Bible text avoids legal disputes

An interfaith group is releasing a new textbook aimed at teaching public high school students about the Bible while avoiding legal and religious disputes.

The nonprofit Bible Literacy Project of Fairfax, Va., spent five years and $2 million developing "The Bible and Its Influence." The textbook, to be introduced at a Washington news conference, won initial endorsements from experts in literature, religion and church-state law.

The textbook "shows that it can be done," said American Jewish Congress attorney Marc Stern, an adviser on the effort. "And it will short-circuit people who would take religion entirely out of the public-school curriculum."

The $50 book and forthcoming teacher's guide, covering both Old and New Testaments, are planned for semesterlong or full-year courses starting next year.

The editors are Cullen Schippe, a retired vice president at textbook publisher Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, and Chuck Stetson, a venture capitalist who chairs Bible Literacy. The 41 contributors include prominent evangelical, mainline Protestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Jewish and secular experts.

Religious lobbies and federal courts have long struggled over Bible course content. To avoid problems, Bible Literacy's editors accommodated Jewish sensitivities about the New Testament, attributed reports about miracles to the source rather than simply calling them historical facts and generally downplayed scholarly theories — about authorship and dates, for example — that offend conservatives.

Educators know biblical knowledge is valuable — 60 percent of allusions in one English Advanced Placement prep course came from the Bible — and that polls show teens don't know much about scripture. Yet few public schools offer such coursework, partly due to demands for other elective classes, partly over legal worries. The U.S. Supreme Court's 1963 decision barring schoolroom Bible recitations said that "the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities" if "presented objectively as part of a secular program of education."

The textbook follows detailed principles in a 1999 accord, "The Bible and Public Schools," brokered by Bible Literacy and the First Amendment Center, a non-partisan program of the Freedom Forum devoted to constitutional liberties. That accord is endorsed by seven major educational organizations and Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups.