Concerns Voiced About Text for Public School Bible Course
by Jim Brown
September 30, 2005
(AgapePress) - The head of a popular Bible curriculum program is urging caution about a new public school Bible course that uses a textbook endorsed by Jewish, Muslim, and even some Evangelical groups. Last week, the Bible Literacy Project unveiled a new textbook called The Bible and Its Influence. According to a press release, the text is the first designed to meet constitutional standards for public school use, the first to be provide comprehensive coverage of the Bible's influence on literature, art, music, and rhetoric. It also accommodates Jewish sensitivities about the New Testament and avoids referring to miracles in the Bible as historical facts.
Elizabeth Ridenour is executive director of the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, which itself has a program being implemented in more than 300 school districts. She admits she is concerned the Bible Literacy Project course does not use the Bible as its textbook.
"This is not a competition thing," she explains. "We do endorse other Bible curriculums around the country, and we're hoping that their textbook will be what it should be. But we do have these concerns of things that we've known and heard."
She also wants people to be aware of who is behind the new Bible course. One of the driving forces behind the textbook is Charles Haynes of the Freedom Forum, who she points out is on the board of directors of the Pluralism Project along with a "self-professed Wiccan high priestess."
The textbook is also endorsed by liberal activist groups, among them the American Civil Liberties Union, People for the American Way, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association. Religious organizations that have endorsed the text include the National Association of Evangelicals, the American Jewish Congress, and the Baptist Joint Committee for Legislative and Public Affairs.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
