The Case Against The Bible In Public Schools

[ When the April 2, 2007 edition of Time Magazine came out last month, I wrote a number of essays ( 1, 2, 3 ) criticizing Time's cover story, a piece of advocacy journalism entitled The Case For Teaching The Bible that offered a qualified endorsement of Bible classes in public schools. Subsequently, I came across the following analysis, by Tim Mitchell, that I thought was quite remarkable for it's thoroughness and sensitivity to issues of cultural, religious, and philosophical diversity and which made many arguments, against Time's case, that I hadn't thought of. Tim told me that, in fact, the series I'd written was what had inspired him to write his own take in the first place, and I'm grateful he did because I think his treatment, below, adds tremendously to what really needs to be a national conversation about the controversy over Bible classes in American public schools - Bruce Wilson ]

Examining Bible Classes in Public Schools and Religious Literacy

by Tim Mitchell

A few weeks ago, Time magazine ran a cover story entitled The Case for Teaching The Bible, which was written by Time's senior religion writer David Van Biema. Van Biema's basic argument is that the Christian Bible should be taught as a class in public schools, but with careful precautions taken to ensure that the class remains secular and constitutional.