I once attended a writers workshop with Madelyne L'Engle and when asked how one best prepared for writing, her response was "Read the King James version of the Bible and read Shakespeare". So, that might be a reason also for teaching the Bible in Literature classes.

Susan Johnson, ObJN

In a multifaith country, the Bible has lost its relevance. Culture, like language, changes. If the Bible is that irrelevant to people's lives that it must be rescued by public school teachers, then nothing can bring it back. It has already given up the ghost.

I would rather they stress Greek tragedy, which is much more in keeping with the Age of Doubt. Plato is older than Christianity and in many ways is the water in which Chrstian thought swims. Hamlet is also very rich and much more undecidable and troubling than traditional religious texts.

I like the idea of the Bible as literature but it also sends a mixed message. This is no fun but it is good for you. The Bible is like cod liver oil.

I agree with Freddy Nietzsche's ironic observation that outlawing something is a better way to promote something. Culture and the arts will not win people over if scholars pretend they are good for people. Better to be honest and say they are an addiction, someothing one would not do without, but which cannot be justified. Presidents of France read poetry and take culture seriously, whereas American Presidents pretend to be ordinary mortals who would rather do ordinary things than waste time on poetry and the arts. The message would have to be sent from the top that culture does matter.

In any case, I don't think Texas et al. are serious about educating students. It seems more a way to smuggle religion into the public schools.

I doubt the polticians mentioned in the article want culture taught in the classroom. They would annihilate real culture if it appeared to them, just like how the Athenians wiped out Socrates.

Granted Socrates was very graceful about his having to drink poison.

Gary Paul Gilbert

From Cynthia Gilliatt: I have a mixed response.

Response One: As someone who taught English literature at the college level from 1971 - 2008, oh how I wish my students would not have to have every single biblical allusion explained! They usually got Adam and Eve and the snake, and a reference to the cross, but that's about it - execept for the fundamentalists who can challenge me by saying 'But that contradicts Second Corinthians 2:12!' which leaves me baffled, since I don't readily remember numbers.

Response Two: As someone who knows what the local climate is here in the center of the Shenandoah Valley, I think it would be extremely dangerous to teach the Bible in these public schools. The fundagelicals would resist textual scholarship, and would be loudly reistant, say, to having the Servant passages in Isaiah be anything other than direct pporphesies about Jesus. Others would, wisely, be concerned about the teacher imposing her/his beliefs in explaining the Bible.

Response Three: As someone who for the last 20 years taught at my moderate sized public university a course called The Bible as Literature, I know how very hard it is to avoid theological stuff. I always came out to my students as an Episcopal priest [did not wear dog collar to teach] and emphasized that I was, and am, a firm believer in the wall of separation. None the less, it is very difficult to separate out, because, for one thing, the students themselves, at least at the beginning, don't make a clear distinction between literary and other concerns.

So - one the whole - no. If it is difficult for me to separate theology from literary studies, and hard for junior and seniour college students to do so, I don't see how this could be done in the public schools.

I would also add that very few teacher certification programs include 'how to teach the Bible.'

So - my a bit more then two cents.

Cynthia A. Gilliatt

Susan Johnson's quote from Madeleine L'Engle is exactly right. How does anyone read English or American literature from the past without being familiar with the Bible and Shakespeare? For the literatures of other languages of the the West, I'd say the same for the Bible.

On the other hand, the attempt to teach the Bible in public schools today is surely to venture into dangerous waters, more's the pity. It should be done, but how to navigate the dangerous waters is a whole other question, and I don't know the answer.

June Butler