Caucus leadership says the Bible is essential to understanding the nation's start.
Members of Oklahoma's Freedom Caucus in the state legislature support ensuring public school classrooms across the state are equipped with a physical copy of the Bible, according to a joint press release by caucus leaders published Wednesday.
Shawnee Republican Sen. Shane Jett chairs Oklahoma’s Freedom Caucus and elaborated in a phone interview on its position regarding a mandate by State Superintendent Ryan Walters ordering just that.
Jett says the Bible is meant to be a historical reference in classrooms to underscore what he calls the most influential document in the country’s founding.
“It is impossible to fully comprehend the mind of the framers of the Constitution, and consequently, the Constitutional Republic that they created without understanding what was the underlying foundational document, motivation and inspiration from which they drew,” he said.
He describes his thinking as constitutional conservatism and an essential component of the Freedom Caucus’s positioning on policy.
He says a second component is maintaining a small government. But that, he says, requires the moral self-regulation of individuals in society, which only Christianity can teach in a way the nation’s founders intended.
Rep. Jim Olsen, R-Roland, is the vice-chair of the caucus in the House. He says that while he thinks there is value in school children learning from the Bible, no one will be forced to read it.
“In this case, every child is not going to be mandated to read the Bible, but it will be available in every classroom,” Olsen said. “And parents are going to make the more exact decisions.”
That is, whether children should take it upon themselves to read the Bible at school while it’s available. But Walters’ mandate and the guidelines he’s published to help teachers implement Biblical teachings into their curriculum don’t seem to allow for as much choice as Olsen suggests.
Those guidelines direct teachers to specifically integrate the New King James Version in lessons about history, literature and art and music.
The first implementation strategy listed in Walters’ teacher guide is “Textual Analysis.” It says, “Students may be encouraged to analyze biblical texts as they would any other historical or literary document. Focus on the structure, language, and rhetorical strategies used in biblical narratives, poetry, and epistles.”
Jett said for him and other caucus members, there is no blurring of the line between teaching about the Bible and its historic significance and teaching students Christianity in the way Walters has ordered schools to act.
“The [state] statutes address that,” he said when asked about conflating religion with governance. “The purpose for the Bible, as was stipulated and articulated by the OSDE and their board and Superintendent Walters, is that this is a historical reference, that is, that is to be taught accordingly.”
On matters of “the separation of church and state,” the Freedom Caucus members dismissed the notion as a communist one stated in the Soviet Union's communist constitution of 1918 and not what the founding fathers meant when they wrote the words in the U.S. Constitution.
While Deevers didn’t respond to a phone message for this story in time for publication, he did comment in a press release. "The phrase 'separation of church and state' is not found in the U.S. Constitution," Deevers said. "Our Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion."
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