Commentary: How we can teach the Bible in public schools without violating 1st Amendment
This op-ed by Palmetto Promise Senior Fellow Oran Smith originally appeared in the Post and Courier August 15, 2024, and a version of it appeared on the Carolinas Academic Leadership Network site in July.
Oklahoma’s state school Superintendent Scott Walters has made headlines for his new policy requiring the teaching of the Christian Bible and the Ten Commandments in the public schools. The policy will no doubt be intensely litigated and adjusted, but there are methods of teaching the Bible to public school students that are unquestionably legal.
Surprised?
The first is known as released-time instruction. Christian ministries purchase land adjacent to public school campuses, build ministry centers on it and transport kids to them for Bible lessons. Evangelization is the goal of these organizations, and their efforts are often successful: Public school children are hearing the word and converting to Christianity on the spot.
The clunky term “released time” was coined in the context of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Zorach v. Clauson that laid out how this off-campus religious teaching process works and how it can be constitutionally sound. Zorach got up to bat at the court for a test because a previous decision, McCollum v. Board of Education, held that it was unconstitutional for ministers in Illinois to come to public schools and teach religious classes during the school day.
In response to McCollum, a ministry in New York started a program where children instead went to the ministers. In released time, kids are temporarily released from the school campus during non-instructional periods and receive Bible teaching nearby, but only with express parental permission. Zorach said that was OK.
The year was 1952.
The longstanding constitutional point should not be hard to grasp. Parents give permission for their children to leave school and return. In released time, there is no McCollum going on; it is all Zorach. Nevertheless, school board meetings have come to a halt on just this point, with released-time ministries being forced for weeks on end to rehearse more than 70 years of settled law to prove what was obvious in 1952.
Released-time instruction is very popular in the South, including both North Carolina and South Carolina. A number of organizations with names such as “Christian Learning Center” and “Bible Education in School Time” operate all over. South Carolina also stands out nationally because it was the first state to pass a law awarding elective credit toward high school graduation for certain release-time instruction.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, whose territory includes South Carolina, has found released-time instruction constitutional on at least two occasions (1975; 2012) post Zorach. One national released-time group, School Ministries Inc., is headquartered in the Palmetto State. That organization has a constitutional lawyer on its board, which is probably necessary given the misunderstandings, but his services should not be required. Just Google Zorach.
Another very different type of Bible instruction is legal for public school kids as well.
I don’t know if you have seen the billboard campaign titled “Values: Pass It On.” My favorite current one features an image of William Shatner with the phrase “Boldly Go” with “exploring” as the value to be passed on. The Ben Franklin ad is another favorite: “Go fly a kite. Ingenuity. Pass It On.” The prime mover behind these ads is venture capitalist Chuck Stetson.
Stetson has another endeavor known as the Bible Literacy Project. The goal is to teach the Christian Bible strictly as history and literature. The textbook for the course, which contains no preaching or religious advocacy, is “The Bible and Its Influence.” The textbook itself is not only academically sound (more than 40 leading scholars worked to develop it over five years), but also, because of its many striking illustrations, physically beautiful.
Maybe that’s why “The Bible and Its Influence” is being taught in more than 640 public high schools in 44 states. More than 140,000 students have benefited from its instruction. Best of all, next year will mark its 20th year, and during that time it has been found to be nothing short of First Amendment safe. It is purposely respectful of all religions. Many public school leaders like programs such as this because exposure to the Bible as history and literature functions essentially like character education and there is a relationship between character education and student achievement.
Released-time instruction, the teaching of the Bible as history and literature and character education are very different concepts, but when conducted properly they do not violate the First Amendment. Some will argue that these are mere lowest common denominators of agreement in the broader debate over religion and public schools. True, but in these times, that sounds like a good place to start.
Oran Smith is a senior fellow at Palmetto Promise Institute.
