a bit of decent discussion about the myths for the few who care. It might even spark a few hell-raisers to turn up the heat (sharia law anyone?) but I doubt it. High School for most is something to get through not dig into.
Posted by: MikeMa | February 3, 2010 9:57 AM
Two words: Dover trap.
Posted by: RBH | February 3, 2010 9:57 AM
Rutee, Ed generally queues up 4 to 6 posts to be automatically rolled out in the mornings, at 9:02, 9:09, 9:16, 9:23, and (if necessary) 9:30 and 9:37 Eastern time. If you see a post outside of these times, then he's genuinely "cranking one out." :)
Posted by: Squiddhartha | February 3, 2010 10:04 AM
Bart Ehrman is just a hop away at UNC Chapel Hill. TN could get him to help with their bible study curricula. I'm sure he'd be happy to oblige. Heh.
Posted by: eric | February 3, 2010 10:30 AM
Which version of "the bible," among the dozens, will be taught? I wonder if they'll cover the historical (in)accuracy of the bible. Or the lack of any evidence for a historical Jesus. How many other religion's texts will be presented? Do you suppose that they'll show The God Who Wasn't There or Root Of All Evil? during class? Do you suppose they'll cover the various councils that chose which books would comprise "the bible," and their reasoning? Do you suppose that they'll cover any of the more "colorful" parts of the bible, like the ones urging selling daughters into slavery, and not mixing crops or eating shellfish?
Having read (some of) the bible, I cannot call it literature, much less "great literature" by any stretch. So the "bible as literature" argument doesn't really hold water for me. While I acknowledge its cultural relevance, since its followers walk our streets, this fact seems irrelevant to this class.
This whole road seems fraught with constitutional peril.
Posted by: TGAP Dad | February 3, 2010 10:56 AM
While I'm sure even a totally legit "comparative religions" class would be valuable to many high school students, I simply do not feel the reward outweighs the risk at present. Open the door the teensiest crack, and you're going to have Evangelizing 101 being taught to unsuspecting school kids with public money.
Maybe in thirty years the political climate will be different and we can actually have a "Bible as literature" or "comparative religions" class in high school. But not in 2010.
Posted by: James Sweet | February 3, 2010 11:10 AM
There is a very simple solution to the problems posed by this and all public school religion specific classes. Just make the class be taught by a member of a different religion. In Tennessee, they would probably have to cancel the class for lack of any muslims or jews to teach it. But can you imagine the howls?
Posted by: amar | February 3, 2010 11:12 AM
@10 James
To be fair, assuming that the class is an elective, the teachers will in no sense be dealing with unsuspecting school kids. These kids will be taking this class with the intent (or their parent's intent) of having their mythology reinforced. They will literally be preaching to the choirs.
Posted by: TGAP Dad | February 3, 2010 11:15 AM
When I was in the 6th grade, we had a year-long course studying the nations of the world (well, mostly Europe) and that included a brief (couple of weeks) lesson on major religions. It worked out rather well and was as informative as most other subjects. A year does seem rather long to spend on just the Bible when there are so many subjects to consider for K-12 education.
Posted by: mark | February 3, 2010 11:21 AM
Will they teach the controversy about the bibul?
Posted by: rnb | February 3, 2010 11:33 AM
Anyone who appreciates the Babble as literature has no taste in literature.
Posted by: LightningRose | February 3, 2010 11:56 AM
I think a comparative religions class will be the only way critical thinking will be invoked and taught in such a curriculum. Unless you can enforce what amar says in #11.
Posted by: MartyM | February 3, 2010 12:38 PM
In the UK I had to do one hour a week of compulsory religious studies, which is essentially a comparative religion class. As far as I can remember, each of the major religions were afforded a similar amount of time, and the course consisted of a history of each religion, as well as an explanation of the cultural and religious practices of those religions, today. It was highly informative, to be honest.
However, nothing could have been more effective as an early lesson in skepticism than the realization that there were quite so many major and minor religions and that the bizarre and unbelievable aspects of the "other" religions of the world were in fact no more bizarre (with respect to everyday experience) and unbelievable than the major religion(s) of my own country.
Posted by: Damian | February 3, 2010 12:48 PM
When we were growing up, my classmates and I were subjected to at least 10 years of mandatory "RE", daily mandatory morning school assemblies that included at least one hymn and two prayers, and about three or four full-blown church services each academic year. We also took part in nativity plays, and retellings of the Easter story.
After all that, I'd wager not more than one in twenty of my ex-classmates sets foot inside a church building more than a handful of times a year these days.
Of course, this all happened in the UK (Glasgow, Scotland to be precise) in a government run and government funded school. Like most other non-Catholic Scottish schools, it is affiliated with the Church of Scotland. (We had a Catholic school down the road, and the two schools coordinated going home times to reduce the odds of fights breaking out!)
It's actually quite amazing how different attitudes are in the UK compared to the US. I recently came across the home page of the primary school my sister's kids attended. It's just the local public primary school, not private. Yet their headmaster puts this on their home page with nary a whisper of complaint:
I'm sure that most parents who bother to read this would be more upset by the spelling mistake than the overtly religious statement in it. And for the record, of my three sister's kids, who are now grown up, only one of them shows the slightest interest in Christianity, and that's with both their parents being regular Church goers (and not the insane kind).
So, regarding the separation of church and state, the Religious Right should be very careful what they wish for. They just don't realize how good they've got it.
Posted by: tacitus | February 3, 2010 12:49 PM
I had two "comparative religion" classes in high school. One was a very dry overview of major world religions (and required attending a service of another religion). Boring.
The second one was a class on "ethics" where we read some of the Bible (Jesus was all about the subversive non-violent resistance to Romans!) as well as the Baghrava Gita (spelled that wrong) and the Epic of Gilgamesh.
But you can get away with that stuff in private school.
Posted by: JustaTech | February 3, 2010 1:51 PM
i thought bible study was already covered by abnormal psychology classes.
Posted by: rob | February 3, 2010 2:16 PM
I think it's also a measure of... well, I'm in the hick part of Florida, and I'm darn sure folks aren't learning about other cultures on their own. Of course, in fairness, they generally won't learn about historical context for the bible either, just "ITS HOLY AND JESUS SAYS I GET TO KEEP MAH GUNS".
Posted by: Rutee | February 3, 2010 2:30 PM
You know it's a farce because there's nothing stopping teachers from discussing the bible in literature classes and some universities have had the bible as part of the Mythology section in literature classes for over 30 years. If the bible isn't being discussed as myth, then it is being misrepresented. "Oh, we're just reading this stuff but we're not telling the students it's true" - oh sure, but if you're not telling the students it's codswallop it's nothing more than deception to get jesus into the schools.
Yeah, Sunday School is no longer limited to sundays or to churches.
Posted by: MadScientist | February 3, 2010 4:25 PM
Maybe it was because it was in the early 1970s and in California, but when I took a Bible as literature course in high school nobody tried to convert anybody or claim that anything in the text (and our only textbook was the Bible, but I can't recall which translation except that it wasn't the KJV) was Truth, or even truth, or anything of the sort. It was a literature class, taught thruogh the English department. Period. Nothing more and nothing less.
So, it can be done, and it is a valuable thing to do, considering that knowing what is in the Bible is key to understanding a lot of references in the rest of literature, to understanding much of the visual art created in the past couple of millennnia, and to understanding a lot of cultural references that are not religion-related.
Like it or not, believe in it or not, the Bible has been the origin of a large proportion of the cultural context of Western civilization, and to not know anything about what is in it is a handicap in ways that are not religious in the least.
Posted by: Elaine | February 3, 2010 4:29 PM
Elaine, #23: Like it or not, believe in it or not, the Bible has been the origin of a large proportion of the cultural context of Western civilization, and to not know anything about what is in it is a handicap in ways that are not religious in the least.
I disagree. What is important in understanding Western civilization is understanding the various Christian beliefs and how those beliefs evolved over time. You'd be surprised at how little the Bible actually matters in understanding Christians. ;)
Posted by: Chiroptera | February 3, 2010 4:36 PM
Oh, and it's jesus in the details, not the devil.
Posted by: MadScientist | February 3, 2010 4:38 PM
Like it or not, believe in it or not, the Bible has been the origin of a large proportion of the cultural context of Western civilization...
That's BS for a variety of reasons. First, the Bible didn't influence Western civilization in a vacuum; therefore it is misleading, and possibly dishonest, to study it in a vacuum, which is what your class was doing if it only had that one textbook.
Second, the Bible acts, but it's also been acted on: there were a HUGE variety of influences on the Bible, on the development of what we now call "Christian doctrine," and on the history of all the Christian sects and their differing interprations of it; those influences came from inside and outside the West, and some of them even predate Jesus; and again, if your only textbook is the Bible, then your class won't be giving you the full picture, or even one-tenth of the picture, of what REALLY influenced our civilization.
Third, a class whose ONLY textbook is the Bible clearly serves a propaganda purpose, merely by pretending that this one book is so influential that no other influences can be considered alongside it. This pretense is FALSE, and so was your one-book class.
Posted by: Raging Bee | February 3, 2010 5:08 PM
Chiroptera, #24...I don't recall saying anything about understanding Western civilization. I was referring to the understanding of literature, art and cultulral references.
Although, religion and the writings it has produced have influenced history and we ignore that influence as acting on history at our own peril, I think. Historical figures have often had religious motivations as well as personal and political motivations, and those must be taken into account when assesing the influence of those individuals on history. But that is a slightly different issue than the one I was addressing in my original post.
Posted by: Elaine | February 3, 2010 5:10 PM
Raging Bee #26...Give me a break. Just because we only had the one textbook does not mean that there was any proslytizing or propagainsizing, as you put it, going on in class.
First of all, we did not study the bible in a vacuum. There was other material introduced...just not from one textbook: articles from academic journals, excerpts from other literature, and so forth. True, it was a literature class and not a history class, and we didn't look at much history. But few of the other literature courses I've taken in my academic career looked at much history either.
Second of all, I know all that about acting and acted upon, and that different denominations interpet the bible differently. My education is as an anthropologist, with an empahsis on the anthropology of religion. Again, the course I was writing about was a literature course, not a history course, or an anthropology course, or a sociology course. It was about the the Bible as literature and its influence on other literature, not on Western civilization as a whole.
Thirdly, the teacher of the class made very few bones about the fact that she was an atheist, so I'm pretty sure she wasn't interested in propagandizing anyone into belief in the bible as a religious document.
Posted by: Elaine | February 3, 2010 5:26 PM
Clearly, when I typed "propagainsizing" in my previous post, I meant "propagandizing".
Posted by: Elaine | February 3, 2010 5:28 PM
Elaine,
Quite true.
Posted by: JuliaL | February 3, 2010 5:56 PM
There really shouldn't be any problem with a non-religious course about the Bible and just the Bible. In Western culture (which we have undeniably inherited from ancient times), the Bible is far and away the most important book ever written. The list of English words, phrases, idioms, and cliches taken from the Bible are too numerous to list. References and allusions abound in every form of art produced in the past 2,000 years. It's a fascinating work of literature. It's simply far too important not to be studied. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool atheist and I have a Bible on my shelf. One of my regrets from my college years was not taking the Bible as Literature course offered at my university (I could never fit it in my schedule). In our culture, the book far outweighs any other scriptural writings (or any other writings for that matter) in importance and therefore has a rightful place in a course all its own, outside a comparative study of the Torah, Koran, and other holy books. It's hard to live a cultured life in Western countries without at least some knowledge of the Bible (how many Shakespearean allusions or turns of phrase fall by the waysaid if one is Biblically illiterate?). Ironically, it often seems as though non-believers have a better understanding of the Bible than believers, precisely because non-believers study it academically rather than in a half-assed Bible group.
Posted by: Ryan | February 3, 2010 10:18 PM
Elective
Posted by: Buffoon | February 4, 2010 11:02 AM
Ryan #31
Of course the bible provided Shakespeare some reference upon which to turn a phrase. But so did Greek and Roman literature and myth - to the same or greater extent I think.
And so did the very secular and somewhat guttural mores and activities of his time.
My point is to say a much more useful course than study of THE Bible would be a comprehensive course on the impact of religion (religious writings and involvements) on Western Civilization.
Study of THE Bible is nothing more than study of one (in my mind passe) influence among many greater and more enduring. This course is just a ruse (in context of Tenn.) for injecting "gawd" into the classroom.
To put a different way: if they were serious about influences they'd have 10 or more various and necessary ones to cover. The bible is way over blown outside of a band of time some would call the Dark Ages. My opinion.
Posted by: ConcernedJoe | February 4, 2010 12:12 PM
The bible isn't really good literature. The ending is just a big deus ex machina, and that's an incredibly lazy plot device.
Posted by: Suricou Raven | February 4, 2010 3:12 PM
Viewers:
I don't know what they will find in the bible as literature. Religious members will try to convince others outside their own believes that it is but does it really have the literature format that it requires? NO!, Yet, it concerns me that religious members won't see it as a curriculum but as an apportunity to recruite members. Lets not forget that religion has made many attempts to change the educational system to their religious believes. And among those changes they have attempted to take away certain curriculums and insert others like ID(Intelligent design) into schools in the past. And with this approval, this apportunity happens to be just a backdoor for them.
Posted by: Dave | February 5, 2010 3:12 PM
Ugh. And Act One is a mess. It's waaaaaaaaaay too long. And boring as hell. Who edited this thing?
Act Two has a few nice moments, but Act Three is abrupt, and nearly incomprehensible. The deus ex machina is bad enough, but did the author drop acid for the final scene?
I give it one star.
Posted by: Rick R | February 5, 2010 3:37 PM
I like Job, I like Ecclesiastes. For those of you who do not know, Job is extremely old book, it has a storm God, like the Hittites, and it contains the phrase for this God of wind 'he walks on the waters' which probably led to the Jesus story of walking on water, since God walked on the water Jesus had to, must have. Ecclesiastes does not mention God until the last paragraph, which many claim was tacked on. "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity."
I would prefer to be anti-clerical rather than anti-Bible because it seems rather stupid to be against a book itself. But with the current tenor of the culture clash anti-Bible is a necessary stance. Most Christians have not read it, they are not true believers, and they are members of a social club similar to high school, truth be known.
I agree that the high school Bible course will backfire all around in Tennessee and not produce the effect sought in the near term or in the future.
Posted by: david | February 6, 2010 4:11 AM