Alabama Bible Course Bill's Mandated Textbook Sparks Criticism
by Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
December 12, 2005
(AgapePress) - - Several voices are raising objections to a bill in the Alabama legislature, HB 58, which would require local school districts choosing to offer a Bible literacy elective in grades 9 through 12 to use a new, untested textbook that many critics view as controversial. The bill sponsored by Alabama House Majority Leader Ken Guin and House Speaker Seth Hammett would allow schools to offer a course based on the book The Bible and Its Influence, which is published by the Virginia-based Bible Literacy Project (BLP). However, Dr. Dennis Cuddy, who has taught in public schools at the university level and served as a senior associate with the U.S. Department of Education, believes the book contains blatant errors and misleading information.
"For example," Cuddy notes, "one of the passages says most Christians and Jews do not read Genesis as a literal account of God's creation of the world. Then it goes on to ask students to look up some 'other' examples of ancient literature and mythology of the origins of the world. So a student looking at that could get the impression that Genesis is a myth."
The former Education Department official has concerns not only about the textbook, but also about the group that published it and points out that about one half of the Bible Literacy Project's advisory board subscribe to the communitarian idea of balancing individual rights against the interests of society. In fact, he notes, some BLP members have signed a communitarian platform that refers to gun rights advocates as "individual gunslingers" and calls for domestic disarmament.
"It strikes me that if you have half of your members of an advisory board as communitarians that that's really not by accident," Cuddy observes. "If you had a book of religious people and just put your finger down at random, you probably wouldn't wind up with half the people you picked as communitarians; so maybe there's some larger agenda at work here."
A Legal Perspective on the Bible Course Bill
A number of law and policy experts are also raising concerns about HB 58. Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) president Brad Dacus asserts that the Bible Literacy Project "presents questionable views and assumptions, which will likely not withstand critical academic or public scrutiny." And Steve Crampton, chief counsel for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, says the proposed legislation that seeks to mandate the use of the relatively new and untried textbook in Alabama high schools "usurps the authority of the State Board of Education, which is vested with exclusive authority to review and approve textbooks for use in the public schools" across the state.
Crampton feels the citizens of Alabama would have been better served had HB 58 simply encouraged the offering of an elective course on the Bible without trying to require the use of any specific curriculum. "This bill, if passed into law, would invite a legal challenge based on its plain violation of existing law," he contends.
The AFA Law Center spokesman has offered to assist in drafting a revised bill that would eliminate the legal defects in the current bill. "While we enthusiastically endorse the teaching of the Bible as part of a well-rounded education, this bill goes too far by attempting to force local school districts to use only one, untested textbook," he offers.
Crampton serves on the board of directors for the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS), an organization that offers an established Bible curriculum that is already being used in several Alabama schools. The NCBCPS course, which Crampton and PJI's Dacus both recommend, is called "The Bible in History and Literature." It is currently offered in 317 school districts in 37 different states across the U.S. and enjoys widespread support.
