Oklahoma educators remind students that the Bible played a major role in American history
Oklahoma policy sees the Bible as a ‘valuable’ historical document: Father Stephen Hamilton
Superintendent committee member Father Stephen Hamilton unpacks controversy surrounding an Oklahoma policy to use the Bible to teach U.S. history.
Special interest groups are trying to keep a ban on books in Oklahoma, but not the ones you’re probably thinking of. These books are thousands of years old, were taught in American schools from the earliest days of our republic, helped guide our founders and greatest statesmen at critical points in our history and helped forge Western civilization. I’m referring to the books contained in the Bible.
I just announced that Oklahoma schools would incorporate the Bible into their educational curriculum for grades 5-12 in the 2024-2025 school year. The backlash has been as venomous as it has been completely predictable. Let me be clear: we will teach the Bible.
The simple fact of the matter is that the Bible is the most consequential piece of literature in the history of Western civilization. Whether or not one chooses to accept it as the inspired word of God, there is simply no way to fully understand the history of this country, the world in which it was founded, or the millennia of human events that led up to the making of America without being at least somewhat conversant in what it contains.
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While I have previously written at length about the Judeo-Christian tradition’s unquestionable importance in our founding, the Bible’s significance at the most critical moments of our history cannot be denied. Empirical analysis of the writings of our founding generation found that they referenced the Bible far more than any other philosophical work.
The Bible figures in a huge part of American history and Oklahoma has a plan to teach it. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier)
Thomas Jefferson acknowledged that our rights are endowed by our creator in the Declaration of Independence. Abraham Lincoln’s most eloquent arguments against the evil of slavery — in addition to hearkening to the Biblical truths articulated in the Declaration of Independence — were also based on scripture.
Most notable among these was his "House Divided" speech, which drew its key imagery from Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Matthew. His now-famous fragment on the Constitution and Union borrows from the Psalms in calling the Declaration the "apple of gold" in a "picture of silver" framed around it. Martin Luther King Jr. pointed to these same Biblical truths, when making the case to the American people during the civil rights movement.
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American students deserve to know the role that the Bible played in American history and its role in shaping the very American idea. We owe it to them to teach them. Furthermore, we owe it to the generations before us who founded this country and preserved this experiment in liberty in self-government for us.
We should not forget that we are inheritors and stewards of this country, and we cannot preserve something that we do not properly understand — neither can our children. It is academic malpractice not to include the Bible in our curricula and it is cultural malpractice to deny its role and importance to history and our way of life.
Yet, we have seen the Bible driven out of public discussion, out of common knowledge and out of American schools through the left’s militant anti-theistic march through our culture and our institutions. The Supreme Court has completely ignored the role of faith in our founding for the past several decades in many of its cases driving scripture and prayer from our classrooms and schools writ large.
To call this unconstitutional is simply absurd. Some will claim that this should be prevented by a so-called "separation of church and state." As I have already explained elsewhere, that canard is an anti-religious myth masquerading as legal theory.
Thomas Jefferson acknowledged that our rights are endowed by our creator in the Declaration of Independence. Abraham Lincoln’s most eloquent arguments against the evil of slavery — in addition to hearkening to the Biblical truths articulated in the Declaration of Independence — were also based on scripture.
Never mind that the Bible was an expected part of the curriculum in American schools up until about the last 60 years or so. One way to square this would be the laughable idea that our founders simply misunderstood the Constitution they wrote, which is absurd on its face.
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Some will say that a "living Constitution" now requires that we scrub religion from schools. But written constitutions are not "living," they are made of words with concrete meanings printed with ink onto pulverized, dead trees. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights mean today what they meant when they were written. Teaching the Bible is constitutional.
Put simply, the Bible was key to making America great and to making America at all, for that matter. Today, it is critical to keeping America great. We are going to teach it in Oklahoma. I welcome all challenges to this action — political and legal — and I look forward to defending this necessary, commonsense policy out in the open. Our children deserve it, and our country needs it.
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Ryan Walters serves as Oklahoma's secretary of education.
