That We Would Live To See Such Days

Imagine how Jewish, Muslim and other non-Christian Oklahoma students would feel about that. https://t.co/5hxWk7hdjC

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) June 27, 2024

I’m a Christian, and my daughter attended an Episcopal school through middle school. I expected some Christian teachings there. But not in the public school she attended for high school.

And I have too much respect for the Bible to put it in the hands of teachers who are not trained in exegesis, and Biblical history, or Biblical theology, or scriptural studies. The Bible was not meant to be used like a common place book, or outside a community of believers. It is not a talisman. It is a book of literature important in Western history; or it is scripture. Without training in history and literature, you can’t teach it as the former. Without the witness of a blessed community, and outside that community, you can’t understand it as the latter. Some think you harm it by regarding it as literature. I think you harm it by treating it as a source of magical thinking.

Ryan Walters is treating it like an idol. As near as I have the concepts, that is heresy and blasphemy. From a public school position, it’s a misuse of educational materials and of curriculum. You might as well command all public schools to begin teaching the Nichomachean Ethics ir Plato’s last dialogues of Socrates. Both are arguably as foundational to Western thought; but don’t you want teachers trained in those studies, and curricula written to incorporate them?

This is the judicial equivalent of clickbait, and nothing more.