Think this question is resolved? Think again. It’s being raised right now in Texas and because it’s being raised there, it affects all of us. Why? Because the Texas Board of Education is the nation’s second largest purchaser of public school textbooks, and what they order from publishers ends up being what most Americans get, like it or not. So I ask all of us, how much theology should be taught in our nation’s public schools?
My answer is clear. None, zip, nada. And imagining it should be otherwise is as wrong-headed as banishing the story of religion’s influence over our nation’s founding and subsequent history.
But sadly, those are too often the only choices with which we are left by the zealots of both faith and secularity who make such decisions their business. In the Texas case, though, it seems that the fiercest ideologues are all on the side of turning our public schools into Christian academies.
The effort is led by advocates who not only want a greater appreciation of the role faith played in the story of our nation’s founding, and many important moments since. It seems they want nothing less than curricula which tell students who God is, which side “He” is on and how we are all doomed if we don’t subscribe to particular beliefs. Forget crossing over the line; these folks don’t even acknowledge that the line exists.
But I really don’t blame religious zealots like Rev. Peter Marshall and David Barton, both of whom sat on the state’s curriculum advisory panel. They are only doing what they think is best from the perspective of their particular theologies. They are evangelists and they are evangelizing — that’s what they do.

I blame the public officials who invited the participation of evangelists in a process which is meant to respect the ideas and needs of the larger public. These officials abandoned the public they are charged with serving to advocate for their own religious world views and that is a complete failure of leadership for which they should be held accountable.
The issue is not whether they are entitled to their views or to advocate for them. But when public officials knowingly choose polarizing pastors to participate in setting public policy, they are worse than the pastors behind whom they hide. They willfully create havoc from which little good can emerge other than the thrashing of any citizens who oppose them. And, ironically, that is precisely what they believe a previous generation of secularists did to them, and to public school curricula, so they should know better!
I also blame the general public, which too often cedes these decisions to the very extremists about whom we complain. But the only reason these people, both the politicians and their consultants, have power is because we give it to them.
Most Americans are somewhere in the middle on this issue, as we are on most of the so-called hot button issues. We know, even if we are believers, that there is a difference between teaching about the history of religion in America and preaching the Gospel to a captive audience of children in our nation’s classrooms. Most people would like to see the former and reject the latter. But they need leaders who will advocate for that sane middle ground which neither turns teachers into preachers nor ignores the role of religion in general or Christianity in particular, as crucial to our shared history.
That history should be explored in the classroom as just that, history, not theology or religious practice. Students should know that among the founding fathers there were men of deeply traditional faith and that without their faith they would have accomplished far less. There were also deists who had no use for organized religion at all. There were people who believed that God ordained the keeping of slaves and the oppression of women, and others who understood that such actions were truly sinful.
Religion has animated many causes in our nation’s history and our children are entitled to hear the entire story in all its complexity. That is what it means to study the history of religion and its influence in America, which we should do, and not teach either theology or devotional religion in our public schools — which, the last time I checked, was against the law.
How might this be accomplished? In the case of Texas at least, but often in similar conflicts elsewhere as well, the one thing which the two sides can agree upon is that crucial ideas and themes are missing from the extant curriculum. They don’t generally agree about what they are, but they agree that more is needed.
Why not invite each side to identify the areas in which they deem the curriculum deficient and share that list with those on the other side of the issue. In the case of Texas that would mean those seeking more religion would turn over their list to those seeking more information about minority experience, and vice versa.
Each group should now be charged with addressing the needs identified by the other.
This approach assures that no issues of importance to a significant portion of the community was avoided, while also assuring that those addressing the issues are not invested in manufacturing an outcome which meet only their needs. In this way, the greatest range of issues is addressed and it is done by those with the greatest sensitivity to people who are concerned about raising those very issues. That’s a good educational model for our public schools.