by Jeff Childers
The most encouraging and least reported story of all unexpectedly winged out of Oklahoma yesterday. The Wall Street Journal ran the headline, “Oklahoma State Superintendent Orders Bible Be Taught in Schools.”
Fearlessly igniting an Apocalyptic legal battle, Oklahoma’s Republican state superintendent of public instruction, Ryan Walters, cast the first stone by courageously ordering all of Oklahoma’s public schools to teach students about the Bible and the Ten Commandments. His opponents are not planning to turn the other cheek.
The move closely followed last week’s similarly provocative Lousiana law, which required public school classrooms to prominently display the Ten Commandments.
Defending the new Oklahoma directive, Ryan cited the inarguable fact that the Bible lies at the beating heart of American history and Western Civilization itself. Our culture, traditions, politics, and legal system cannot be understood without referencing the country’s Christian roots. “This is not merely an educational directive, but a crucial step in ensuring our students grasp the core values and historical context of our country,” Ryan explained.
“This is a historical argument,” Ryan said. “The left can be offended, but that’s our history,” he shrugged.
Aghast atheists and other opponents can’t believe their ears. To them, Oklahoma’s law is literally one million times more dangerous than the worst excesses of the French Revolution. (And we all know how that unpleasant affair turned out.)
Critics were anguished and distressed. They cried, What is happening in this country? They asked, didn’t we spend the entire 1960’s getting the Bible out of public schools? The wanted to know, was it all for nothing? How can public schools force kids to even think about the Bible?
It didn’t stop there. They demanded, was The Handmaid’s Tale predictive programming? Is Christian Nationalism really Christian Totalitarianism? And so forth, and so on.
The answer to all those questions is calm down. One state’s rebellious challenge to the Separation doctrine does not mean women* are about to be herded into fertility camps, or whatever dystopian fantasy Bible opponents conjure up in their paranoid imaginations. (*definitions may vary.)
Oklahoma has a solid argument about the Bible’s historical significance. The Bible is the best-selling book of all time. Nothing else even comes close. It’s also the most effective self-help book ever published. You’d think people would want to study the top bestseller in history.
Even our language, English, is packed with Biblical words and phrases. Like “the writing on the wall,” “scapegoat,” “forbidden fruit,” “the blind leading the blind,” “an eye for an eye,” a “Good Samaritan,” and many many others. Our systems of justice and government were established on Biblical principles.
For just one example, the Founders carefully designed our “checks-and-balances” style of government on the threshold assumption that all men are tempted to evil, even themselves, and no one is righteous enough to be trusted with unchecked power. How can we understand the Founders’ intent without appreciating the original rationale for their distrust of human forms of government?
The Bible also recounts thousands of years of ancient World history that have proven deadly accurate. Time after time, archaeologists have confirmed Biblical accounts of unlikely events and civilizations previously unknown to historians who thought the Bible’s accounts were just mythological.
The Bible’s ancient histories remain relevant. How can anyone truly understand the controversy over Israel and the deep ties between America and that country, without understanding Israel’s Biblical roots? How can students understand the fiery debates over the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, without understanding the religious significance of the Temple?
The Bible also teaches basic philosophy in an unmatched way. For just one example: does objective morality exist? Or does morality only come from democratically-based human laws? In other words, is forcible rape always wrong, even if a particular culture’s democratic majority approves of raping women who refuse to wear a head scarf? If so, why?
We should always be patient with people, including C&Cers, who worry that teaching the Bible in public schools violates rights just as much as the DOJ’s weaponization of the Enron document-shredding statute. This issue won’t be resolved in a single conversation.
To secular readers, I would pose one question. If Western Civilization is in fact Biblically based, to whatever extent, what happens when you unceremoniously yank the Bible out of it? And could that yanking explain, at least partially, America’s simultaneous long, undeniable slide into social and moral confusion?
Putting the Bible back into public schools, assuming it sticks, will not create a Theocratic Dictatorship. We had no theocratic dictatorship from the founding till 1962, when Separation became fashionable. By many metrics, the Country was doing well, maybe even better than now, before the great anti-Christian crusade began in the 1960’s. Maybe we should give it a chance.
Kudos to Oklahoma’s courageous state leaders who are deliberately taking on some of the most well-funded and well-organized adversaries of all!
The left simply hates to be reminded of what morality and humanity is.
The nice thing about federalism is that if you don’t like it, and you don’t live in Oklahoma, you can go to hell and mind your own business in your own state!
The same thing holds true for the non-Californians on this site who constantly bash California.