Oklahoma will require schools to teach the Bible and have a copy in every classroom, the state’s top education official announced Thursday.
Effective immediately, Oklahoma schools must include the Bible as part of the curriculum in grades five through 12, according to a memo that Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters sent to all school districts. Schools are instructed to reference the Bible and the Ten Commandments because of their “substantial influence on our nation’s founders and the fundamental principles of our Constitution.”
“Immediate and strict compliance is expected,” the memo said.
Walters said Thursday at a state board of education meeting, “We will teach from the Bible in the classroom to ensure that this historical understanding is present for every student in the state of Oklahoma.”
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a civil liberties nonprofit, said in a statement that Walters’ new Bible policy “tramples on the religious freedom of public schoolchildren and their families.”
“This is a textbook example of Christian nationalism: Walters is abusing the power of his public office to impose his religious beliefs on the children of others,” Rachel Laser, the group’s CEO, said in the statement. Her organization is “prepared to intervene,” she wrote, though she stopped short of promising legal action. The group has already filed a lawsuit to block a new Louisiana law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools.
Walters, a former high school history teacher, built a national profile in his first year and a half as a staunch supporter of incorporating Christian beliefs and teachings into state education policy.
Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, recently approved a package of rules proposed by Walters that included time for prayer in schools and expanded the state Education Department’s “fundamental values” to recognize a “Creator” and the existence of good and evil.
But Walters has also faced resistance. Stitt issued an executive order this month banning state agencies from entering into exclusive contracts with marketing and public relations firms, after Walters hired a $200-an-hour PR firm to help him get national media attention.
The state Supreme Court ruled this week that a state contract to fund a Catholic charter school violated both state and federal law and should be voided. It would have been the nation’s first religious charter school.
Walters called the ruling “sanctioned discrimination against Christians” in a statement. “This ruling cannot and must not stand,” he wrote.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond, also a conservative Republican, disagreed.
“This decision is a tremendous victory for religious freedom,” he said in a statement. “The framers of the U.S. Constitution and those who wrote the Oklahoma Constitution clearly understood how to best protect religious freedom: by prohibiting the state from sponsoring any religion.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
