Textbook case: a bible curriculum for public schools

Christian Century, Feb 21, 2006 by Luke Timothy Johnson

The entire production is handsome, informative, high-minded, irenic. The focus on the Bible as literature enables the authors to bypass some thorny topics--little is said about science, nothing about evolution--and to deal delicately with others, such as the New Testament polemic against Jews.

The strengths of the book, however, also suggest its limitations. The book is perhaps too pragmatic in its goals: students are told they will understand the world around them better, be better students, be better able to participate in a society that takes religion seriously and be better able to express themselves. They are given little sense of the passions out of which this literature emerged, or the passions it can still engender. They will not get a full sense from this book of the weight of authority invested in the Bible by its passionate readers who are little interested in its literature but sure about its truth.

As with all textbooks, the effectiveness of this one will depend most on the abilities of teachers. It is good that a teaching manual and online training are in production. Whether these will equip teachers to deal with the issues that will inevitably arise in the classroom is not clear. Students will bring their own experience of the Bible into class with them, and the book's avoidance of some disputed questions almost ensures that they will emerge in the classroom--and in a far less orderly and more passionate form than they would have in the book.

The more pressing question may be the degree to which both Bible curriculum projects may be far too little far too late, not only for schools but for the culture itself. The real issue is not the threat such projects pose to the authority of the home and school, but the fact that young people come to high school so dismally uninformed religiously by home and church that responsible educators feel obliged to take up the task. As I read through this excellent textbook with appreciation for all the rich cultural connections it makes, I became increasingly uneasy because of two growing realizations. The first is that students' cultural ignorance goes far beyond the Bible. It is not enough to suggest that Milton, Dante, Shakespeare, Rubens and Caravaggio used the Bible; a far greater challenge is to make Milton and the rest seem as important to young students as many of them already consider the Bible to be.

The second realization is that so many of the cultural connections adduced by the authors came from the (often quite distant) past. The closer that writers and artists are to the present, the more difficult it is to make the case that they are in any sense shaped by the Bible. The question this fine book presses on teachers and students alike--and on the rest of us--is whether the Bible continues to influence the higher expressions of contemporary culture, granted that there are higher expressions.