Bible Course Battle Flares In Texas

The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools has been campaigning for 12 years to get school boards across the country to accept its Bible curriculum, not without success: more than 175,000 students in 312 school districts in 37 states use it. It's voluntary, and it's designed to address all separation of church and state issues.

In Odessa TX, one university prof and one organization are trying to throw a wrench into the works, in a story reported at length by the NYTimes:

In the latest salvo, the Texas Freedom Network, an advocacy group for religious freedom, has called a news conference for Monday to release a study that finds the national council's course to be "an error-riddled Bible curriculum that attempts to persuade students and teachers to adopt views that are held primarily within conservative Protestant circles."

One would think that a group for religious freedom would be all for students being able to volutarily study a religion that interests them, especially if it's presented in a "this is what they believe" instead of "this is the truth" format. But no; it's not that kind of "freedom" they're after. It's the freedom to repress any view but their own. They also oppose vouchers, school privatization and "bans on sexy cheerleaders."

With the help of these radical secularists, the NYT found egregious examples like this of religious brainwashing of volunteer students:

• In one teaching unit, students are told, "Throughout most of the last 2,000 years, the majority of men living in the Western world have accepted the statements of the Scriptures as genuine." I'd change it to "men and women," but other than that, I'd say it's historically accurate.
• The course is criticized for saying the Bible is the blueprint for the nation and the Constitution. Granted, God only appears once in the Constitution, but its framers were "endowed by their Creator" with a spirit that lead to its framing.
• It cites findings attributed to NASA to suggest that the earth stopped twice in its orbit, in support of the literal truth of the biblical text that the sun stood still in Joshua and II Kings. "When the type of urban legend that normally circulates by e-mail ends up in a textbook, that's a problem," Mr. Chancey said. The NYT does not offer refuting documentation, and if the course cites the information in the context of what fundamental Christians believe in, what's the problem?
• The curriculum presents documentation by "an internationally known creation scientist" regarding the flood. To the NYT, the words "creation scientist" are damnable on their face.

No matter how hard we try to turn back the clock to a more reasonable time, there's one guy -- in this case Prof. David Newman of Odessa College -- who selfishly wants to impose his secular views on the rest of us.