Alabama House Rejects Bible Literacy Bill, Generating Mixed Reactions
by Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
February 9, 2006
(AgapePress) - - The Alabama House has rejected a bill that would have required public high schools offering a Bible elective course to use a controversial textbook published by the Virginia-based Bible Literacy Project (BLP).The bill, sponsored by Democratic House Majority Leader Ken Guin, would have required public schools offering a Bible course to use the textbook The Bible and Its Influence. However, the measure was voted down 49-42 on Tuesday, with Republicans claiming the bill ignored textbook selection procedures set forth by the Alabama School Board.
Some of the lawmakers, legal analysts, and Christian activists that argued against the Alabama Bible literacy bill asserted the inappropriateness of state lawmakers mandating use of a particular text in the schools.
Meanwhile, according to one Education Week article, supporters of the legislation have argued that the legislature should approve a curriculum as a way of assuring that the program complies with laws regarding religious instruction in state schools. Attorney Steve Crampton, a constitutional law specialist with the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, feels Guin's bill may have been legally questionable.
Crampton says state lawmakers wanting to encourage Bible literacy would be well advised to limit themselves to passing a resolution that encourages schools to provide Bible literacy education electives "without trying to dictate to [education officials] what curriculum or text they ought to use and how they should use it." Enacting legislation that so dictates these matters, the AFA Law Center spokesman warns, would be "bad policy."
The sponsoring Alabama lawmaker apparently disagrees. According to a report in The Birmingham News, Representative Guin said he believes The Bible and Its Influence could be used effectively to educate students about the influence of the Bible on literature, art, civil rights, and other areas of U.S. culture, and he also believes the bill could survive any legal challenges brought against it.
Pro and Con Responses
Guin was quoted as saying the vote that defeated the measure was "clearly a partisan vote" and that the Republican opponents of the bill "were looking to nit-pick everything they could without seeing the big picture." However, House conservatives attributed equally political motivations to the Democratic supporters of the measure.
Alabama physician Randy Brinson, a supporter of the legislation and founder of the Redeem the Vote! voter registration effort, feels curricula like the one using The Bible and Its Influence are needed to help tie scripture together with important cultural events and historical figures without forcing or endorsing a particular ideology. The curriculum in question "doesn't come down and say: 'You should believe this or believe that,'" he told Education Week.
However, Alabama Senator Hank Erwin says he is delighted the bill is now "history," because he feels the textbook favored by the legislation included a leftist theological view of the Bible. With satisfaction he notes, "Our State House of Representatives stepped up to the plate, went to the podium, fought that bill and defeated it in the House."
Erwin and his colleagues were ready for the legislation "if it came up to the Senate," he says, "but our House members took to the floor and just talked it out to the point where everybody understood that this is not a good bill, not a good idea."
The Bible, the conservative senator contends, "unlike Shakespeare and Harry Potter," is regarded as sacred by Alabamians. He and other critics of The Bible and Its Influence favor courses that use the Bible itself as their primary text.
"The best thing when you're teaching a course on the Bible as an elective," Erwin asserts, is to "let the Bible speak for itself. Let the kids see the Bible, let them interact with the actual book, and let them come to their own conclusions. But I don't think that we need to have any textbook to replace the actual Bible itself to teach the scriptures."
The Alabama legislator adds that he hopes his state will serve as a model for others when it comes to teaching Bible literacy in public schools. Recently Erwin and his Senate colleagues unanimously passed a resolution encouraging Alabama public schools to teach students about the Bible in a manner in accordance with constitutional and state school board guidelines.
Alabama schools already feature an approved elective called "The Bible as Literature." A spokesperson for the Alabama Association of School Boards says the state's school boards receive updates and training on religion issues in schools in order to keep current on the law.
