Bible Classes in Public Schools

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.  This week’s item is from World Magazine, March 24, 2001.  “Death, burial and resurrection recite 12 students in unison answering their teacher’s question about the central event of Christianity as he hands out shiny red King James Bibles.”  That may not seem controversial to most church goers but this isn’t Sunday school. It’s the new Bible studies class at DuncanvilleHigh School, a public school 20 miles south of Dallas.  In a classroom next to the school cafeteria retired Baptist missionary Wendell McCargue teaches a 90-minute Bible class three times a week.  Today’s introduction to the gospel of Matthew marks the second portion of a 16-week Bible survey.  Students who sign up for this optional course study the Bible’s historical and cultural significance, and each week memorize scriptures including the 23rd Psalm.  In Texas alone about 200 school districts offer Bible classes.  School boards in Florida, Virginia, Tennessee and Illinois have recently followed suit with their own Bible class proposals.  The nationwide spread of Bible courses taught in public schools has refueled the on going church state debate.  There’s the usual outcry from left leaning interest groups, “Bible classes in public schools are often used as a vehicle for unconstitutional religious instruction,” warned a press release from People for the American Way.  Such groups often demand that Bible courses included viewpoints from Bible skeptics and other religions.  But more surprising is the disagreement over the courses in Christian circles.  Some Christians believe state sanitized Bible classes will divorce the Bible from its theological underpinnings and ultimately undermined its message.  Others argue that the courses offer an unprecedented opportunity to foster basis Bible literacy among increasingly secularized youth.  “In reality,” says Richard Lann, President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, “the Bible’s bold face truth claims make it impossible for public school teachers to teach the book neutrally.”  How do you teach the resurrection objectively and neutrally in a way that’s not going to offend either non-believers or believers?” he said.  “People who want to have the Bible taught in public schools are going to hate the end product after the civil liberty groups and courts get through with it.”

T. A. McMahon:

Dave we have gotten some letters [from] people talking about this segment in our program.  They are saying it’s kind of starting to sound like Point/Counterpoint.  Now, if you know anything about Point/Counterpoint, it’s usually the liberal versus the conservative.  Now, we are hardly that, this is more like ultra-conservative versus screaming ultra-conservative.  I don’t know who gets which part here but this is an issue.  Let’s see if we agree about this, you go first.

Dave Hunt:

I think you have real problems bringing prayer into school unless it’s voluntary and they do it themselves in their own hearts, I mean, nothing to prevent that, that’s not against any laws.  So, they can always pray and they can study their Bible although some places they don’t even want you to carry a Bible, which is wrong.  That’s not constitutional to force someone not to carry a Bible, anything else they can bring in.  But if you start—it wasn’t clear to me entirely   from this news alert whether—it said a retired missionary was teaching the course but that—

T. A. McMahon:

There are so many courses that you don’t know who is going to teach them.

Dave Hunt:

Okay, but it talks about state sponsored.

T. A. McMahon:

Well, you have a program it’s an elective for the kids, again, this isn’t available everywhere but it’s a growing thing.  So, whoever decides they want to teach it, they could do it.  You could have somebody with a Jehovah’s Witness background.  That’s not the criterion that they set.  They just want to make sure that it is taught more with regard to the cultural value, the historical value and so on.  So many do in Israel, don’t they?  Isn’t that their history book? Well, certainly not the New Testament.

Dave Hunt:

Sure, they study their history out of the Bible.  But there is more than history to the Bible.  These things are spiritually discerned.  1 Corinthians 2, Paul says, “The natural man understands not the things of the Spirit of God.”  He can’t know them; they are foolishness to him so how can you have a natural man teaching the spiritual things through the Word of God.  Well you say we’ll just do the history.  Yeah, but the history involves miracles, for example.  The history really revolves around Jesus Christ, who He is, His claims, His teachings.  You can’t possibly teach that unless you really know Him and believe in Him.  The Bible is not just a history book, it’s not a secular book, [and] it’s not a book of some religion.  So, we have a problem now, because under the cover of what seems to be a new wonderful opening for the Bible to be taught, to be brought into the school and so forth, we have the worst thing that could happen, an undermining of the Bible, undermining of the truth by teaching it from a purely secular standpoint which then brings a perversion really of what the Bible is all about.

T. A. McMahon:

Well, let me add onto that.  Take somebody going through the first 11 chapters of Genesis.  You could go to a seminary today and you would have problems with how that’s taught because it ends up being mythology, giving the perspective of whoever is teaching it more often than not.  But on the other hand, Dave, God’s Word will not return void.  If you have kids gathering together going into it can’t God’s Word and God’s Spirit speak to hearts and that’s an opportunity?

Dave Hunt:

He certainly can, but the Bible is to be presented in the power of the Holy Spirit, it’s to be presented in its purity without skepticism.  So, if you have it being presented but from a skeptical point of view, purely historical point of view and, of course, if you are a historian you can’t believe that Jesus fed five thousand people with a few loaves and fishes.  You can’t believe He literally raised the dead and so forth.  So, even thought you would claim you were teaching it from a historical perspective your bias against miracles, for Jesus to say, “I am the way, the truth, the life,” which He says in John:14:6Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
See All..., well, how is a secular teacher going to handle that?  Well, this is just something that Jesus said but we know that He didn’t know what He was talking about.  I mean, you could come up with some pretty clear options.  Either He is a lunatic or He is a liar but He is not a good man if He makes these claims.  But that won’t be brought out, not by an unbeliever.

T. A. McMahon:

Do you think it will build a case more in the minds of the kids an anti-biblical bias rather than them saying, oh this is interesting and this is—you know, one of the reasons they are doing it is because the kids want to get into it because they’re English majors or something like that and they want to understand the allegories, the language, the historical in a very literate sense.

Dave Hunt:

I think it can only undermine the truth of scripture in the minds of the students if it is being taught from a secular viewpoint.