Initiative Effort OKd to Allow Bible as a Literature Textbook

[Judi Lynn]

January 6, 2004

ORANGE COUNTY
Initiative Effort OKd to Allow Bible as a Literature Textbook

An Orange County man received the go-ahead from state officials Monday to begin gathering signatures for a ballot initiative that would authorize the use of the Bible as a textbook in literature classes.

If Matt McLaughlin can collect 598,105 valid signatures by May 24, voters would then decide whether to amend California's constitution to allow the voluntary use of the Authorized or King James Version Bibles for classes in grades 1 through 12, according to Secretary of State Kevin Shelley's office.

McLaughlin did not return calls seeking comment, but Shelley's office described the proposed study as "without devotional or denominational purpose." Under the initiative, Bibles would be distributed free to every public school student, unless parents objected.
(snip/...)

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bibles6jan06,1,1403845.story?coll=la-headlines-california

On edit: This is a -> "Free registration only" site.

[opihimoimoi]

1. Madness rules

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. I have no problem with this

as long as they also go to the great literature of the Hindus, such as the Ramayana, or the story of Lela and Majnun and the poetry of Rumi. But somehow I have a feeling that these works will be ignored....

[mouse7]

14. The Koran too

Force those Pentacostal kids to read the Koran as Literature and that shit will end real quick.

[Ernesto]

15. You forgot the scientologists!

[ElsewheresDaughter]

16. equal time...Runes taught too

[punpirate]

3. Free distribution to every public school student...

... defines it as having devotional and denominational purpose. If the import of the initiative were to allow its inclusion in courses related to comparative religion study, the Bible would require no additional legislation for its inclusion.

Further, seeking this for grades 1-12 suggests that the effort is to proselytize, not to educate. If the effort were restricted to, say, high school students who might see study of it as part of their larger curriculum, that might be reasonable.

Having the state pay for copies of the Bible for distribution to 1st graders meets none of the above tests.

[truthspeaker]

4. They need a law for that?

We read parts of the Bible in both AP English Literature and Myth & Modern Man. As long as it doesn't get special treatment there's no First Amendment issue.

[izzie]

5. Years ago this was the plan of the religious right,

Start at the school and books and start the take over. I recall reading about it and thinking that it was crazy. I recall Texas was one of the places. I hardly thought about it as it seemed so silly. I do recall why they picked Texas, as it had such a large school system once the books were changed as they liked and were printed and companies would print them for a system that big, all the South would just take the books.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

6. if "Spirit" the Mars rover shows that there was once life on the planet

opps....it will also bust the Biblical teaching of creation....and prove that that's exactly what the Bible is ...A BOOK>>>>A STORY

[Bob3]

7. Idiots

Lets just say for the sake of agrument that this goes through - are they willing people just read the damn thing as a work of literature? Do they even know what that means? I don't think so - can you imagine the howls of outrage when kids start asking qestions like - how come god creates man twice? Did God torture Job simply to win a bet?

The bible is a minefield full of things that contradict what you think you know - for every "Blessed are the poor in spirit" there is the cursing of a fig tree (a very odd incident indeed).

And will they use Thomas Paine's book the Age of Reason as a suplemental text?

[ElsewheresDaughter]

8. their goal is Christian Wahabism....Bushco dream of American Taliban

[laidbackkid]

9. Another try

This is another try to destroy a women's right to choose.

Abortion drives the religious right up the wall. They think that if they can just get people to think that babies are "a gift from God" as depicted in the Bible that women will stop having abortions.

[noonwitch]

10. To have an thorough understanding of american literature,

one should at least be familiar with the Bible. It is important to any study of Hawthorne's writing, among other writers. I wrote a paper for my AP English class in high school in which I discussed biblical imagery used in the short story "Young Goodman Brown". The first essay we read in that class was "Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God". The teacher was an agnostic, incidentally, but understood the importance of religon in american literature.


The handing out of Bibles is a different matter. They did this in 5th grade at my school-the Gideons came in and we had to bring a card home for our parents to sign, then the next day, we got little red new testaments. As it was the KJV they gave away, pretty much only the protestant kids' parents signed the form. But our school also made allowences for the local catholic church to pick up the catholic kids for two hours, twice a week, to go to "cat prison". Young Life, an evangelical group, put up posters in the halls of the high school and the counselors were allowed in at lunch time to eat with the students. They had a Sunday service for graduates a couple of days before the graduation ceremony that involved a local minister giving a sermon and prayer for the graduates.

The irony is that with all this religon going on at my school, they were rather picky about whose religon got practiced. I was in the orchestra and always had to play at the aforementioned graduation service, held on a Sunday. If I missed it, I got a B in the class instead of an A. Our church always had a picnic on that same day, and my mom decided the school was wrong and pursued the matter (I wanted nothing to do with any of it, and had no problem with playing with the orchestra). The principal first asked my mom what denomination, then told her point blank that if our church was Christian Reformed, he wouldn't let the orchestra teacher give me a lower grade for missing a scheduled performance. As we went to a UCC church, he said I would not be given this privelege.

I should point out that these events occurred in the late 70s and early 80s in a very conservative community, Grand Rapids, MI. The school district remains one of the top ranked districts in Michigan, Kentwood Public Schools. But the Christian Reformed Church (the Dutch) has a lot of power there and not many people stand up to them.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

11. holy crapola! noonwitch

[sybylla]

21. Yeah, but they don't teach "literature" until high school

This meathead wants to hand out bibles to all students K-12. Now, I studied Hawthorne and others in high school and got all I was going to get out of it as a disinterested high school student. Knowledge of the bible wouldn't have been any help.

If they can teach physics without math, they can teach Hawthorne and others without the bible. If they want to do a comparative lit using several religious texts, that would be fine with me. But what christian in their "right" mind would let their children take such a class? Probably wouldn't be enough takers to bother offering the class.

[jayfish]

36. Do You Still Live In GR?

Cause I can tell ya that Kentwood is nothing to write home about and is most definitely not controlled by any religious interest today. Heck a few years back they nearly had race riots on the high school campus. That sounds about right for the 70's & 80's though.

Jay

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

12. I remember pieces from the bible in Norton's Anthology when I was in

college, but the idea of the ENTIRE bible as a textbook????

Sorry, that doesn't float. No prob with looking at selected readings and critical interpretations of thpsalms ands such, but the idea of offering the entire book as a text smacks of pushing religion into the classroom.

[leesa]

13. Even though this is likely bad news for freedom and justice everywhere,

it will probably have the effect of people hating this book like any forced textbook. I took a literature course on the bible and it was quite enlightening. It focused mostly on the prose and poetry, but also discussed the inconsistencies born of many different authors and the fantasy tales picked up from many different previous cultures, like the creation fantasy borrowed from the Egyptians.

[bspence]

17. Put it in creative writing class

Pure fiction

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. As I recall the Supreme Court decision of 1962

students could not be required to read the Bible for devotional or evangelism purposes, but courses in comparative religion or religious literature were actually encouraged.

Since Christianity has had such a huge influence on Western history and culture, knowing the Bible helps you understand literature, music, and art, but I doubt that this is what these Orange County types have in mind.

They probably want to keep the kiddies as far away from literature, music, and art as possible.

[jpak]

19. I hope 7th graders are assigned the Song of Soloman

and have to take it home to read to mommy and daddy when they have to write an in-depth deconstruction of it.

and let's not forget all the beggetin' and begattin' and beheadin' and slave keepin' and seed spillin' and the rest of that literature stuff...

:)

[Teaser]

24. Tell the 7th graders what "navel" means in SoS...

It's the most fundamentally dishonest mistranslation in the bible.

How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.
Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies.
Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.

let's see:

going up the body we have feet, thighs, navel, then we reverse to include the belly, then we reverse again back up the body to include the breasts...

now, knowing that

1) one's navel is not generally wet with "liquor"

2) The poet is clearly describing his love from the feet up and the navel comes before the belly

3) The word for navel is better translated "hole" or "hollow"

How do you think this passage should actually have been translated, class?

[missile_bender]

20. The "Christian Right" believes that extreme leftists

are people who believe in science. It's a new Dark Age.

[bobthedrummer]

22. The University of Wisconsin system has been doing that,

discussing The Holy Bible as literature, for some time and it's no big deal-I earned several credits taking that as a summer course back in early 90's.

[Teaser]

23. The Bible is literature...

and including it in the curriculum as such opens it for study as literatures. Which means criticism of the text, examination othe motives of the authors, evaluation of the text's stylistics, evaluations of the claims made in the texts, pointing out moments of inconsistency between the various authors...

As long as the Bible is actually treated as real literature, this is a fine healthy development...

Now as to how likely it is the Bible will be treated this way, I will hazard no guess.

[On the Road]

25. High School Students Need to Know More About the Bible

but unfortunately it looks this is a stealth evangelism program. The Gideons are OK because it's voluntary on the part of the hotels. Looks like the individual schools or teachers would have no say.

It does not look like individual parents can object. But that means it's not mandatory, right? So how is it a part of the curriculum?

[gauguin57]

26. kids do need to be familiar with bible

Too much of Western literature, art, etc. alludes to the bible not to make sure kids are somewhat familiar with some of its oft-referenced stories. I grew up Catholic (and back then, we weren't encouraged to read the Bible ... the priests and catechism teachers would interpret it FOR us!). When I started studying literature, I realized I was woefully ignorant about this basic text. It depends on how the bible is taught in these schools ... teachers could point out the biblical allusions in works they study, and have them go on the internet and read those. The whole bible is on the internet ... they could save taxpayers money by not handing out the whole bible. Or the parts of the bible that could be found in a literature anthology would be appropriate.

I do think familiarity with other great religious texts would be helpful to students in this brave new world. Could be in lit class or world cultures or whatever. But they've got to include the information found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi texts ... kids have to know that the Bible was written AND EDITED over time, and within a political and social context, as well as a religious one. That scholars believe certain gospels were used, others discarded to advance the agenda of the early Church.

Put it in some contexts, and studying bible stories is a good idea -- the way studying aesop's fables or the odyssey or the inferno any other seminal text is a good idea.

[Solly Mack]

27. While I do view the bible as a textbook (more or less)

it's just one more book on a shelf with other similar books that I use for reference and nothing more...Since when has the exact same, ah, "textbook" been handed out for all 12 grades before?

This bears watching....but if handled properly, could teach and not indoctrinate....but it should not be the only religious textbook handed out...others should be used to gain the full measure of religious (textbook) literature. After all, the bible isn't the only textbook referred back to in other areas of literature...

[roguevalley]

28. Ha! Then he better be ready for serious literary criticism to take place

in the classroom, the lies, oddities and other fallabilities being
discussed and the resultant parental outrage that it is happening. they have made a big mistake here with this.

[davidinalameda]

29. Lord, protect us from your followers

every fundie church in the state is going to be pushing this petition

and you know it's going to make the damn ballot

there are times that I really hate referendums

[et]

30. Links to details

Here's a link to the actual initiative propoisal:

http://www.ag.ca.gov/initiatives/pdf/sa2003rf0054_amdt_1_ns.pdf

Here's a link to the proposers web site:


http://www.kingjamestextbook.com/pages/1/index.htm

Oy Vey!

[yellowcanine]

34. Website is a bunch of Norman Rockwell pictures

If you click on "More Information" you get a bunch of cute patriotic pictures. Somehow I don't think these folks are interested in the Bible as literature.

[0007]

31. Diet books would be more appropriate -

The bible as a text book? I've read it three times and still don't understand any of it, other than the ten commandments and not many folks pay too much attention to those, except where they should be placed to offend people.

[0rganism]

33. Which 10 commandments did you understand?

There's the Jewish 10 commandments, the Catholic 10 commandments, the continental Protestant 10 commandments...

No other book has suffered so much in translation by so many angry monks.

[yellowcanine]

32. This violates the U.S. Constitution

If the proponents merely want to authorize the use of the Bible as a literature book, no legislation is needed. The schools already have the right to do that. But - schools and teachers get to decide where and when and what translations to use. Also, to be legit, the proposed studyof the Bible as literature would have to be in historical context - for example one could use the KJV version of the Bible as an example of English literature of that period - perhaps compare it to the other writing of the same period. Any proposal to distribute a specific version to all students is clearly unconstitutional, though whether 5 of members of the SCOTUS will see it that way is not certain. Actually, I suspect that a lower Federal court will rule against this proposal and the SCOTUS will not hear the case. If the proponents want to distribute Bibles to students, they have to do it outside of school or within the context of a club that that is attended voluntarily by students during a free period or non-school hours.

[dawn]

35. I would be okay with this if they did this with other religious texts.

[daleo]

37. Had Bible as literature in Grade 11

I was assigned one of the "X1 begat X2", "X2 begat X3", and so on type sections. Lots of the Bible may be literature, but that was hardly a riveting read.

We were also handed out Gideon Bibles once at school, sometime in Junior High, I think. Several of my classmates found that they made excellent shinny pucks, although they didn't last very long. I am not particularly proud (or ashamed) of this - it just shows how pointless proselytizing can sometimes be.

[Merlin]

38. The best way for kids to learn it's NOT the word of God is to read it.

The bible is interesting reading. But it is so poorly written, so jumbled, so innocuous, that it is self-evidently not the word of an almighty, all-powerful God. To allege it is is tantamount to blasphemy. It would be like attributing Peyton Place to Shakespeare.