Much like the Louisiana legislature adopted a law to post the Ten Commandments in all public school classrooms, the Texas state school board has opened its public school classrooms for the Bluebonnet Learning curriculum. This program, which is widely interpreted as favoring Christianity, includes teachings by Jesus, stories such as the parable of the prodigal son, readings from the Psalms, and a unit on the Golden Rule.
Although schools are not required to adopt the curriculum, they will be incentivized by receiving $40 for each student in the program annually, as well as $20 per student for printing costs.
Texas curriculum law could become a test case on church-state separation
Like the Louisiana Ten Commandments case, the Texas program will likely in time test the degree to which the U.S. Supreme Court will adhere to earlier decisions designed to promote separation of church and state in public school classrooms and the degree to which these decisions might change in the aftermath of the court’s renunciation of the three-part Lemon Test (requiring laws to have a clear secular legislative purpose, to neither advance nor hinder religion, and to avoid excessive entanglement between church and state) in its decision in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022). Attempting to balance a teacher’s free exercise rights against the perception that the state was favoring his religion, the court in that case allowed a public school coach to offer a prayer on the 50-yard line after a game.
Even before abandoning the Lemon Test, the court had relied primarily on historical practices in decisions in which it had permitted a chaplain to open state legislative sessions with prayer (Marsh v. Chambers, 1983) or members of the clergy to open town meetings with prayer (Town of Greece v. Galloway, 2014).
Longstanding cases involving religion in public schools
If a legal challenge to the Texas curriculum law comes before the U.S. Supreme Court, it will have to take a renewed look at earlier cases dealing with prayer and Bible reading in schools.
In Engel v. Vitale (1962), the court invalidated the practice of reciting a nondenominational prayer in schools each morning. The prayer was as follows: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our Country.” Although children could be excused from the exercise, such exclusion arguably singled them out from other students.
The majority decision, authored by Justice Hugo Black, reviewed the history of church-state separation that was embodied within the First Amendment and concluded that “government in this country should stay out of the business of writing or sanctioning official prayers and leave that purely religious function to the people.”
The next year, the court extended this precedent in Abington School District v. Schempp in invalidating a daily reading without comment of verses from the Bible and the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. Justice Tom Clark authored this decision, with the caveat that the decision did not mean “that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education” would be unconstitutional. He thus sought to distinguish devotional religious exercises from more secular education about religious texts.
There have, of course, been subsequent decisions, often focused on whether religious exercises were student-initiated, whether they involved state coercion, whether they made nonreligious students feel like outsiders, and the like, but the line between devotional religious training and secular instruction about religion remains paramount.
Knowledge of religious culture is valuable
One could well argue that individuals who are unfamiliar with the Golden Rule or the story of the prodigal son have an inadequate education. Although there are still disputes about the degree to which the United States is a Christian nation, there can be little doubt that a majority of Americans throughout most of its history have identified as Christians and that some knowledge of this religion is thus important.
At a time when students and parents are particularly concerned over disruption and violence within the schools, some kind of moral instruction such as that found in the Bible certainly seems desirable.
From a historical perspective, albeit from a time when America was far less pluralistic than it is today, McGuffey Readers, which were widely used throughout the 19th century in public schools, often mixed stories from the Bible with other secular writings. Moreover, there are undoubtedly biblical stories and other writings that can take their place among the classics of world literature.
Potential pitfalls of Texas curriculum legislation
The most problematic aspects of the Texas law center on the fact that the curriculum that it is adopting appears to favor Christian teachings over those of other religions and was actually written by a state agency. One of the court’s primary concerns in the Engel case was that a state agency had written the prayer. In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943), which overturned a compulsory flag salute law, Justice Robert Jackson famously observed that “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in matters of politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word their faith therein.”
Both previous school prayer and Bible reading decisions have expressed particular concerns about the pressures that children might face to conform, and these are magnified when, as in the Texas case, the curriculum is designed for K-5 classes. Indeed, some educators have criticized the Bluebonnet curriculum as too rigorous for this age group (Muss and Sottie 2024).
Much might depend on how the law is implemented. It would be especially problematic if teachers were to blur the line between educational and devotional exercises that the court enunciated in Abington or if they were to incorporate a sectarian spin on their lessons; there might also be concern if they relied on a single translation of the Bible. Even Christian parents might be reluctant to have secular teachers (or those from another denomination) instructing their children on key biblical texts, while non-Christian parents might worry about the dangers of proselytizing.
There is also the danger that injecting religious texts into schools, and the financial incentives to adopt them, could foster divisiveness.
John R. Vile is a political science professor and dean of the Honors College at Middle Tennessee State University.