Oklahoma public schools must teach the Bible with 'strict compliance'

The BBC informs that Ryan Walters, Oklahoma's top education official, has ordered that schools in the state to begin incorporating the Bible into the school curriculum with “immediate and strict compliance”.

“The Bible is an indispensable historical and cultural touchstone,” Walters said in a statement. The measure would apply to students from the ages of 5 to 12.

“Without basic knowledge of it, Oklahoma students are unable to properly contextualize the foundation of our nation which is why Oklahoma educational standards provide for its instruction”, the state top education official declared, as quoted by AP News.

Oklahoma, however, is just the latest US state to add more Christianity into their classrooms.

Back in June, Louisiana has become the first US state to require every public classroom up to university level to display the Ten Commandments, igniting the discussion over the separation of church and state.

According to The New York Times, the law was approved by Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry on Wednesday, June 19. “I can’t wait to get sued”, the Republican politician previously declared during a fundraising event in Nashville, Tennessee.

“If you want to respect the rule of law,” Landry said, as quoted by The New York Times. “You’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses.”

CNN describes the display mandated by Louisiana law as poster-sized, with large, easily readable font and be in every classroom from kindergarten to college.

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According to the BBC, the Ten Commandments will be shown along a four-paragraph “context statement”, describing how this Biblical set of rules “were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries”.

The BBC reveals that other Republican-controlled states such as Texas and Utah are looking into approving similar policies.

Unsurprisingly, the new law is expected to be challenged in court by the American Civil Rights Union and other groups, arguing that it goes against the church and state separation established in the United States Constitution.

Specifically, the Establishment Clause establishes that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.

Legal controversies in the United States regarding the Ten Commandments are hardly new. CBS News writes that a similar legislation in Kentucky was struck down as unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1980.

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However, given the current conservative markup of the US Supreme Court, this could easily translate into a victory of Biblical proportions for the Republicans.

CNN writes that the American Civil Liberties Union, among other organizations, released a statement arguing that the new Louisiana measure would result in an “unconstitutional religious coercion of students”.

“The First Amendment promises that we all get to decide for ourselves what religious beliefs, if any, to hold and practice, without pressure from the government”, different groups declared in a joint statement quoted by CNN.

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