By mandating teachers to board the Ten Commandments and incorporating Bible allusions into reading lessons, conservative lawmakers across the United States are attempting to test the separation of church and state and push for greater Christianity in public school classrooms.
The initiatives coincide with President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to support the First Amendment rights of students to pray and read the Bible in class, which are currently permitted as long as they are not supported by the government, as he gets set to enter office.
Trump can indirectly affect what is taught in public schools, and his election might give state-level campaigners more confidence, even though the federal government is expressly prohibited from telling states what to teach.
The goal of Trump and his fellow Republicans’ support for school choice is to increase the number of parents who use taxpayer-funded vouchers to send their kids to religious schools.
The vast majority of pupils, including those of other religions, attend mainstream public schools, but there is a parallel movement to increase the presence of Christianity in these institutions. Additionally, courts have started to support the idea of more religion in the public sphere, including schools, thanks to judicial appointees from Trump’s first term in office.
According to Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Christian nationalists are more confident than ever as a result of Trump even being the president-elect, let alone the president once more.
Many Americans think that the country’s founders wanted it to be a Christian nation. The U.S. has a mandate to create an overtly Christian society, according to a smaller group that supports a synthesis of American and Christian identity and is a component of a movement commonly referred to as Christian nationalism.
On the contrary, many historians contend that the United States was established by its founders as a substitute for European monarchies that persecuted religious minorities and had official state religions.
In a number of states, initiatives to increase the amount of Christianity taught in schools have gained traction.
Republicans in Louisiana enacted legislation mandating that the Ten Commandments, which start with “I am the Lord thy God,” be displayed in every public school classroom. You must not worship any other deities before me. Families have filed lawsuits.
In November, Texas officials approved a curriculum that combined Bible studies with language arts. Additionally, Oklahoma’s state superintendent of education has mandated that Bible lessons be included in grades 5 through 12, a demand that schools have refused to comply with.
Teachers might display the Ten Commandments in their classrooms because Utah state lawmakers declared them to be a historic document, on par with the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Legislation to install them in more schools has been proposed in numerous other states. Additionally, the attorneys general of 17 states with Republican-controlled legislatures recently submitted a brief endorsing Louisiana’s Ten Commandments requirement.
It is acceptable and even recommended for schools to introduce kids to religious texts and to teach about religion. However, some claim that rather than educating kids, the new policies are brainwashing them.
Proliferating lesson ideas have also drawn criticism from critics. Despite complaints that the films favorably portray the expansion of Christianity and contain Christian nationalist talking points, some states have permitted educators to use videos from Prager U, a nonprofit organization formed by a conservative talk show personality.
Trump commissioned the 1776 Project, a research that sought to advance a more patriotic interpretation of American history, during his first term in office. Historians and academics criticized it for, among other things, attributing many of the beneficial developments in American history to Christianity while ignoring the religion’s role in the continuation of slavery.
The conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan turned the experiment into a curriculum, which is currently taught in a network of the college’s supported public charter schools. It has also affected South Dakota’s state requirements.
Due to Trump’s judicial nominations, the courts have become more accommodating to religious interests, and challenges to various state laws are currently making their way through the system.
The Supreme Court decided in favor of a Washington state football coach in 2022 who was sacked after praying with players at midfield following a game, claiming that the school district had violated his right to freedom of religion. Some players felt pressured to join the coach, according to the dissenting justices. However, the top court overturned a five-decade precedent by ruling that a public school cannot impose restrictions on an employee’s religious activities just because doing so might be interpreted as endorsing religion.
According to Derek Black, a legal professor at the University of South Carolina, the decision might open the door for conservatives to spread Christianity in public institutions.
He claimed that states have been encouraged to challenge the separation of church and state by Donald Trump’s judicial appointees.
According to Joseph Davis of Becket, a public interest litigation firm that focuses on religious freedom and is defending Louisiana over its Ten Commandments mandate, courts now examine church-state separation through the perspective of history in the wake of the football coach’s case.
“If religion has played a significant role in our history, we should sort of expect that the Supreme Court has endorsed the idea that it’s okay to have religious expression in public spaces,” Davis said.
Critics claim that some attempts to increase historical allusions to Christianity in the classroom have gone too far, making unnecessary biblical allusions while ignoring the part Christianity had in defending American atrocities, such as the genocide of Native Americans.
These are some of the complaints made about Texas’s new reading curriculum. Districts are given financial incentives to accept this state-created program, but they are not obligated to use it.
Even when they are superfluous and unjustified, the authors seem to make a special effort to incorporate in-depth Bible lectures into the curriculum. David R. Brockman, a religious studies expert, reported on the information. Despite the fact that religious freedom is essential to American democracy, the curriculum downplays the significance of other fundamental liberties that Americans hold dear while misrepresenting its role in the country’s formation.
The court’s decision to allow more Christianity in schools and more government funding for religious institutions is corrective, according to a statement from Texas Values, a conservative think tank that supported the new reading curriculum.
Jonathan Saenz, president of Texas Values, stated that the football coach case had correctly restored protections for free speech and religion in public schools.
He claimed that lawmakers and voters are growing weary of the assaults on God and our legacy as One Nation Under God.
By AP Education Writer MORIAH BALINGIT
Peter Smith, Kimberlee Kruesi, and Sara Cline were writers for the Associated Press.
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