Oklahoma leaders crow about parental empowerment, so why are they forcing the Bible on our kids?

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An old saying advises us not to talk about religion and politics in polite company.

So why are Oklahoma Republicans insisting that we teach our children to be impolite?

Yet, here we are attempting to require our children to talk about Christianity in public schools as our education officials lead a foolhardy charge to turn our public school classrooms into Sunday schools.

Last week, the State Department of Education unveiled guidelines that attempt to require schools incorporate the Bible into curriculum. 

Under the agency’s vision, teachers would assign students to write essays extolling the book’s many virtues and its impact on Western culture and society. They’ll examine biblical-inspired art and analyze the book’s literary elements.

I could envision a scenario where our children learn the parables, about Cain killing Abel or about the doom-and-gloom predictions of a pending apocalypse. Then, they come home armed with some very complex and serious questions about why siblings kill each other or if the world is coming to an end — or spouting someone else’s views on those issues.

As a Christian and the parent of two children who attend Oklahoma public schools, I don’t want their teachers deciding what they should know about religion.

That’s my job.

Many versions of Christianity exist – just like the myriad translations of the Bible. I don’t want someone else deciding the morals they’re supposed to impart from biblical stories or to which version of Christianity they should adhere. 

The evangelical Bible Project reports publishers have created about 900 different versions of the Bible since the first known English translation was published in the 1500s.

Which version of the Bible will our children be learning? And since the agency is also requiring physical copies of the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Ten Commandments in all classrooms, which translation of the Ten Commandments will be in our classrooms? (To my knowledge, there’s only one version of the Declaration of Independence, which seems to be a little out of place with holy writings from the Middle East.) 

Someone will certainly hang the irreverent “Hillbilly Ten Commandments” which take a lighthearted spin on the Old Testament’s  guide to living. Those commandments include “No tellin’ tales or gossipin’’” and “Git your hide to Sunday meetin’”.

Our leaders like to preach about parental empowerment when it comes to schools, which is commendable.

This seems to do the opposite of that.

Our state academic standards already require students to learn about religion’s impact on government and society, but local districts have the ability to set their own curriculum and determine how to teach it.

But as a growing number of districts push back against his statewide Bible inclusion guidelines that seems to usurp that local control, State Superintendent Ryan Walters said he will ensure all districts comply, and warned that he’ll “use every means to make sure of it.”

That sounds very ominous. And it sounds like we’re all going to be watching a terrible battle play out over an encroaching bid to push Christian nationalist philosophies down all our throats.

The charge also seems to ignore the fact that a Pew Research Center study at one point found that over 2 in 10 Oklahomans don’t identify as Christian. I’m sure that divide has only widened as our population continues to grow.

The State Department of Education’s edict is essentially requiring us all — Christian or not — to put blind faith in a near-stranger to teach our children about something very personal. We’re being required to trust someone who may not even believe in God or our own tenants of Christianity to weave in complex biblical lessons in an age-appropriate manner.

I don’t know about you, but I have no idea what religion my children’s educators practice, and I want to keep it that way.

Parent-teacher conferences should focus on the three “R’s,” — reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmatic. There’s a reason the slogan doesn’t include a fourth “R” for religion.

Our country wasn’t founded on Christianity. Sure, many of our founders were likely Christian, but they took a downright practical approach when drafting our founding documents.

The U.S. Constitution doesn’t endorse a specific religion, and our Declaration of Independence states our rights come from “Nature’s God,” and “their Creator.”

I’m certain our founders vividly recalled that many of our country’s earliest immigrants fled to this country to escape religious persecution back at home. They wanted a world with the freedom to worship as they saw fit. 

Our wise founders recognized that and enshrined into our founding documents the right to worship as we pleased and created a stark divide between church and state.

Some of our policymakers have tried to blur that line in recent years by erecting Ten Commandments monuments and approving publicly funding religious charter schools. But Oklahomans and our courts have pushed back. Judges have made it clear from the bench and voters both from the ballot box and in our state Constitution that religion has no place in our secular portions of government.

That’s how it should be.

Parents are the ones who should be empowered to decide what religion — if any — they want their children to learn. 

Children of differing faiths shouldn’t be forced to learn using biblical texts in schools, just as children of Christian families shouldn’t be required to use scripture from other religions. The Satanic Temple is using the fights over state-sponsored religion  to point out that Oklahoma and others are kicking open the door for other ideologies to be forced on the public, too. In Arkansas, the group unveiled a statue of Baphomet — a winged creature with the head of a goat — after the state allowed a monument of the Ten Commandments to go up in Little Rock just to prove that point.

If we open the door to requiring biblical instruction, you better believe every other recognized religion will demand our children be taught from their texts.

There’s a reason the Bible isn’t a mandated text in our schools.

And, there’s a reason nobody likes to discuss religion in polite company.