But…

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Charles R. Kniker is not only a fine scholar, but a recognized authority on Bible education. He states well the case for the objective teaching of the Bible in the public schools. But that case fits the period 1960 to 1980 better than it does the current and future decades, since the United States has become less of a homogeneous Christian society.

The country is far more diverse than Kniker acknowledges. For example, there are more than five million Muslims in the U.S., a larger number than Episcopalians and Presbyterians, and a growing Asian immigration has brought us more Buddhists and other followers of Asian religions. Kniker also assumes that the lack of biblical knowledge among students is unfortunate for everyone, whereas many parents, while not consciously atheist or humanist, may have deliberately rejected biblical education in the home and church.

The problem of biblical illiteracy coupled with religious diversity is not new of course. About 30 years ago the Pennsylvania General Assembly authorized “courses in the literature of the Bible and other religious writings.” The state, with the cooperation of the University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania State University, prepared a teacher’s guide and a student manual with sections on the Hebrew Bible, Rabbinic writings, the New Testament and the Koran. That was and is a more realistic way of dealing with our religious diversity than simply a “back to the Bible” emphasis.

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The thinking behind Pennsylvania’s inclusion of Rabbinic writings was well expressed by Rabbi Arthur Gilbert in a 1967 address to the National Council of Churches:

“Very frequently a contrast is made between the Old and the New Testament, the one representative of Judaism and its spiritual insight and the second representative of Christianity and its fulfillment of the development of the Jewish ethic. This is bad scholarship. There is at least a gap of 400 to 1400 years between the ethical and spiritual insights of Old Testament literature and the insights communicated through the New Testament. A contrast of one literature with the other is unfair. What one needs to do is to contrast the New Testament material with the Jewish material contemporaneous with the New Testament, that is, the material in the Rabbinic literature. The significant point to be made is that both the New Testament and the Rabbinic literature—the Midrash and Talmud—represent the growth and development of Jewish ideals as articulated by Jews. The fact that the New Testament parallels to an astounding degree the world view that is apparent within Rabbinic literature is understandable, for Jews developing a biblical exegesis, living in the same part of the world, confronting the same issues, wrote both great pieces of religious literature. The distinctive feature of the New Testament is to be found in its witness to Jesus as the Incarnate Christ; it is not to be found in the uniqueness of its ethical teaching nor even in the language with which the spiritual and ethical insights are communicated.”¹

The Bible is a uniquely Christian book precisely because it includes Hebrew Scripture to demonstrate that Judaism is God’s intended antecedent to the New Testament and that Judaism is fulfilled in the Christian church.

Unless the Bible is dealt with as part of a study of comparative religions that recognizes the distinctive contributions of Judaic, Islamic, Buddhist, American Indian, humanist and other literatures, it necessarily denotes a preference by the state for one religion over others.

As at least one court noted, “To characterize the Bible as a work of art, of literary or historical significance, and to refuse to admit its essential character as a religious document would…be unrealistic.”²

Even before the 1963 Supreme Court decision prohibiting Bible readings in school,³ there was not one commonly accepted translation of the Bible. There was the Protestant, or King James Version, and the Catholic Bible. Today there are many translations, including one produced by scholars and copyrighted by the National Council of Churches that challenges some previously translated passages. There is also The Five Gospels (published in 1993), based on the search for the authentic words of Jesus by a group of scholars known as the Jesus Seminar.

Who is going to supply the Bibles or the sources for public school teachers? Will the new translations provided by biblical scholars be acceptable to those who claim biblical inerrancy for earlier translations? Or does “the Bible” mean the King James Version?

Another problem is even more pressing, given the “cultural war” being waged by a large number of far-right religious groups who think of themselves as the “Christian Coalition.” Their “war” is directed against 040mainstream churches and is rooted in their interpretations of biblical literature, of creation, history and the like. There are also divisions within the Catholic Church, between right-wing and Vatican II approaches.

Professor Kniker rightly indicates that teachers must be sensitive to the variety of religious differences. However, he says nothing about teacher training to understand biblical scholarship, including awareness of biblical writings in historical sequence, the context of their development (their pre-Copernican world view, for example) and the different approach to the Bible by those who reject such scholarship. All of this is background information for sensitivity to difference. Objectivity in teaching depends upon competence in these areas.

It is important not only to know the Bible for its allusions in Western literature, but to supplement it for the way it has obscured history. As Rabbi Gilbert put it, “There is a loud silence with regard to Jews and Judasim in the curricula of the public and church schools of the United States…The pages narrating the history of Jewish-Christian relations and the contributions of Jews to the making of Western civilization have been torn out of our textbooks.”⁴

In suggesting that teaching about the Bible or religion must be in the context of comparative religion, we must be wary of insisting that special classes in Bible or religion belong in the public schools. Such teaching belongs in public schools only when it is an aspect of the school’s secular responsibility. Our effort should be to integrate biblical and other religious information where applicable in literature, art, history and social studies curricula, rather than have specific courses in comparative religion or the Bible as literature.

Of course it is possible to avoid such separate courses by constructing a curriculum, as the University of Nebraska did in the 1960s for the state’s public schools, not around the Bible but around world literature that includes religious themes, such as Milton’s Paradise Lost, Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and the works of Tolstoy. The curriculum can focus on explaining religious terms, their origins and how the authors weave them into their works.

Kniker fails to note the lack of important guidelines for teachers. Thayer Warshaw indicated that, in his teaching of the Bible as literature, “at the outset we came to an understanding…we would not discuss meaning or interpretation. The pupils were made to realize that such questions as how to reconcile the two versions of the story of creation could not be brought up in class; pupils were to take such questions to religious authorities.”⁵

Another teacher asked his class to begin with a discussion of the differences between religion and science, or between faith and evidence. “There is no way to decide empirically whether there are angels [or] if God exists…These are theological questions, a matter of faith.”⁶

Teaching the Bible objectively is possible, as some have attested. But there are increasing complexities in this field. How many teachers are equipped for such teaching? Is it wise to use clergy or other faith advocates as teachers? How many do we have on the subject and how objective are they? Should such courses be elective only? Should students and parents know, before the courses begin, the guidelines the teacher will follow and her or his qualifications? Should the instructor ever teach about miracles or the Virgin Birth or the “divinity” of Jesus? These are theological questions that do not lend themselves to objective discussion, especially if the teacher believes them as a matter of faith.

There have been more than 20 years of teaching about the Bible in such states as Pennsylvania, Florida and Nebraska. It would be interesting to know if this has led to serious problems and how these problems were resolved. It would also help to know whether the Bible has lost its centrality in weekday and weekend religious schools. Is it really the proper task of secular public schools to make up for the perceived deficiencies in religious education? It is interesting to note that the demand for teaching about the Bible comes from Christian rather than secular educators and from parents who do not provide Bible education at home. It is also often a reaction to federal court decisions on the part of those Christians who want the United States to be a “Christian nation,” with Christian doctrine taught in the public schools.

Sensitivity to the religious diversity of our population should make us wary of using an essentially Christian document in public school teaching.

Charles R. Kniker is not only a fine scholar, but a recognized authority on Bible education. He states well the case for the objective teaching of the Bible in the public schools. But that case fits the period 1960 to 1980 better than it does the current and future decades, since the United States has become less of a homogeneous Christian society. The country is far more diverse than Kniker acknowledges. For example, there are more than five million Muslims in the U.S., a larger number than Episcopalians and Presbyterians, and a growing Asian immigration has brought us more […]