Does the Bible have a place in public schools?

New legal mandates and the rise of two national curricula are driving a surge in the number of classes — and the debate over how they're taught.
By Seema Mehta
LA Times

It looks like a scene out of Sunday school — students in a southern Orange County classroom huddle over Bibles as teacher Ryan Cox guides them in analyzing the relationship between God and Satan.

"If God is supposedly omnipotent, if he exists and is all-powerful, why let the serpent in the Garden" of Eden? Cox asks. "Why let him hurt Job? Why let him tempt Jesus?"

But this lesson, at Aliso Niguel High School in Aliso Viejo, is one of the growing number of Bible classes being taught in public schools across the nation.

There is broad agreement across the social, political and religious spectrum, and most important the Supreme Court, that the Bible can be taught in public schools and that knowledge of the Bible is vital to students' understanding of literature and art, including "Moby-Dick," Michelangelo and "The Matrix."

But battles are raging in statehouses, schools and courtrooms over how to teach but not to preach.

As the number of these classes increases across the nation, civil libertarians, religious minorities and others fear that Bible lessons cloaked in the guise of academia may provide cover for proselytizing in public schools.

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