The US State of Oklahoma has ordered its public schools to incorporate the Bible into lessons for grades 5 to 12. Every teacher taking those classes will be required to have a Bible in their classroom to teach from.
Oklahoma’s superintendent of public instruction Ryan Walters announced the order with immediate effect and with special attention afforded to the Ten Commandments. “Every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom, and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom to ensure that this historical understanding is there for every student in the state of Oklahoma,” he declared.
“The Bible is an indispensable historical and cultural touchstone. Without basic knowledge of it, Oklahoma students are unable to properly contextualize the foundation of our nation which is why Oklahoma educational standards provide for its instruction,” stated Mr. Walters
“Adherence to the mandate is compulsory and immediate and strict compliance is expected,” he added. It was not immediately clear exactly how the Bible would be incorporated into lessons and what instructional standards would be required.
Oklahoma law already explicitly allows Bibles in the classroom and lets teachers use them in instruction. However, The Associated Press writes: “It’s unclear if Mr. Walters has the authority to mandate that schools teach it. State law says individual school districts have the exclusive authority to decide on instruction, curriculum, reading lists, instructional materials and textbooks.”
Superintendent Walters is a Republican elected official in a strongly Republican state. The former public school history teacher was elected to his post in 2022 after running on a platform of fighting ‘woke ideology,’ banning books from school libraries and getting rid of ‘radical leftists who he claimed were indoctrinating children in classrooms. He has clashed with leaders on both sides of politics for his focus on culture-war issues which include transgender rights, banning books and appointing a right-wing social media influencer from New York to a state library committee.
Mr Walters has previously argued that secularists in the US have created a state religion out of atheism, by driving faith away from the public square. In an opinion column for Fox News, he wrote that President Joe Biden and the teacher unions had supplanted Biblical values with “woke, anti-education values that tell students that they should treat their classmates differently depending on their race and sex and that they should be taught graphic sexual content at as young an age as possible”.
Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Kevin Stitt recently approved a package of regulations put forward by Superintendent Walters that included time for prayer in schools and expanded the state Education Department’s “foundational values” to acknowledge a “Creator” and the existence of good and evil.
The mandated Bible teaching directive immediately came under fire from civil rights groups and supporters of the separation of church and state. “Public schools are not Sunday schools. This is textbook Christian Nationalism: Walters is abusing the power of his public office to impose his religious beliefs on everyone else’s children. Not on our watch!” asserted Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
The head of the Oklahoma chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations criticised the directive as a clear violation of the US Constitution’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from “establishing” a religion. “Requiring a Bible in every classroom does not improve Oklahoma’s ranking of 49thin education,” said Oklahoma Democrat lawmaker Mickey Dollens, adding that: “The State Superintendent should focus on educating students, not evangelising them.”
It’s unclear if the new directive supersedes a recently approved law allowing Oklahoma public school students to receive off-campus religious instruction during the school day if they choose to. It authorises district boards of education to “adopt a policy that excuses a student from school to attend a released time course for no more than three class periods per week or a maximum of one hundred twenty-five class periods per year.”
The Bible teaching decree with a special focus on the Ten Commandments follows Louisiana’s recent enactment of an unprecedented US state law requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom.
