What happens when forced Bible reading backfires

Christian conservatives are cheering last week’s announcement by the Texas Board of Education mandating readings from the Bible in the state’s K-12 literature curriculum starting in 2030, but a curriculum studies scholar says they appear to be forgetting that this puts Bible myths under a microscope.

Kids will be dissecting it like a tadpole, and squaring that with the reality that snakes don’t, in fact, talk. Nor do they hand out apples.

“The decision might not be the victory they think it is,” Nicholas Mitchell tells MS NOW. “If such stories from the Bible are appropriately taught as literature, then students will be encouraged to question and challenge Christianity’s holy text, not accept it and believe it without question.”

“As a curriculum studies scholar, I can see that the education board’s decision will create a predicament for schools and teachers that they will not be able to avoid: the inevitable outrage from Christian fundamentalists when the Bible is taught as something other than truth, that is, something other than religious instruction.”

Mitchell said some parents and politicians may be cheering this mandate now and he said he’s doubtful they’ll be as “gleeful when classroom implementation begins and teachers are made to treat the Bible not as a divine text but as a book.” And teaching the Bible as literature, rather than settled fact, will open it up to being analyzed the way any other book gets analyzed — complete with hard scrutiny of its philosophy, contradictions and shortcomings.

“Consider the Texas teacher in 2030 who is teaching high school sophomores excerpts from the Book of Job,” said Mitchell. “According to that story from the Hebrew Scriptures, Satan bets God that if God lets him inflict immense suffering on an innocent man named Job, then Job will curse God. A person teaching Job as literature would prompt students to think about what accepting that wager say about God’s character and Satan’s character? How does the story attempt to make sense of human suffering? A good literature teacher would also push students to think about why this character, God, let such awful things happen to a person as good as Job and then scolded him when he complained. A teacher who does that is likely to offend some people’s religious sensibilities.”

Some fundamentalist students and parents will inevitably see critical analysis of the biblical text as “tantamount to blasphemy,” said Mitchell because such engagement would challenge their belief that the Bible is “a flawless sacred text that leads to salvation.”

“Thus, the people who seem to be clamoring the most to bring the Bible into schools may be the least pleased if it’s taught in accordance with the law,” Mitchell said.