Bible Textbook for Public Schools Planned
Sep 22, 2005 — An interfaith group released a new textbook Thursday aimed at teaching public high school students about the Bible while avoiding legal and religious disputes.
The nonprofit Bible Literacy Project of Fairfax, Va., spent five years and $2 million developing “The Bible and Its Influence.” The textbook, introduced at a Washington news conference, won initial endorsements from experts in literature, religion and church-state law.American Jewish Congress attorney Marc Stern, an adviser on the effort, said despite concern over growing tensions among U.S. religious groups, “this book is proof that the despair is premature, that it is possible to acknowledge and respect deep religious differences and yet still find common ground.”
Another adviser, evangelical literature scholar Leland Ryken of Wheaton College, called the textbook “a triumph of scholarship and a major publishing event.”
The colorful $50 book and forthcoming teacher’s guide, covering both Old and New Testaments, are planned for semester-long or full-year courses starting next year.
The editors are Cullen Schippe, a retired vice president at textbook publisher Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, and Chuck Stetson, a venture capitalist who chairs Bible Literacy. The 41 contributors include prominent evangelical, mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish and secular experts.
Religious lobbies and federal courts have long struggled over Bible course content. To avoid problems, Bible Literacy’s editors accommodated Jewish sensitivities about the New Testament, attributed reports about miracles to the source rather than simply calling them historical facts and generally downplayed scholarly theories about authorship and dates, for example that offend conservatives.
Source: ABC.com © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures
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Filed under: Education, Bible Reading
Isn’t this really just a subversive attempt to proselytize in our public schools? Is this part of a broader curriculum that teaches all religions as an intrinsic part of human sociology, or is it just about cramming Christianity down our throats?
Isn’t this just a subversive attempt to proselytize in our public schools? Is it part of a broader curriculum that teaches all religions as an intrinsic part of human sociology, or just a means to expose one groups’s religion at the exclusion of others?
Sorry for the double post – this page is giving me a lot of errors and then it takes a while for the post to show up.