My take on Texas “teaching the Bible” in schools
I am a Texas public school teacher and a Christian. I think the new standards from the State Board of Education are well-intentioned but will ultimately fail to achieve their intended purpose and will backfire, potentially causing more harm than good.
1. What just happened in Texas?
Texas included some selected passages from the Bible in the texts that students will read in their Language Arts classes. Examples include Psalm 23, the Golden Rule, and the Road to Damascus account. The change to the standards does not actually take effect until 2030, so it will not impact students this fall.
2. Why is Texas doing this?
Texas is trying to solve a cultural problem through legislation (which is why this is doomed to backfire).
For all of Western Civilization up until about 50-ish years ago (maybe less), the majority of people in western nations had a general familiarity with the Bible. Even if your family didn’t go to church, it was pervasive enough in the culture that you really couldn’t go through life without being exposed to it in some way. Go back a little further and virtually everybody would be familiar with at least the Old Testament, and using Bible passages in school was common practice.
Because of this, much of the great literature of Western Civilization includes references to the Bible, and in many cases a reader who is entirely unfamiliar with the Bible would miss key concepts or be confused by certain phrases. Essentially, you need at least a passing familiarity to be able to fully engage with classic texts.
This wasn’t an issue until three things happened:
1. Church attendance began dropping
2. Leftists successfully propagandized people into believing “separation of church and state” was in the Constitution and that it meant you couldn’t so much as mention the Bible in public school
3. We drastically expanded our immigration policy to bring in a staggering number of people from countries that share almost nothing with us culturally.
Now in public schools a significant portion, if not the majority, of students are entirely unfamiliar with the Bible. Even those who are nominally Christian and do attend church know very little (which relates to a fourth problem with how American churches have failed, but that’s a separate post). So when schools want to teach great works of literature, students are missing the background cultural knowledge that was assumed in previous generations.
So the Texas State Board of Education decided the way to fix this would be to enforce teaching of the Bible in schools.
3. Why this will backfire
First, the texts selected are not sufficient to give students the level of familiarity with the Bible that students in previous generations had. This is a common issue with government solutions to problems. You start with a good intention, and by the time the policy or legislation makes it through committee, it no longer accomplishes the original goal. You cannot sprinkle a handful of Biblical passages into the curriculum and expect that to recreate what we had 50 years ago.
Second, students only retain what is reinforced. Putting these passages in the curriculum does not mean students will actually learn or retain anything about them. The assumption will then be that students have this knowledge when they get to more advanced classic texts in high school, and those high school teachers will find that this is not the case. Without the cultural reinforcement and support, the passages will be nothing more than something they read in class once that they will forget about in a week or two.
Third, resentment from teachers will undermine any benefits. I saw the reaction from coworkers when they put up the Ten Commandments posters in our classrooms. That legislation only required the posters to be posted. We don’t have to talk about the posters or teach anything about the Ten Commandments. When non-Christian (and in many cases anti-Christian) teachers are forced to teach Bible passages, they will likely do so with animosity and in a way that makes these kids resent the assignments and create negative associations with the Bible.
There’s no magic bullet here. Western Civilization is in rapid decline. Mass migration and intentional undermining from the leftists and globalists is hurtling us toward a point of no return, which we may already have passed.
If you are a Christian parent, it is imperative that you take significant steps to teach your child the Faith and surround them with a strong Christian community. If you have an active church community that teaches Scripture and solid theology, that’s a great first step. It cannot be the only thing you do.
Homeschooling is great, and probably the best thing you can do. A carefully vetted private Christian school is the next best thing. With private schools you cannot be complacent or “hands off”. You must be paying attention to what the school is teaching and what your child is learning. You must be involved enough to know your child’s friends and their friends’ parents, and know what influences your child is surrounded by. You also must intentionally help cultivate a Christian community around them. These things will not happen organically if you are a passive parent.
Even with all of these things, it is very likely that in the next few decades our culture will become unrecognizable and Christians will face a more significant level of persecution. We already see the beginning of it. If you hold traditional Christian values and beliefs like a six-day Creation, Biblical marriage/sexuality, and Biblical gender roles, you are already persecuted when you say those things out loud in mixed company. Many Christians have quietly compromised these things to avoid conflict, and in doing so new generations of Christians aren’t even taught these things in the first place.
Christians have endured persecution many times in many places over the last 2000 years. We will endure it again. It is time to start preparing ourselves and the next generation for that reality.
We cannot legislate ourselves out of this.
