Bible study in school? The Devil is in the details

As though reading, writing and arithmetic weren’t enough of a challenge, President Donald Trump is encouraging public schools to add a fourth “R.” This one is for religion. I couldn’t agree more. It’s about time Americans became Biblically literate. However, as they say ironically, the Devil is in the details.

Cynics think the President, who famously quoted what he called “Two Corinthians,” is just tossing red meat to his base in order to create a distraction from his legal problems, reminding Homer Simpson fans of when Rev. Lovejoy quoted “First Thessaleezians,” for the proposition that “blessed is a man who perseveres until his trial.”

Even if you give Mr. Trump the benefit of that doubt, it’s doubtful he thought through his proposal to its logical conclusion proposal. If he wants a legitimate Bible study, Trump’s loudest evangelical cheerleaders will become the most fervent opponents. An honest-to-God Bible study would send conservative Christians into apoplexy.

The Bible is the best selling, least read book on the planet. No other writings have so greatly influenced language, literature, science, economics, politics, and history while receiving so little scholarly attention over the centuries.  As a result, it leads and misleads while being the most quoted and misquoted tome on the shelf.

According to one poll, 93% of all Americans own a copy, but one in 10 believes Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. A majority is neither able to name even one of the Gospels nor able to identify Genesis as the first book of the Bible.

Churches have failed to teach Biblical literacy. Give the schools a chance. To use a Trumpism, “What do you have to lose?” The answer is “a lot,”  if you’re a literalist who strictly interest scripture and cherry-picks verses to win an argument.

The first problem will be to find teachers. They won’t come out of the pulpits or the pews of most churches. Most of them use the Bible to promote an agenda-oriented apologetic supporting Christian exclusivity, a violation of the First Amendment even under the sympathetic scrutiny of Trump jurists.

Public schools  have to recruit qualified teachers rather than installing ideological evangelists at the front of the classroom. Students cannot be targeted for conversion, but must be encouraged to open their minds to the possibility that what they learned in Sunday school may be different from what the Bible actually teaches. The result will produce unintended consequences to Trump’s superficial thinking about such a complex matter.

Imagine the shock of Trump-backing evangelicals when Susie come home, excitedly telling her Biblically illiterate parents that after decades of study, scholars believe the bulk of the words attributed to Jesus were not actually spoken by him, that many of Paul’s letters were not written by Paul, and that Matthew, Mark, and John were written by someone other than those three disciples.

Watch their faces when Jimmy comes through the door, sharing that the earliest manuscripts of Mark, the first of the Gospels to be written, did not include the Resurrection story, and that a couple of hundred years later it was added by church fathers as a matter of political correctness.

Many conservative Christians take offense hearing Bible stories referred to as “myth.” In Biblical literacy classes, kids will learn that many of their favorite Bible stories are indeed truth-telling myths, what C.S. Lewis called “the heart of Christianity.”

Some parents will be shocked to hear what their children conclude when they actually struggle with the words of scripture. Youngsters will learn there are two separate and conflicting creation stories and two separate and conflicting flood stories in Genesis, both are myths, neither is science, and no legitimate scholar believes they prove the earth is but 6000 years old.

So, let’s teach Biblical literacy in the public schools. To be lawful, let’s do so alongside the Quran and other holy texts, which are part of our pluralistic society. Above all, can we agree to teach it in a way that complies with the U.S Constitution?