Religious truths

Stanley Fish has an op-ed in today's Times (now that the LA Times has turned into a Republican rag, it no longer deserves a claim to confusion when you refer to a paper as The Times. The Times is now the New York Times -- at least in the U.S.) on the merits of teaching the Bible in the classroom. It begins [behind subscription wall] as follows:

In 1992, at a conference of Republican governors, Kirk Fordice of Mississippi referred to America as a “Christian nation.” One of his colleagues rose to say that what Governor Fordice no doubt meant is that America is a Judeo-Christian nation. If I meant that, Fordice replied, I would have said it.

I thought of Fordice when I was reading Time magazine’s April 2 cover story, “The Case for Teaching the Bible,” by David Van Biema, which also rehearses the case for not teaching the Bible. The arguments are predictable.

On the one side, knowledge of the Bible “is essential to being a full-fledged, well-rounded citizen”; also, if you get into a debate with a creationist, it would be good if you knew what you’re talking about.

On the other side: bring the Bible into the schools and you are half a step away from proselytizing; and besides, courses in the Bible typically play down the book’s horrific parts (dashing children against stones and the like), and say little about the killings done in its name.

He goes on to discuss how some want to teach the Bible in a secular fashion, ignoring the religious "truths" imbedded in it and seems to conclude that if you do that, it's not worth teaching. Here are the concluding paragraphs:

Of course, the “one true God” stuff is what the secular project runs away from, or “brackets.” It counsels respect for all religions and calls upon us to celebrate their diversity. But religion’s truth claims don’t want your respect. They want your belief and, finally, your soul. They are jealous claims. Thou shalt have no other God before me.

This is what Fordice meant. He understood that if he prefaced Christian with “Judeo,” he would be blunting the force of the belief he adhered to and joining the ranks of the multiculturalist appreciators of everything. Once it’s Judeo-Christian, it will soon be Judeo-Islamic-Christian, then Judeo-Islamic-Native American-Christian and then. ... Teaching the Bible in that spirit may succeed in avoiding the dangers of proselytizing and indoctrination. But if you’re going to cut the heart out of something, why teach it at all?

Now, I'm going to dispute this position. There's much to learn from a study of the Bible, both old and new testament, that has nothing to do with the particular "religious truths" that one kind of religious fanatic or another imputes to it. I took courses in the Bible all through high school and college, and, while I temporarily adopted Christianity at that time largely because most everyone around me pretended to be Christian as well, it had nothing to do with the instruction I received in the Bible. The Bible can easily be taught as an historical document, offering a mirror into the lives and thinking of the people of that time. It can be taught, in part, as beautiful poetry (the Psalms, for instance). It can be taught in conjunction with archaeology and other historical documents to explore what the Biblican writings probably meant to contemporaries.

Indeed, one of the best courses I ever sat in on was an Old Testament course taught by a Jewish Rabbi who made the books of the Old Testament come alive without in any way indoctrinating the students in his faith.

I value that education, notwithstanding the fact that I am now somewhere between agnostic and atheistic. It gave me a basis for understanding references to Biblican events in subsequent art and literature. But, perhaps more importantly, it gave me a working understanding of the scriptural basis of at least two of the world's most important religions and to some degree a basis for a third religion (Islam).

All that said, however, I am against teaching it in public elementary and secondary schools. First, many teachers would be unable to keep their religion out of their instruction. I recall attending an elementary school function in Florida a couple of days after 9/11. The kids were still pretty shell shocked by the events of that day, but the teacher tried to sooth them by telling them that the reason this happened was because those were bad people because they didn't believe in Jesus Christ. I'm sure this would be the rule and not the exception throughout much of the South and mid-west if the Bible were taught in elementary schools.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, those who tried to look at Biblical scholarship as a fact-based enterprise and taught about the Bible in a secular manner would be roundly condemned by the various and varying religious fanatics in the community for perverting the particular understanding they put on particular favored passages that "prove" their own particular slant on truth. Think about the fights in front of Boards of Education today over these issues (evolution, for example) and think just how much worse that would be if someone taught that the miracle of the loaves and fishes might just be allegorical and not literal. That teacher would be brought up for discipline in an instant in many communities around our country.