‘Promote Christian values’: Lobbying group wants Bible read in Idaho public schools

Published at 7:36 pm, November 20, 2024

Ian Max Stevenson, Idaho Statesman

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(Idaho Statesman) — An influential Christian lobbying group in Idaho plans to bring forward a bill that would require all public schools to read the Bible.

The Idaho Family Policy Center — which has helped draft a number of controversial state laws, including ones that limit abortion and transgender rights — announced its plans for the proposal in an email Tuesday.

Idaho would join a growing number of conservative states challenging decades of legal precedent, which generally prohibit government endorsement of any religion. Galvanized by a conservative U.S. Supreme Court, members of the Christian right have targeted bans on state-funded religious teaching.

“Government should promote Christian values,” Blaine Conzatti, the group’s president, told the Idaho Statesman by phone.

“We’ve seen the societal devastation that was caused by removing God and the Bible and prayer from public schools in the early 1960s,” he added, ticking off subsequent rises in crime, increases in “unwed teen births” and single-parent households.

Conzatti said the proposal would expand an existing law and would give teachers and students with parental consent “reasonable accommodations” to opt out of the Bible ritual if they object to it. He said the bill would require the entirety of the Bible to be read in public schools over a 10-year period, which equates to roughly 20 verses per school day.

Teachers would be directed to read the verses “without instruction or comment” to avoid “getting into those denominational differences and theological distinctions that could very well run afoul of our Idaho State Constitution,” he said.

Conzatti’s group launched a petition to “bring the Bible back to school” in late August. He said it has more than 2,500 signatories so far.

“This is not about forcing anyone to affirm Christian doctrine,” he said.

It’s unclear how much support the proposal could have in the Legislature. Conzatti declined to say whether any lawmakers have promised to sponsor the bill. Most Republican elected officials did not respond to the Idaho Statesman’s requests for comment Tuesday.

“Without seeing a bill and how it addresses certain considerations, it would be difficult to comment,” a spokesperson for Superintendent Debbie Critchfield told the Statesman by email.

A spokesperson for Gov. Brad Little did not respond to a request for comment. Last year, Little signed a new law affirming that public school teachers have the right to pray with students at school.

House Majority Caucus Chair Dustin Manwaring, R-Pocatello, said Wednesday that he could not speak for the caucus but had reservations about the idea.

“I am a Christian and strong advocate for religious liberty,” he said by text. “However, I will be very cautious to interfere with the First Amendment separation of church and state and the free exercise of religion. We would be wise to prioritize our foundational system that protects both the public and theological freedoms we enjoy.”

Conservatives challenge Supreme Court precedents

The Idaho Family Policy Center’s push to institute Christianity in taxpayer-funded schools follows similar efforts nationwide by conservatives to push policies that would increase the reach and authority of Christian doctrine. Sometimes called “Christian nationalism,” the efforts aim for government policy to incorporate or endorse tenets of the Christian faith. (Conzatti said he doesn’t like the term because “no one agrees” on what it means.)

In June, Oklahoma’s school superintendent ordered public schools to teach the Bible, and the state is working to purchase tens of thousands of them. In Louisiana, a new state law requires the Ten Commandments be displayed in all public school classrooms — a requirement that a federal judge in a preliminary ruling concluded is unconstitutional. And in Texas, education officials plan to vote this week on whether to adopt Christian curricula for the state’s public schools.

The efforts challenge years of Supreme Court precedents, many of which were established in the mid-20th century.

In 1963, the Supreme Court outlawed school-sponsored prayer and Bible reading in public schools and ruled that the First Amendment forbids the government from advancing religion. Teaching the Bible violates the First Amendment’s command that the government “maintain strict neutrality, neither aiding nor opposing religion,” the court’s 8-1 majority ruled.

The following year, federal judges in Idaho implemented the U.S. justices’ decision by quashing the state law that dated back to 1925 and required Bible readings in schools. It remains on the books.

The balance of power on the court has shifted in the decades since, leading to decisions in recent years by a majority on the court — appointed by Republican presidents — that has moved to overturn or limit some of those rulings on religious neutrality from years ago. Various decisions have provided religious belief exemptions for corporations, required school voucher eligibility for religious schools, and allowed for Christian symbols on public property if they have historical significance.

In 2022, the Supreme Court found that a public school football coach had a constitutional right to pray on the field with his players, overturning a 1971 ruling that laws related to religion must have a secular purpose.

Conzatti in an interview referenced 19th century practices that allowed for more religion in public life and pointed to Idaho “Founding Fathers” who supported the practice. He said public schools should “acknowledge God in ways consistent with the history and tradition of both our state and our nation” and characterized the U.S. as having been founded as a Christian nation — which many historians have disputed.

Eric Foner, a prominent historian at Columbia University whose textbooks on American history are widely read in college courses, wrote that James Madison, one of the founders, believed religion was a matter of “personal opinion, not public policy,” and “insisted the state must not sponsor or encourage any particular form of worship or religious expression.”

Conzatti said he felt the Idaho Family Policy Center’s proposal would be supported by the Supreme Court’s new “history and tradition test,” referring to the 2022 ruling. In that decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority that the justification should instead be replaced with an examination of “historical practices and understandings.”

Conzatti also referenced another Founding Father, Samuel Adams.

“We agree with Samuel Adams that the two foremost purposes of education are to teach the rising generation to be good citizens and to be good Christians,” he said. “We would love to see Christian values further permeate our public education system.”

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