Baptists in Georgia are divided over proposed legislation to allow Bible elective classes in the state’s public school system. The legislation comes after the Georgia State Board of Education rejected a proposal to fund the Bible classes.
Rep. Tommy Smith, a Baptist legislator from south Georgia, introduced legislation that would provide for teaching the history of the Old Testament and New Testament as electives in the state’s high schools using only the Kings James Version of the Bibles. The courses would be financed through state funding. House Bill 1200 would not require students to attend Bible classes, but would offer the constitutional right to students to enroll in a Bible course taught as history literature.
More than 400 people attended the Feb. 1 news conference and rally sponsored by Georgians for Bible Literacy, including State School Superintendent Linda Schrenko.
Charles Stanley, pastor of First Baptist Church, Atlanta, and James Merritt, pastor of First Baptist Church, Snellville, both have expressed support for the Smith bill.
However, some Southern Baptists have expressed reservations, including Richard land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) Ethics & Religious liberty Commission (ERLC), and Gerald Harris, immediate past president of the Georgia Baptist Convention.
Stanley’s involvement in the issue began last year when the Georgia Board of Education originally considered funding of the Bible course.
“I want to express my wholehearted support of allowing our high school students the opportunity to study the invaluable information of the Bible,” Stanley wrote in a letter to the Board of Education. “Not only will they acquire a greater understanding of history and culture of the nations and peoples contained therein, but they will be able to consider for themselves the principles which contributed to the success and happiness of biblical characters.”
Merritt, a former chairman of the SBC’s Executive Committee, said he is hard-pressed to find a problem with the bill. “The Bible is a book that we believe is divinely inspired,” Merritt said. “It is the greatest-selling book in the world. If any other book was like that, it would be required reading.
“Beyond our belief that it was divinely inspired, the Bible is loaded with historical information and some of the most beautiful writing penned by man,” Merritt said.
While the proposal has the backing of some religious leaders, the ERLC’s Richard Land is opposed in general to teaching the Bible in pubic schools.
“It is a dangerous move to place public schools in the business of teaching about religion and the Bible,” Land wrote in the winter 2000 issues of the ethics agency’s Light magazine. “We need to ask ourselves, ‘Do we really want the state to teach our children the Bible? Do we want the Bible marginalized as simply a fine history and literature text?’
“It is virtually impossible to teach a course about the Bible in a public school context — particularly when the students are minors — and be ‘objective, nonjudgmental, academic, neutral, balanced and fair,” Land wrote.
“Public school administrators would be far wiser to affirm students’ rights to express their religion in the schoolhouse and to guarantee that any student who desired to do so had the opportunity to share his or her faith perspective without fear of retribution or penalty,” Land said.
Harris said he also had some misgivings about the issue. “I have a lot of questions that haven’t been answered,” he said. “First, I don’t know who would be teaching the courses, and I really don’t believe you can separate the supernatural and the miracles from the Bible.
“I would support voluntary prayer and Bible clubs and even free expression of religion, but I don’t know about this one [Bible electives]. It wouldn’t be too long before someone wanted to teach the Koran or the Book of Mormon,” Harris said. Stanley’s letter expressed concern over the moral condition of high school students as a reason for his support for Bible electives. “Our nation grieves over the consequences we are experiencing because of moral, mental and emotional corruption,” he said.
“Our young people need to be aware that there are solid, trustworthy principles that have worked in the lives of individuals… .” (BP)
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