A disturbing trend is taking place in some of our nation's public schools. An organization linked to the Christian Right movement is creeping its way into school systems, breaking down the wall separating church from state. The group, known as the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, has been aggressively trying to instill Christian religious practices and conservative ideology in publicly funded schools.
In Odessa, Texas, members of the school board recently voted unanimously to make the biblical course part of the elective high school curriculum in 2006. In doing so, the Odessa school board joins more than 300 school districts in 37 states that use the course. Parents, teachers and other educators should be wary of the council's agenda. On its Web site, the group writes that it works in cooperation with the American Family Association and the Center for Reclaiming America.
The American Family Association, headed by Donald Wildmon, is conducting a campaign to require posters bearing the national motto "In God we trust" to be displayed in every classroom in the country. The posters would be a "reminder of the historic centrality of God in the life of our republic," according to the association's Web site. The other group working with the council to incorporate Christian teachings in public schools is the Center for Reclaiming America, a project of Coral Ridge Ministries, which does grassroots organizing of Christians throughout the country. The efforts of these groups to proselytize in our nation's public schools are misguided, and they end up often hurting the educational process.
The National Bible Curriculum Council is trying to slip creationism into schools through the back door. Creationism takes the word of the Bible for the literal truth of the beginnings of the universe. By contrast, the teachings of evolution convey scientific ideas about the origins of the universe. The National Council on Bible Curriculum claims that the Bible must be taught in public schools because it is a "foundation document of our society."
The U.S. Constitution, it says, is based on the Bible. But this assertion perpetuates the misconception that just because some of the Founding Fathers wrote about their own Christian faith, they intended for the government to promote that religion.
The fact is that the Founding Fathers did not want the government to establish any religion, and so they wrote the establishment clause into the First Amendment. The separation of church and state is one of our nation's bedrock principles. With so many faiths in this country, we must keep our schools from becoming covert conversion grounds for any religious group.
Starita Smith is an award-winning writer and editor based in Denton, Texas, where she is a doctorate student in sociology at University of North Texas. She is a former reporter and editor at the Austin American-Statesman, the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch and the Gary (Ind.) Post-Tribune. She can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.