Will the âGod Bless the USA Bibleâ be required reading in Oklahoma schools?
In June, Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, directed the stateâs public schools to teach the Bible, which he calls an “indispensable historical and cultural touchstone.”
Walters is right about one thing. The Bible has played a significant role in American history. But Walters seems to have more in mind than merely exposing students to a major work of Western Civilization.
According to a recent document uncovered by Oklahoma Watch, Walters is in the market for 55,000 Bibles to distribute to his teachers. He will not settle for just any Bibles. He wants âKing James Version Biblesâ that include printings of the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, and Bill of Rights. The Bibles must also include âstudy guides,â a âpublisher narration,â and âadditional commentary.â And to top it all off, they must be bound in leather or âleather-likeâ material for âdurability.â
Thatâs very specific.
As several media outlets have noted, the only Bibles on the market right now that fit all these requirements are the We the People Bible and the God Bless the USA Bible. These also happen to be the only two Bibles endorsed by former president Donald Trump.
Hmmm . . .
Walters, an evangelical Christian, is a big Trump fan. In July he joined Christian nationalist âhistorianâ David Barton and Iowa Christian Right radio host Steve Deace in endorsing Trump as the only candidate who can deliver the country from âwokeness,â affirm a âcommitment to our nationâs Judeo-Christian values,â and help conservative Christians win the âthe fundamental struggle for the soul of America,â a struggle âdeeply rooted in spiritual warfare.â
Again, something tells me that there is more going on here than merely exposing kids to good literature.
The God Bless the USA Bible sells for $59.99. The âWe the People Bibleâ is even more expensive. Unless another publisher emerges, the state of Oklahoma will need to spend at least three million dollars on Bibles. Walters thinks the high price tag is worth it.
Meanwhile, kids in Oklahoma schools canât get inhalers.
For the record, there are leather-bound King James Bibles without the founding American documents on sale at Amazon.Com for less than $5. Texts of the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, and Bill of Rights are widely available online for free.
As a scholar of the Bible in America, Iâll point out three things about Waltersâs attempt to get the Bible in Oklahoma schools.
First, Walters does not just want the Bible and the founding documents to be read in public school classrooms. He wants them to be read together. There is a lot of confusion about what qualifies as Christian nationalism and what doesnât, but Waltersâs proposal is clearly Christian nationalist. In its attempt to use taxpayer money to buy Bibles for students his proposal pushes the limits of the separation of church and state, and probably violates it. And in its attempt to fuse nationalist ideas with a sacred text that Christians believe is inspired by God, Waltersâs plan is blasphemous.
Second, Waltersâs call for Bible reading in public school classrooms is part of what he describes as a âcomplete overhaulâ of Oklahomaâs social studies curriculum, and he has assembled what he calls an âA-List Executive Review Committeeâ to help him get it done.
The people Walters has appointed to this committee have little business shaping the educational future of Oklahoma. The only person in the group with a PhD in history is Kevin Roberts. He is the President of the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank behind the infamous Project 2025. Other members of the committee include Barton, Deace, and conservative pundit and YouTube educator Dennis Prager.
These people were not chosen for their historical expertise; they were picked for their right-wing bona fides. Once again, identity politics is driving the study of history. Only this time Christian nationalists are leading the charge.
Third, Waltersâ insistence on the King James Bible (KJV) reflects a view, still popular among Independent Baptist churches: that the 1611 KJV version is superior to all other translations. Jesus, of course, did not speak in King James English. But for many within the âKJV-onlyâ crowd, the very words of the translation are divinely inspired.
Walters says that he wants the KJV because this was the Bible the Founding Fathers read. Fair enough. But I am sure there are a lot of Oklahoma fundamentalists who are cheering his choice of translation.
Walters also claims that the KJV is the translation quoted in âthe vast majorityâ of American history textbooks. I am not sure what âAmerican history textbooksâ he is talking about, but most U.S. history textbooks donât extensively quote Bible passages. This leads to further questions about just what kind of textbooks the state of Oklahoma is using in their public school classrooms.
In the end, the implementation of Waltersâs Bible plan will rest with classroom teachers.
Iâve spent twenty years training social studies educators and providing professional development opportunities for veteran history teachers. From what Iâve seen, they are smart enough to know when the Bible legitimately intersects with the social studies curriculum and when a state official is using them to promote a Christian nationalist political agenda.
John Fea teaches history at Messiah University, is distinguished fellow at the Lumen Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and is executive editor of Current.
And what does it cost to make the Bible hawked by Trumpy? Less than $3. And where was it made? China. For more details, please see this report:
https://apnews.com/article/trump-god-bless-usa-bible-china-32a80611605d4052d8238064bbcace4c
And how poor was the craftsmanship of this bible?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_6TVa7scKM
Tim Wildsmith, bible reviewer, sacrificed $74.75 to get a copy. He points out very clearly what a rip-off the production is. He received a dinged up copy (they are mailed in a bubble-wrap envelope). We know he paid $59.99 for the Bible, letâs guess he paid ~ $3 in tax, so he paid ~ $11.80 for shipping it â in a cheap bubble-wrap mailer â so he was even overcharged for shipping (I am guessing it was sent USPS Bound Printed Mailer, or Media Mail).
And BTW, for $1,000, you can receive a copy autographed by Trump.
Great article, John. I agree with all your criticisms of Christian nationalism, but that issue raises the bigger issue of the alternative nationalism that has shaped public education for quite some time. Not quite sure what to call it, but “secular liberal nationalism” seems to me an apt descriptor. Christians may be misguided in fighting against this by trying to reinstate the old order, but we cannot deny that there is a new order and it is offensive to many people. Wokeness is just the latest instance of this. However much they may attack racism in American history, the Woke still believe in the “self-evident truth” that “all men are created equal.” From the perspective of history, this statement is about as empirically verifiable as “Jesus Christ is Lord.” I am sure that most high school teachers place the ideas of the Founders in their 18th century context, but expect that they also affirm that certain ideas like “equality” transcend that context and are universal truths. Isn’t this a double standard? To be fair and objective, shouldn’t we apply the same standards to politics that we apply to religion–that is, we can teach about it but we can’t preach it? Is there some official politics that all history teachers are duty bound to preach in the classroom? I understand that in political practice we have to accept laws and political structures that assume some version of 18th century ideas, but must we affirm them as transcendent truth in the classroom?
I don’t know how teachers plan to use the Bible in their classes. Might be quite a difficult issue for science teachers. But, if English and history teachers are involved They might require the use of long passages to dissect. If students have to read the KJV, they are going to be hindered by it’s archaic language and by the way it is printed (each sentence is numbered and separated from each other and it is in a two column format like a dictionary rather than the way most books look). I think most students won’t go far before they stop reading. Maybe that is the goal. Not that students might understand what the different texts in the Bible are saying, but rather to think it is a Holy Book and accept what others say about it. More specifically, what Christian nationalists say it says about America.
Chris: Hasn’t public education always been more about citizen formation than pure education? Ie, imbuing young people with the values, myths, and even prejudices that the forces that control the schools believe are needed to move the republic in the direction they want to see it go? Those forces have always been the educators on the one hand–who are elites of a sort, themselves participants in a certain culture, one not entirely congruent with that of “the people”–and the latter, the folks, on the other, the people who yell about masks at school board meetings, Moms for Liberty and similar interest groups, as well as the politicians who champion them. Can we realistically imagine a democracy such as ours functioning any other way?
As for Christian Nationalism, these Oklahoma classroom Bibles are a wonderful illustration of its deepest reality. The movement’s most hallucinating supporters and it’s most paranoid-hysteric detractors may have great hopes/fears for its consequences, but, a single Bible in a classroom? What’s going to happen? It will be as consequential as the mandatory Constitution Day festivities, the Pledge of Alegiance, or the dull bromidic pro-forma ecumenical prayers of the past, which is to say, not at all. You don’t shape a culture so easily.
Again, I agree with you completely on the Christian Nationalism nonsense, but I guess I have some hope that all this nonsense might help us consider functioning in some other way. The people vs. elites struggle has been present from the beginning of public education, but it waxes and wanes. Many initiatives from both sides have their moment but then pass away. Some endure. That school prayer remains a hot button issue for some people speaks to how even the blandest ecumenical prayers (though my Irish Catholic mom said the Protestant Our Father in her Boston public school in the 30s) did a lot to promote the idea of America as a Christian nation, or at least a religious nation. Has the Pledge of Alegiance, initially designed as a loyalty oath directed at Southerners and immigrants, shaped the culture? Well, imagine the response if the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional. Think of the outrage at NFL players taking a knee at the national anthem. Cultures are not shaped easily, but they are shaped by the repetition of institutional habits, however banal. The content of education is less important than the institutional form. I agree that the Christian Right overestimates the power of a single Bible, but so too they overestimate the influence of wokism on students who don’t pay attention to much of anything anyway. What the schools do most effectively is create age cohorts which, aided by the marketing of our consumer culture, have helped to created a constantly changing youth culture that loosens intergeneration bonds. Education did not always do that, and only started doing that quite recently. One of the many reasons I would like us to consider functioning in some other way.
Meh. I caught the tail end of those prayers, and of course my older siblings, parents, etc., were all exposed to them. No one I knew cared about them, and no one made any fuss at all when they ended. It wasn’t even a discussion in my neighborhood. No one ever spoke of the US as a “Christian nation,” ever, in my experience then, and I never even heard the term until the 1980s. Purely an astro-turfed political point to make or break.
You can just look around at the nation today and see what effect the Pledge has had. “Liberty for *all*”? Who believes that? Sure if SCOTUS banned it there would be a brouhaha, but again, just as a political football. It would be seen as another point, to make against or lose to the other side. Americans like to win.
Would the knee-takers have created such a contratemps if they were white? Was it the anthem that people were upset was being disrespected, or a racial hierarchy that prescribed certain roles? Does one single person who claimed offense actually know all the lyrics, or actually love the song?
As for “functioning in some other way,” are you a betting man? We could make this interesting if you wish.
John,
I would love to make this interesting, but I suspect the comments section is not the place to do it. I am open to suggestions.
In terms of the effect of these public rituals, it is easy to dismiss them. I tend toward the cynical myself. Sure, nobody in the 70s talked about America as a Christian nation. But they sure did in the 50s and many patriotic Americans in the 60s were deeply offended by the disrespect for the rituals of civil religion shown by WHITE people–youth, student radicals, etc. I fully understand the racial coding of Nixon’s “law and order” rhetoric, but the white hippie was as much, if not more, the target of conservative anger than the black rioter, if only because they seemed like traitors in rebelling against there parents. Anything involving professional sports (except hockey!) undoubtedly carries some kind of racial coding, but think of the furor over flag burning in the Bush I era. Pretty race neutral as far as I can remember.
Yes, few people know the lyrics of the national anthem or think deeply about the meaning or history of these public rituals. They do, however, feel deeply about them. I have a childhood friend who is very conservative. When we were kids, he was a big Nixon fan and I was the Democrat. He was raised Catholic, but as an adult is at most a Christmas and Easter Catholic. He is also a big football fan who introduced me to the NFL and is responsible for much childhood trauma as a Minnesota Vikings fan. Still, he was so offended by Kapernick that he swore off watching football for years. There is something going on there that points to the religious nature of American patriotism/nationalism. Studies show (correct me if I am wrong) that the religious element of MAGA draws less from regular church goers than from the institutionally marginal who nonetheless have some sense that some kind of religion made America great once and can’t stand liberals who insult religion. In terms of political culture, that’s enough to be meaningful. Jerry Falwell got a lot of mileage from the anger at the school prayer ruling, and the historic path to the MAGA nation goes in part through the Moral Majority. I do not agree with the Christian nationalist efforts to reintroduce the Bible into schools, but I think it is a symptom of deeper, more serious issues that we must take seriously.
Chris: I guess I wouldn’t want to have to argue civil religion never gets activated–I suspect it did quite a bit from 9/11/01 to about 2005 or so. But overall I feel we can explain most of this stuff with less conceptually sophisticated forces.
One is “mere conservatism,” if I may coin a category. Temperamentally, there’s the people who get excited about change, and those who feel threatened by change. These groupings tend to overlap with breakdowns on hierarchy and authority and all that stuff. I think a whole lot can be explained by that: a change presents itself–especially if it’s political or cultural (as opposed to technological for some reason)–and the mere conservatives are primed for action. Throw a demagogue like Falwell into the mix and you could get a kerfuffle out of it. That happens a lot. It might go part of the way (certainly not the whole) towards explaining those unchurched MAGA “evangelicals.” Plopping a (soon to be unstudied and unread) Bible into a classroom is the perfect sop to these folks: it seems 1950s-ish, it’s meaningless, it triggers libs, Trump approves, etc., etc.
(I had a similar acquaintance to your friend, huge football and Taylor Swift fan. Things got a little bonkers for the poor guy over the past 15 years. What it all meant was his already very small social circle–because, sorry, but the guy’s weird–got even smaller–no more football, no more concerts–which made him weirder and more paranoid still, and he began jettisoning FB friends just for still liking Taylor Swift. We’ll all be lucky if he just spends his remaining days like those elderly Birchers you probably had in your neighborhood, muttering bitterly in every direction at once, rather than looking for a window in a book depository some afternoon. But, honestly, I can’t imagine what would have saved this guy. He was pointed towards the deep end, I suspect, from the moment of conception.)
There is also real radicalism, meaning actual changes that have great significance–not just symbolic or ritual. I think a lot of that was occuring with the counterculture and New Left. The counterculture meant–for those who opposed it–essentially sex. Other things that seemed distinct–from rock n’ roll to blue jeans to long hair to integration to the New Cinema–also meant sex. Older Americans, fathers especially, had good reason to be worried: sex, to them, meant a potentially pregnant daughter, another mouth to feed, diminished marriageability and income-earning potential for that daughter, you name it. All that hit the father where it mattered: his wallet (also, his status). This was when we still called children born out of wedlock “bastards,” and cast a suspicious eye on any man who could raise such a daughter. As for the New Left, they were waving Viet Cong flags when we were at war, if not making literal bombs. Not much explanation needed beyond that. Nobody wanted their kid blowing himself up after moving to Greenwich Village; his growing his hair long and listening to the Beatles could easily be the gateway to that.
In sum, I don’t think this stuff actually is all that deep. Trump wants to sell Bibles because he likes money; Oklahoma politicians want to buy the Bibles because they like Trump, want to please him, and they know nothing pleases him like money; Oklahoma parents aren’t going to object to a Bible in the classroom because who would object to a Bible in a classroom, especially in the Bible Belt? That will do it.
I’ve enjoyed following this discussion. as an Oklahoma resident (and a son who teaches in Oklahoma City public schools), I suppose i should add my two-cents’-worth.
Everyone I’ve talked to (including my son) regards Ryan Walters’ MAGA-Bible purchase as little more than a political stunt (albeit an expensive one!) a and a joke.
I’ve wondered, though, if it could (unintentionally) spark a much needed debate about what civic values and virtues actually should be taught in public school classrooms. Walters’ stunt is clearly (and laughably) unconstitutional, but so is the ideological indoctrination carried out under the banner of CRT and the rainbow flag.
My vote would go to the teaching of civic virtues like “mere civility” (Teresa Bejan’s phrase) and whatever would foster the co-existence of everyone from Southern Baptists to “woke” progressives (who have significant numbers, even in the Bible Belt.