Bibles in Schools

Buzz about plans to begin teaching the Bible in Georgia schools (AP via ABC).

On a list of classes approved Thursday by the Georgia Board of Education are Literature and History of the Old Testament Era, and Literature and History of the New Testament Era. The classes, approved last year by the Legislature, will not be required, and the state's 180 school systems can decide for themselves whether to offer them.

Apparently the classes are explicitly structured to not stray into preaching, as "the measure calls for the courses to be taught 'in an objective and nondevotional manner with no attempt made to indoctrinate students.'"

Every story I've read so far has featured opponents to the measure worring that these classes will, in fact, lead to spreading a Christian worldview. But is this true? If the classes are really "objective and nondevotional," exactly the opposite might happen.

Modern skepticism about Christianity was born out of the whole cloth of German philology, which approached the Bible as a historical text, not a sacred one. Historicizing the Bible tends to desacralize it, except in the hands of the most devout.

A few months ago I got to attend some Bible study sessions at the American Bible Society here in New York. A theology graduate student had us reading a lot of modern seminary papers, which used interdisciplinary ideas of post-structuralism and historicism for shedding light on the Bible. To a room full of preachers and scholars, the plucky seminarian pointed out the parallels and provenance of a wide range of beloved passages to contemporary historical documents to make the point, I think, that the Bible could be read as a coded literature of oppressed peoples.

Showing that the ideas of the Bible did not emerge out of a vacuum is a big deal. For those in the room who believed in a more literalist, received Word approach, the sessions got really uncomfortable.

As I blogged the other day, I'm all with Stephen Prothero for more religious education in the schools. It remains to be seen what the effects will really be.