Reading the Bible in Texas

On June 26, the Texas State Board of Education adopted reading lists for public schools across the Lone Star State. Apart from the “perhaps unprecedented” (The New York Times’word) fact that it sets a standard body of knowledge for graduates of public schools in one of the largest states in the Union, the Board’s reading list did two other shocking things. First, it mandated that each book be read “in its entirety.” Second, it stipulated excerpts from the Bible at every grade level.

The usual suspects wailed. Reading from the Bible was another breach in the great wall of church-state separation. Reading the classics was subjecting a “diverse” and non-white school population to the thought of dead white European (and American) males. Like Shakespeare and Poe, Stevenson and Lincoln. And, of course, it truncated teacher “autonomy.”

Let me defend the Board’s decision on the Bible. Like it or not, American—and more broadly Western—culture is the product of a Judeo-Christian influence. That culture is incomprehensible apart from recognizing its sources in Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem. The culture we know comes from the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ—and not Confucius, Allah, and Vishnu. Like it or not, that is a historical fact. One need not be a Jew or a Christian to understand that a thorough grasp of American and Occidental culture presupposes some basic understanding of Judaism and Christianity. 

Let me compare. I have lived abroad in many countries, including China. But the culture I least understood was China’s. It wasn’t because it was ancient or because it was communist. It was because its cultural roots lay in religions and philosophies that were alien to me. While I could superficially appreciate aspects of that culture—the aesthetic (“this is pretty”)—its depths remained opaque to me because they presupposed some deeper awareness of Confucius, Lao Tzu, and Buddha that I lacked. 

Painters didn’t paint the Fall because they were working on “still life with apple and two gender binary nudes.” The “Good Samaritan” wasn’t the guy who called 911 when you got stuck on the BQE. The “Pilgrims” didn’t get called that because they booked a Massachusetts cruise. 

American geography is replete with religious allusions. “Providence” bespoke the divine care a certain Roger Williams felt. Other Puritans, like Robert Treat, decided to expand out of New England to establish a “New Ark” of the covenant in New Jersey. Towns like Zarephath in New Jersey, Ephrata in Pennsylvania, Hebron in Nebraska, and Salem in Massachusetts and Oregon come from the Old Testament. Nor should we forget the diversity of the American colonial experience, expressed in places like Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan, Los Angeles and San Francisco in California, and San Antonio and Cestohowa [sic] in Texas.

No doubt there are people who will be surprised that “For everything there is a season”—on Texas’ reading list—did not originate with the Byrds. 

We won’t get into even more complicated ideas, like the various “covenants” that marked Puritan theology and which managed to temper the social contract individualism of the early American founding. Or how a civil rights leader like Martin Luther King—a Protestant minister—often peppered his speeches with allusions his biblically literate congregation would have recognized came not from him but the Good Book.

Indeed, the very expression “the Good Book” alludes to the biblical roots of our culture. 

A young person exposed to the classics that formed American culture, identity, and thought who lacks a grounding in the Bible will not appreciate where his culture comes from. At best, he might think there are some nice similes and metaphors to be found there, but concepts like “covenant,” “responsibility,” “pilgrim’s progress,” etc. will largely remain just words to him. He will be alienated from his culture.

I had heard somewhere that students might be expected to read an excerpt from Dante. You can’t understand Dante without the Bible. You can’t understand a lot of literature without the Bible.

Let me draw another analogy. I have been recently translating works by a Polish Jewish-Christian author, Roman Brandstaetter. Brandstaetter is steeped in the Bible. For Polish readers, the allusions he makes are self-evident—Polish culture has still not been secularized in the ways Western culture has (though it’s getting there).

But I find that, in translating Brandstaetter for English-speaking audiences, I must frequently add footnotes to explain or reference allusions, especially biblical allusions, because they are unlikely to be familiar to the average reader. Could the reader plow past them? I guess—but he’d lose a lot of the richness and texture of the author’s writing by just skimming the surface.

Texas is doing its students a great favor by grounding them in the sources from which their culture and country sprang. The biblical passages are excerpts: nobody is making students read the Bible Genesis to Apocalypse. But Texas is also providing another benefit by insisting on reading other works in toto.

No, Texas is not sending kids home with 600+ pages of Melville’s Moby Dick. But it is requiring a complete reading of some of Shakespeare’s plays and Poe’s “The Raven.” It’s correcting a tendency—which even the Times previously admitted—that elementary and secondary students no longer read whole books. And, for some young people, picking up a paper book rather than a silver screen may be a whole new experience.

Kudos to Texas for its effort to promote cultural literacy.