From Oklahoma's state superintendent of schools:
The Bible, along with the Constitution and many other documents, are foundational in education. We will not allow rogue districts and administrators to indoctrinate hatred of America by refusing to teach foundational Oklahoma standards. You cannot rewrite history. The left… pic.twitter.com/OI0OJq0G9A
— Superintendent Ryan Walters (@RyanWaltersSupt) July 24, 2024
Huh. So declining to teach the Bible means you hate America. That's a fascinating point of view.
Naturally Walters says he wants the Bible taught solely for its "historical, literary and secular value." Nothing to do with proselytizing Christianity, no sirree. It's just a random historically important book.
The only surprising part of this is that Walters hasn't been sued yet, since that's obviously his intention. Maybe because the school year hasn't started yet, and no one can claim any harm until then? If so, we have three weeks to wait.
These people would hate it if these schools taught the Bible the Jesuits' way. I'll venture to speculate that they'd ban Jesuit teachers in public schools, in fact. After all, these Calvinistic folks hold a contradictory view of piety and fidelity as it applies to themselves and selectively pick which passages are literal whilst selectively misinterpreting the rest for self-serving reasons.
All day long, until the seventh day that is.
The Jesuits? Perhaps, but the Jews first.
See? SEE?!? All you HATERS just HATE Jesus and America! That's why courageous men like Ryan Walters, who STAND UP for Jesus and America, and STAND TALL against your hatred, are JUST LIKE JESUS! And why the people who support him, like me! are also just like Jesus! Oh it just makes me WEEP with happiness for all our GOODNESS!!
You can get by without an "/s" here, but post that anywhere else and Poe's Law comes into effect.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PoesLaw
When they say “The Bible” are they talking about the old or New Testament. Both?
If you teach it in a secular way isn’t that considered sacrilegious to many? Do you edit the more salacious parts? Maybe some people don’t want their kids reading about old men having sex with their daughters. Maybe some people think a person who murders their sibling out of jealousy should suffer a greater punishment than being told to move to another city. How do they expect to teach this stuff?
They will only teach Genesis, Deuteronomy, Isaiah and Kings. That New Testament stuff is way too Soshulist.
Oh no, just Revelations. The rest is a sort of an extended intro, so you can skip it with no problem.
I remember an article from a few years ago where a young married gal spent a year following the rules in Leviticus as a piece of performance art. No modern American woman is going to do that for real no matter how big a xtian they claim to be.
And here's something the god botherers never bring up: the bible does not proscribe abortion
In 1968, Christianity Today and the Christian Medical Society hosted a gathering of evangelical leaders from across the country for a symposium on birth control. The purpose was to set forth "the conservative or evangelical position within Protestantism" from scholars who "shared a common acceptance of the Bible as the final authority on moral issues." The joint statement resulting from the conference, titled "A Protestant Affirmation on the Control of Human Reproduction," included the consensus of attendees on abortion.
"Whether the performance of an induced abortion is sinful we are not agreed," it declared, "but about the necessity of it and permissibility for it under certain circumstances we are in accord." Circumstances justifying abortion included "family welfare, and social responsibility." "When principles conflict," they affirmed, "the preservation of fetal life ... may have to be abandoned to maintain full and secure family life."
In 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention agreed, in a joint resolution: "We call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother."
Dallas Theological Seminary professors also supported the cause. Bruce Wakte, writing in Christianity Today, drew on Exodus 21:22-24 to argue that "God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed." His colleague Norman Geisler concurred: "The embryo is not fully human -- it is an undeveloped person."
And Robert P. Meye, currently a professor emeritus at Fuller Theological Seminary, insisted in Christianity Today that evangelicals "must reckon with the fact that there are those within the Christian community who can see no final offense in abortion when entered into responsibly by a woman in consultation with a physician."
For those of you not familiar with the origins of the anti-choice movement among evangelicals:
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/
With added snark:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/02/18/the-biblical-view-thats-younger-than-the-happy-meal/
given our current supremes majority, i doubt anyone could have standing to sue over this.
There's good practical advice in the Bible!
Take Deuteronomy 23:13:
Should have been a commandment.
One of the Five Lost Ones.
https://youtu.be/4wunGF3oMA0?si=kwmMQ-sW1XMAYRGL
Oy!
Tell it to my dogs.
Theists always reaffirm my decision to become an athiest.
Weird how reactionary theocrats are your standard for any random theist. The most vocally reactionary and authoritarian elements of any group are likely to put you off from the entire group. Anti-theists definitely make people as exasperated as evangelicals and would likely cause their own very big problems if they had power.
Anti-theist. What an odd term. i don't know of any atheist seeking to force atheism on people. Myself included. Oklahoma is the latest example of a theist doing that. As far as reactionary theists goes, you don't think other theists share their belief that the Bible should be taught in public schools? It's especially concerning when the theist in question is in a position of power to enact laws to force their religious viewpoint onto everyone else.
ezekiel 23:18-21--
“I turned my back on her just as I had on her sister. But that didn’t slow her down. She went at her whoring harder than ever. She remembered when she was young, just starting out as a whore in Egypt. That whetted her appetite for more virile, vulgar, and violent lovers—stallions obsessive in their lust. She longed for the sexual prowess of her youth back in Egypt, where her firm young breasts were caressed and fondled."
the message
Which translation is that? - I want to read it.
Take your pick:
https://www.bible.com/bible/compare/EZK.23.18-21
(J D Vance: "I'll be on my couch.")
Maybe the kiddies can illustrate that passage.
Oh my! [in the voice of George Takei]
Do they realize in Song of Solomon what is really going on? I doubt it.
"My beloved has gone down to his garden
to the beds of spices,
to graze in the gardens
and to gather lilies.
I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine;
he grazes among the lilies."
I'm looking forward to the return of keeping the sabbath. No one should be working!
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns.
And the NFL goes out of business.
Then what would we worship on the Sabbath?
geezer butler.
A well-publicized lawsuit would be just the thing to get this guy a cabinet-level position in a new Trump administration, and I'm sure that's his angle with this initiative. He's just playing the Bible-thumpers in the GOP as his grift.
Given the way the playbook has been running, the strategy is to get a lawsuit, run it up to SCOTUS and SCOTUS rules that every state is free to have an official religion and the right to incorporate that religion at every level of government.
It's a transparent run at federal power to enforce the anti-establishment clause.
I suggest this man have a visit to a library and go to the history section where he will discover the you can, indeed, rewrite history and that it is being rewritten on a daily basis.
Usually by the victors.
As history, the Bible is terribly inaccurate, and you don’t need any more of an understanding of its contents to understand history in general than you do of any other major religious text.
As literature, the Bible is nigh unreadable.
As moral philosophy, the lessons of the Bible range from inarticulately expressed versions of what can be found in many much better children’s books, to cultish insanity, to defenses of outright moral crimes such as genocide and mass rape.
The book is so awful that it should be banned from schools.
abe lincoln would disagree with you.
Lincoln was a progressive. He would have escaped the cult long ago if still alive.
Well, it was written by multiple authors over the span of hundreds of years, all of whom claimed they were talking directly to god.
"As literature, the Bible is nigh unreadable."
* ahem *
I've read a couple of Robert Alter's books, "Genesis" and "The David Story", and I must insist that *parts* of the Bible have real value as literature. Also, a Jewish friend of mine insists that the book of Jonah was intended to be read as comedy, a view that I didn't know until recently is actually taken seriously by some Hebrew scholars.
Granted, most of the New Testament is crap, and the story of the conquest of Canaan is pro-genocidal propaganda. But there are some jewels amidst all the garbage.
I've always thought the story of Samson was a kind of sarcastic parody of Greek hero stories.
This asshole probably thinks the bible should be taught in science classes, to impart its bronze age understanding of the physical world, so they grow if to be complete morons just like him.
Math class, too! The bible (1 Kings 7:23) helpfully notes that the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference is exactly 3--such a holy and elegant number, in contrast to the godless irrational geometers who arrogantly claim that it is some neverending sequence digits greater than three.
Just add it to English class, as a part of the FICTION reading. Done.
I'd rather read a good Stephen King novel.
From the party that says childless catlady Democrats want to brainwash their kids...