Help Protect the Bible and Our Public Schools
Dear friends and colleagues,
Did you know that I am an "anti-religion extremist,"
a secular humanist who is against academic freedom and
for censorship, a radical leftist who is against the
Bible?
I didn't know any of these things either, until I was informed of them
this week by various representatives of the Religious Right. Sometimes I
had the pleasure of learning them on TV.
If you want to see one exchange, go to
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,164518,00.html and play the video
segment in the box to the right. (This man's claims were mild compared to
the ones that have followed.)
Perhaps you've been fortunate enough to miss the circus, so let me explain. Or,
go to Google, hit the news link, and search for "Texas Freedom Network" to read
stories from the New York Times, Associated Press, Reuters, and elsewhere about
a troubling Bible curriculum. (If you go to the link that says "See here for
similar results" you can see various news outlets that have run this story.) The
National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools is an organization that
claims its curriculum is in use in over 1000 schools in over 300 school
districts in 37 states (including, perhaps, yours).
The organization's website is
www.bibleinschools.net.
When you go there, please turn up the volume on your
computer for full effect.
I wrote a report for the Texas Freedom Network, an ecumenical religious
liberty advocate and a watchdog group, that is available at
www.tfn.org. I
documented in
extensive detail that while parts of the curriculum are fine,
much of it reflects a strong Protestant fundamentalist slant claims that
archaeological findings have always confirmed the complete
historical accuracy of the Bible and that the biblical text has been
transmitted from antiquity without any significant change or errors.
Despite occasional efforts to be non-sectarian, on the whole it strongly
reflects a sectarian perspective. (Indeed, Roman Catholics and Jews will
find little about their Bibles in this curriculum, unless they've
switched over to the King James Version.)
I also document numerous factual errors. There were far too many to
list them all. Some are more important than others. One of the worst is
the curriculum's claim that NASA has discovered a "missing
day" in time that
corresponds to the sun standing still in Joshua 10. I called NASA. The
missing day is missing. This is an urban legend. Its development has been
well-documented. Granted, this is just one example and it takes up only a
few lines within the curriculum, but it's
indicative of the level of much of the
"scholarship." Elsewhere,
the curriculum argues that Jesus is mentioned in the
Dead Sea Scrolls. It also claims that since all Jewish genealogical
records were destroyed with the temple in 70 CE, Jesus is the only Jew in
history who can document that he's a descendent
of David to the genealogies in Matthew and Luke. (The
temple, by the way, was
destroyed by Trajan, according to the curriculum.)
If you're thinking this curriculum couldn't be worse, you're wrong.
Much of it is plagiarized off uncited web sites. I document it all.
School
districts are paying $150 for a curriculum with a lot
of material (of varying quality) that's available
online for free.
By the way, did you know that America was founded as a distinctively
Christian nation and that many historians now think that the Bible, more
so than the Constitution, should be regarded as our
founding document? That's in
there, too.
It also recommends showing Creation Science videos that claim a literal
6-day creation, a 6000-year old earth, and the simultaneous co-existence
of humans and dinosaurs. I am not making this up.
Would you want your kids taught this in school? Would you want anybody's
kids taught this in school? Would you want this taught in 1000 public
schools across the country?
At www.tfn.org, where my report
is posted, there is a petition for academics to
endorse the report and call for the removal of this particular
curriculum from public schools. Both my report and all Texas Freedom
Network materials make absolutely clear that we have no objection to
Bible classes in public schools that are academically
informed and non-sectarian in nature. But this
curriculum falls far short.
Please read the report and consider adding your name. Send e-mails to Ryan
Valentine at
ryan@tfn.org with �academic endorsement� in the subject line. We have the
facts on our side and we're winning the discussion in the media, but we still
need as much help as we can get.
If you have colleagues or friends that you think would be interested in
this issue, please forward this e-mail. Frankly, we need the help.
And I promise you, when my critics tell the media that I'm out to ban
the Bible, it's not true. If it happened, we'd all be out of jobs.
Best wishes,
Mark A. Chancey
Assistant Professor
Department of Religious Studies
Southern Methodist University
Dallas, TX 75275-0202
