Bible Literacy Project News

Book review from On Board Magazine
Bible textbook breaks new ground for schools
New York State School Boards Association

By Eric D. Randall
Editor-in-Chief
July 31, 2006

Study the Bible in public schools? High schools will be able to offer an elective on the Bible this fall with a remarkable textbook called The Bible and Its Influence.

Understanding the Bible as literature

Scholars have long recognized that many narratives reenact common patterns. More recently, it has become clear that all literature is made up of repeated images and motifs known as archetypes. An archetype is a symbol, character type or plot pattern that occurs throughout literature. An example of an archetypal symbol is the season of spring to suggest rebirth. An archetypal character is the hero or heroine. One archetypal plot pattern is the chase and rescue. Some of the most important archetypal plot motifs appear in the Bible in Chapters 3 and 4 of Genesis: 1. Sibling rivalry. 2. Crime and punishment. 3. Murder. 4. Detective story. 5. The rejected one. 6. The guilty child. 7. Innocent victim(s). 8. Expulsion. 9. The wanderer. In each plot there is human choice, a call to moral responsibility, sin, consequences, divine patience and judgment and protection of rights afterward. These plot archetypes are repeated in various ways throughout the Bible. – An excerpt from The Bible and Its Influence

The book was released last year by a religiously unaffiliated group called the Bible Literacy Project. It was vetted by 41 reviewers including scholars from Catholic, mainline Protestant, Evangelical, Eastern Orthodox and Jewish traditions, as well as educators at the high school and university level.

The book was designed to help public students study the Bible academically – not devotionally – in elective courses in history or literature. The idea is that the Bible is part of our culture, and every educated person should have a basic familiarity with it.

If students in English classes are asked to read Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! or Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon, it would be helpful if they are able to recognize the biblical references in the titles. And when history students listen to recordings of Martin Luther King Jr. saying, “I have been to the mountaintop ... and I’ve seen the Promised Land,” they ought to know that King is comparing himself to Moses.

The problem is that plenty of high school students don’t even know who Moses was. In a 2005 Gallup poll, 22 percent of 1,002 teens thought Moses was either one of Jesus’ 12 apostles, Egypt’s pharaoh or an angel.

Teaching about the Bible or religion in public schools does not violate the First Amendment when the information is “presented objectively as part of a secular program of education,” according to a 1963 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Abington v. Schemp. (The same decision said devotional Bible instruction in public schools is unconstitutional.)

NSBA endorsed concept

I requested a review copy of The Bible and Its Influence because I had been hearing about the effort behind this textbook for years. The National School Boards Association was among the groups that endorsed a 1999 position paper that posited that schools can offer instruction about the Bible without promoting or denigrating belief. Called The Bible and Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide, it’s online at www.firstamendmentcenter.org.

One of the first things that caught my eye as I thumbed through the book was a sidebar entitled, “Biblical Allusions in the English AP Exam.” Among 66 terms listed are Jacob’s ladder, Lot’s wife, Philistines and Tower of Babel. It turns out that 60 percent of literary allusions commonly found on the Advanced Placement literature and composition exam are biblical.

The Bible and Its Influence provides plenty of examples of how the Bible has influenced great works of literature as well as art, music, culture and political discourse. For instance, the speeches of Abraham Lincoln include many biblical references.

The best thing about the book is that, through the lens of the Bible, it acquaints students with a wide variety of historically and culturally significant people, ideas and events. In this book, students encounter not only Moses and Solomon, but also Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Kierkegaard, Noah Webster, Frederick Douglass, Andrew Carnegie and Harriett Beecher Stowe. Almost every page is visually stunning thanks to images of religiously inspired paintings by artists ranging from Rembrandt to Norman Rockwell.

Assignments are suggested at the end of every chapter. One of the more intriguing assignments asks students to find a children’s book that retells a Bible story and compare it to the original. Other suggested assignments seem overly ambitious. One asks students to find, summarize and critique a 10-part New York Times series on the impact of the Ten Commandments on contemporary American life.

A slow start in New York State

The book’s 40 chapters are a tour through the Old and New Testaments, with a few thematic chapters such as “Songs and Poetry.” Every couple of chapters there is a heady, two-page “unit feature” such as “The Legacy of the Reformation,” which discusses Martin Luther, John Calvin, the Church of England and the Puritans.

I contacted the publisher to find out how many schools in New York State had ordered The Bible and Its Influence. It turns out the answer is none. “We’ve only been out (on the market) for seven or eight months, so many places simply haven’t heard about us,” spokeswoman Sheila Weber told me in an e-mail. The group expects to be in 300 to 400 schools nationwide by fall.

A teacher's guide called The Bible in History and Literature is used in 358 school districts in 29 states. It is produced by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, which critics say promotes a conservative Protestant viewpoint.

School boards in New York State are responsible for approving textbooks, and The Bible and Its Influence merits serious examination. Board members should be prepared that some constituents may consider it a disservice to offer an elective on the Bible without treating it as most people do – as a guide for spiritual enlightenment.

Your school attorney can help address such concerns, if they arise, by noting the limits placed on schools in Abington v. Schemp. And your teaching faculty can make the case for becoming familiar with the Bible as an avenue to cultural literacy.

Because of the unique nature of the subject matter, school boards considering an elective on the Bible may wish to involve representatives of the community in decisions involving course materials. School officials can inquire about obtaining review copies of The Bible and Its Influence at a discount by calling toll free (866) 805-6574 or writing to sales@bibleliteracy.org.

New York State School Boards Association • www.nyssba.org

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