Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com
School lunches were a minefield for a picky eater like me. Our rural school was blessed with dedicated elementary teachers who ranked proper nutrition equal to reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Thanks to those teachers, long before I negotiated wages, benefits and language for educators, I bargained literally under the table trades for peanut butter sandwiches and extra homemade cookies.
Trading food was forbidden by the lunch wardens, and a few times I was caught, tried, convicted, and forced to eat my attempted trade. One memorable time was when I was caught trying to palm-off stewed tomatoes.
Mrs. Lewis loomed over me, demanding I put food into my mouth that caused immediate gagging if I dared take even a whiff of it. Her attempt at force-feeding didn’t end well for either of us. I upchucked stewed tomatoes, turning her black flats a bright stewed tomato red.
Force-feeding ruined a pair of shoes and led to an embarrassed third grader, but force-feeding one brand of religion will have far more damaging consequences.
Recently the Texas State Board of Education approved the list of mandatory Bible reading in public K-12 schools, impacting approximately 5.46 million students. But Texas isn’t alone: there’s a national push to force-feed one brand of Christianity into public schools.
Texas is just the bellwether to see if this Supreme Court will ignore the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. While this case moves through the courts, other red states may copy and even try to one-up Texas.
As we celebrate the 250th birthday of America’s grand experiment, let’s not forget the Founders didn’t want a religion free country, but they also didn’t want one religion force-fed to everyone. They recognized diversity. They wanted Americans to have the freedom to choose a religion or no religion at all.
I am a Christian. My faith is important to me. But no one force-fed it to me. I chose it. I joke that my parents sent me to reform school after high school. That’s because I graduated from Central College in Pella, Iowa, a college affiliated with the Reform Church of America. Central professors didn’t teach us what to think. They taught us how to think. Even my New Testament professor warned students, “This isn’t Sunday school.” It wasn’t.
My question for those force-feeding Christianity to public school students is what brand of Christianity? Is it protestant or the Catholic version? Is it Presbyterian, Baptist or another denomination? Is it the Christian Nationalist brand, that appears to put Christianity into a narrow box wrapped in bigotry and hate or is it the Golden rule version of, “Treat others as you would like to be treated.”
Aside from the legal question, there are at least three other reasons this Texas move is dangerous.
First, for decades those on the right have used public schools as a political wedge issue to gain votes. They’ve claimed with little evidence teachers are liberal indoctrinators, and Marxist manipulators of children. Now, they trust those same people to be Sunday school teachers teaching the Bible in public schools. Ironic, don’t you think?
Second, many Christians don’t support this idea. For Christians, the Bible is a beautiful book, but teaching Bible stories in isolation without context could cheapen its beauty and weakens its sacred meaning.
Third, Republicans have preached parental rights for decades. What about Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and non-believing parents? Don’t they have parental rights? Those parents don’t appear to have any rights.
Following the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Elizabeth Willing Powel asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin answered, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
We’ve kept it for 250 years. Let’s not destroy the wall between church and state by force-feeding one brand of religion in public schools.
Top photo from a May 14, 2022 protest in San Francisco is by Sheila Fitzgerald, available via Shutterstock.