The attorney for a Texas school district has called a settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) “a great victory” involving an elective Bible course curriculum.
The Ector County Independent School District in Odessa agreed to modify the curriculum in settling an ACLU lawsuit that said the course unconstitutionally promoted conservative, Protestant Christianity.
Part of the settlement between eight parents, represented by attorneys for the ACLU and People For the American Way, among others, and the school district, represented by Liberty Legal Institute in Plano, Texas, requires that a school board-appointed committee develop a new curriculum by May 1 for review by the school board, the Midland (Texas) Reporter-Telegram reported the day after the March 5 settlement.
A Texas law that took effect in September 2007 allows school districts to offer Bible courses on the Old and New Testaments if at least 15 students request such a course.
The school district said about 40 students are enrolled in the Bible course at two high schools.
In 2005, the Ector County board formed a committee to review available Bible curricula. The committee endorsed one by the Virginia-based Bible Literacy Project, but the board chose the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools material, which the lawsuit said was “improperly designed to promote religious instruction.”
Both curricula have endorsements from evangelical Christian leaders. Southern Baptist Chuck Colson, theologian and author Os Guinness and WORLD magazine columnist Gene Edward Veith have written favorably of the Bible Literacy Project’s textbook — as have mainline Protestants, some Jewish groups and First Amendment watchdogs.
Others, such as the late Presbyterian pastor D. James Kennedy and Pentecostal pastor John Hagee, have endorsed the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools curriculum.
However, Richard Land, president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, repeatedly has said Bible courses in public schools invite problems. “It is a dangerous move to place public schools in the business of teaching about religion and the Bible. 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?’ If teachers set out to teach the Bible objectively, how do they teach the resurrection? Inevitably, their methods would offend those who are devout Christians. Yet, if they taught the resurrection from a Christian perspective, it would offend those who are not." (BP)
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