Oklahoma orders schools to teach Bible ‘immediately’
Oklahoma’s top education official has mandated that schools in the state integrate the Bible into their curriculum, marking the latest cultural controversy in the US regarding religion in education.
According to a directive from Republican state Superintendent Ryan Walters, compliance with the rule is mandatory and must be implemented immediately and rigorously. The requirement applies to students in public schools aged approximately 11 to 18.
This directive follows closely after Louisiana’s governor signed a law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in all public schools in that state.
In a statement, Mr. Walters emphasized the Bible’s significance as a crucial historical and cultural reference point. He argued that without a foundational understanding of it, Oklahoma students would struggle to properly contextualize the origins of the nation. Oklahoma’s educational standards, he noted, already include provisions for teaching the Bible.
Elected in 2022, Mr. Walters, a former public school history teacher, campaigned on a platform that included opposing “woke ideology” and removing what he termed “radical leftists” from the state’s education system.
Critics, including civil rights organizations and advocates for the separation of church and state, have denounced Mr. Walters’ announcement, particularly concerning its application to grades five through twelve.
“Public schools are not Sunday schools,” Rachel Laser, head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement quoted by AP news agency.
“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,” she added.
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 op-ed last year for Fox News, he wrote that US 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 a young of an age as possible”.
In a statement, the Interfaith Alliance – a US group that seeks to protect religious freedoms – called the Oklahoma superintendent’s directive “blatant religious coercion”.
“True religious freedom means ensuring that no one religious group is allowed to impose their viewpoint on all Americans,” the statement added.
It comes a week after Louisiana ordered all classrooms up to university level in the state to display a poster of the Ten Commandments.
Days later, nine families in the state sued Louisiana, marking the start of what some expect will be a protracted legal battle.
The complaint, backed by civil rights groups, argues that such a display violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion, and that the display “pressures” students into adopting the state’s favoured religion.
There have previously been legal battles over the display of the Ten Commandments in public buildings, including in courts, police stations and schools.
In 1980, in the case Stone v Graham, the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky law requiring that the document be displayed in elementary and high schools. This precedent has been cited by groups contesting the Louisiana law.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court said the requirement “had no secular legislative purpose” and was “plainly religious in nature” – noting that the commandments made references to worshipping God.
