That dude is a complete piece of shit. I live in Oklahoma. I hate his fucking face. The Bible is not “history.” It a fictional document. Teach it as literature if you want, but they will likely be presenting the material as fact.
Don’t teach it as anything to fucking fifth graders though. That is just not appropriate at that reading level.
But apparently it is in Oklahoma now.
I would say nearing the end of high school at the earliest if you want to be able to teach the Bible as literature. It might even not be grade school appropriate at all and should just be taught on the college level.
After all, unless you’re teaching it dishonestly, you’ll want to cover translation issues, which would require a lot of reading and analysis.
Only for those children who have been Washed In The Blood™ of the Lord Jesus Christ and accepted Him as their one true savior.
Heathen children, blasphemers, and oh yes the Jews will be consigned to the pit of hellfire to anguish in torment for all eternity. As the Bible clearly teaches. Probably.
Worst, it’s revisionist pseudohistory mixed with fiction and delusion. Well there is some archaeological evidence that corroborates some of the more grounded contents, and some of it is relevant to ancient culture and genealogy, it’s all mixed up with superstitious nonsense, magic, justifications for what we would now consider crimes against humanity, hyperbole, hallucinations, and code used to bad mouth authorities without getting executed. That last part is the entirety of the Book of Revelation.
It is possible to sift some facts out of it, but it’s far easier to either take it at face value, or cherry pick the parts you like. That’s what they do with it today, and honestly I would just do anything to make the entire concept of religion just evaporate from human consciousness.
“OK kids, today we’re going to go over how the Bible was used to justify slavery in the early colonies, continuing on until the civil war. Then we’re going to cover how that was the reason why the Southern Baptist Church was founded…”
The only proper application of the bible. Is upside the head of anyone trying to push it on someone else.
Is this being challenged in court?
Religion is thriving in the USA in a way that it simply isn’t in the UK and similar countries where religious education in schools has been compulsory for centuries.
In handing Bible teaching from parents to schools, where it will be taught by poorly paid and demotivated teachers, Oklahoma will make the primary source of information about religion people who have no particular drive for the children to become “believers”.
I’m not sure what they think this will achieve, but I’m pretty sure it won’t achieve more churchgoers.
Maybe they’ve figured out how little conservatism agrees with what Jesus actually says and want to wean the country off Christianity before people figure it out. This is a strange and slow way of going about that and a very ineffective way of manufacturing more Republican voters, I think.
Then again, this is the party that gave the worst advice about covid, resulting in a much higher death rate for Republicans than Democrats, so they have form for stupidly shooting themselves in the foot.
