BIBLE: TAUGHT OR MISTAUGHT IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS?
J. Grant Swank, Jr.
Current teens don’t know much about the Bible as literature in America.
In previous generations, there was a Judeo-Christian culture in the United States that had the broad sweep of biblical take. No more. A Gallup study was made of present-tense teens, only to discover that they do not know hardly anything about the Bible as history, literature or anything for that matter.
There is a concerted effort to get the Bible into schools — public and private — as literature and history. The Bible Literacy Project in particular is focusing on this endeavor.
According to Amy Doolittle of The Washington Times, in the Bible Literacy Project study of schools “researchers spoke with 41 teachers in 10 states, from both religious and nonreligious backgrounds, who are regarded as outstanding by colleagues. Teachers at four private schools and 30 public schools were part of the study.
“Nine out of 10 teachers who participated argued that knowledge of the Bible is crucial for a good education; 40 of the 41 teachers said Bible literacy is an educational advantage.
“The study by the Bible Literacy Project, backed by Wall Street financier John Templeton, was conducted in tandem with a poll by the Gallup Organization that quizzed 1,002 teenagers on their knowledge of the Bible.
“The Gallup poll found that fewer than half of the teens surveyed knew that the Bible says Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding. Nearly two-thirds couldn't identify a quote from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, or the relation of the road to Damascus to the Apostle Paul's conversion.”
I basically am in favor of the project, with some reasonable qualifications. I think the Bible as history and literature should be taught in schools — perhaps. There is no constitutional conflict with that. However, what does frighten me is that when the Bible is so taught, it can be presented in a theologically liberal context by which to wipe out the Bible’s true history and message.
I was a student at Harvard DIVINITY School, preparing for the Christian ministry. There I was taught Bible by world-known professors, some of them having their faces regularly on TIME magazine. The context for those lectures was theologically liberal. Therefore, a student could very well leave that most prestigious seminary holding basically to nothing traditionally Christian, that is, by Christian doctrine.
I was taught to be suspicious of everything in the Bible. Demythologizing the Bible was the methodology. That meant slicing out miracles for they were legends of the time. That meant discounting the virgin birth of Jesus. That meant questioning quite seriously the literal resurrection of Jesus. That meant usually discounting the divinity of Jesus. That meant posing the first five books of the Bible as fundamentally bogus history. That meant regarding the Bible as man-manufactured. That meant concluding basically that one was left to create his own deity in his own image.
When I asked Dean Samuel Miller what I was to believe at the close of studies at Harvard Divinity School, he replied, “Well, you’ve got to plunk yourself down somewhere.” That “somewhere” then could be Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, animism, agnosticism or even atheism. Any conclusion to graduate was fair game as long as I made top grades at the world’s theologically liberal top seminary.
Therefore, when the Bible is put on a school curriculum agenda as taught in either private or public venue, it is not necessarily a good thing. If the instructor is totally skeptical of the Bible, that book could be torn to shreds in front of teen students — for a semester. It could be presented in such a way that young minds could consider the Bible to be the laughing literacy of all times.
Even preparing a teacher’s text for instructing on the Bible does not insure that the teacher will follow that manual. If the teacher is intent on following through with the Bible class, only to subvert it into an opportunity to wipe out Christian faith, then teaching the Bible as literature and history will have been a dangerous excursion,
that is, as far as genuine Christians are concerned.
Current teens don’t know much about the Bible as literature in America.
In previous generations, there was a Judeo-Christian culture in the United States that had the broad sweep of biblical take. No more. A Gallup study was made of present-tense teens, only to discover that they do not know hardly anything about the Bible as history, literature or anything for that matter.
There is a concerted effort to get the Bible into schools — public and private — as literature and history. The Bible Literacy Project in particular is focusing on this endeavor.
According to Amy Doolittle of The Washington Times, in the Bible Literacy Project study of schools “researchers spoke with 41 teachers in 10 states, from both religious and nonreligious backgrounds, who are regarded as outstanding by colleagues. Teachers at four private schools and 30 public schools were part of the study.
“Nine out of 10 teachers who participated argued that knowledge of the Bible is crucial for a good education; 40 of the 41 teachers said Bible literacy is an educational advantage.
“The study by the Bible Literacy Project, backed by Wall Street financier John Templeton, was conducted in tandem with a poll by the Gallup Organization that quizzed 1,002 teenagers on their knowledge of the Bible.
“The Gallup poll found that fewer than half of the teens surveyed knew that the Bible says Jesus turned water into wine at a wedding. Nearly two-thirds couldn't identify a quote from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, or the relation of the road to Damascus to the Apostle Paul's conversion.”
I basically am in favor of the project, with some reasonable qualifications. I think the Bible as history and literature should be taught in schools — perhaps. There is no constitutional conflict with that. However, what does frighten me is that when the Bible is so taught, it can be presented in a theologically liberal context by which to wipe out the Bible’s true history and message.
I was a student at Harvard DIVINITY School, preparing for the Christian ministry. There I was taught Bible by world-known professors, some of them having their faces regularly on TIME magazine. The context for those lectures was theologically liberal. Therefore, a student could very well leave that most prestigious seminary holding basically to nothing traditionally Christian, that is, by Christian doctrine.
I was taught to be suspicious of everything in the Bible. Demythologizing the Bible was the methodology. That meant slicing out miracles for they were legends of the time. That meant discounting the virgin birth of Jesus. That meant questioning quite seriously the literal resurrection of Jesus. That meant usually discounting the divinity of Jesus. That meant posing the first five books of the Bible as fundamentally bogus history. That meant regarding the Bible as man-manufactured. That meant concluding basically that one was left to create his own deity in his own image.
When I asked Dean Samuel Miller what I was to believe at the close of studies at Harvard Divinity School, he replied, “Well, you’ve got to plunk yourself down somewhere.” That “somewhere” then could be Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, animism, agnosticism or even atheism. Any conclusion to graduate was fair game as long as I made top grades at the world’s theologically liberal top seminary.
Therefore, when the Bible is put on a school curriculum agenda as taught in either private or public venue, it is not necessarily a good thing. If the instructor is totally skeptical of the Bible, that book could be torn to shreds in front of teen students — for a semester. It could be presented in such a way that young minds could consider the Bible to be the laughing literacy of all times.
Even preparing a teacher’s text for instructing on the Bible does not insure that the teacher will follow that manual. If the teacher is intent on following through with the Bible class, only to subvert it into an opportunity to wipe out Christian faith, then teaching the Bible as literature and history will have been a dangerous excursion,
that is, as far as genuine Christians are concerned.
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