There are many efforts nationally to get the content of the Bible incorporated into public-school curricula using several secular textbooks. But one North Carolina group has a different idea. They suggest that the Bible itself be used as a textbook.

The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, an organization based in Greensboro, and having many North Carolinians in its leadership, is promoting the idea.
In addition, the group provides several resources for teachers, including a lengthy teachers’ guide. Another resource is a CD-ROM of a 1969 textbook (The Bible Reader: An Interfaith Interpretation) with various Bible translations accompanied by commentary from Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish perspectives.

Last year, a group called the Bible Literacy Project published studies suggesting that American teen-agers were deficient in Bible knowledge. Students in public schools, in particular, had a great degree of Biblical ignorance compared to private-school and home schooled students. English teachers surveyed in the studies said that students’ Biblical ignorance made it more difficult for the students to understand the literature they were studying.

A few months after issuing their report, in September 2005, the Bible Literacy Project unveiled a high school textbook, The Bible and Its Influence. The NCBCPS teachers’ guide sometimes recommends a 1995 text, The Bible As/In Literature. This is a mainstream academic text whose authors are not connected to NCBCPS.

The NCBCPS claims that its curriculum is used in hundreds of schools in 37 states, but it declines to give specifics, citing fears that the schools involved might get harassed by secularists. According to an account in the News and Observer of Raleigh, Wake County schools use a version of the curriculum.

State Sen. Neal Hunt, R-Wake, is on the advisory board of the NCBCPS. The state of Biblical literacy is “very poor,” he said. Many of the Founding Fathers were “strong believers in the Bible,” Hunt said, and by learning about the Bible, students would be able to understand “where the Founding Fathers are coming from.”

When a school board in the Odessa, Tex., area was considering the NCBCPS curriculum, a separationist organization published a critique of the curriculum, claiming that the teachers’ guide was sectarian, recommended sources endorsing young-earth creationism, and wasn’t properly sourced. The NCBCPS denounced the criticism, while modifying its teachers’ guide.

The Bible and Its Influence is about 400 pages long. The book contains summaries of the various books of the Bible, along with discussion questions, sidebars, and pictures. Students are encouraged to supplement their reading of the text by studying particular books and passages in the Bible itself. The Bible and Its Influence largely portrays the Bible as a positive influence, particularly on behalf of progressive causes. For instance: The books of Ruth and Esther are said to have a bearing on “women’s struggle for equality.”

While the text regretfully notes Timothy’s traditional attitude toward women, it promptly goes on to praise the pro-feminist sentiments of Galatians 3:28. The Bible and Its Influence has a curious array of supporters. It’s been endorsed by prominent evangelical Charles Colson as well as by church-state separationist Marc D. Stern, general counsel of the American Jewish Congress.

In another interesting development, the textbook was endorsed by name in a Bible-curriculum bill sponsored by Democratic leaders in the Alabama House. It was implicitly endorsed in a Democratic bill in the Georgia legislature, but the Republican-controlled Senate approved a substitute calling for a Bible course with the Bible itself as a textbook.

Judith Schaeffer, deputy legal director of the People for the American Way Foundation, said her organization opposes the NCBCPS curriculum, while it avoids taking a position on The Bible and Its Influence. Teaching the Bible as true, which the NCBCPS curriculum allegedly does, would violate U. S. Supreme Court precedents about the separation of church and state, Schaeffer said.

One case where the People for the American Way Foundation fought allegedly sectarian Bible teaching took place in Lee County, Fla. In1997, the Lee County School Board voted to teach a Bible course inspired by NCBCPS (the extent of the inspiration is today a subject of controversy). PFAWF and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the school board in federal district court, which ruled that the curriculum’s New Testament section was unconstitutional, and that the Old Testament section needed to be closely monitored.

At the urging of the judge, the parties reached a settlement, in which a new Bible course was adopted, whose textbook was called An Introduction to the Bible. In a 2002 letter, Schaeffer and another PFAWF lawyer approvingly cited the Lee County settlement and the use of An Introduction to the Bible: “a truly academic, objective and secular approach.”

One of the coauthors of An Introduction to the Bible is Professor Mitchell G. Reddish, chairman of religious studies at Florida’s Stetson University. Reddish recalls the Lee County case — after the settlement, he instructed teachers there on how to use his book. However, Reddish said, “That whole experiment fell through.”

An Introduction to the Bible is written at the college level, Reddish said, but not for high-schoolers (members of the Lee County School Board didn’t respond to an email from Carolina Journal). An Introduction to the Bible calls itself a college textbook.

The text in many places challenges the accuracy of traditional Jewish and Christian beliefs. For example, the book says it’s an “unsettled issue” how Canaan became Hebrew territory (the Biblical account of a Jewish military conquest being only one of several possible scenarios). The text also casts doubt on the authorship of many of the letters attributed to the apostle Paul.

Maximilian Longley is a contributing editor for Carolina Journal.