Read: Trump’s Bible fail

Debates over whether religion has a place in public schools are as old as public education itself. Some of America’s earliest grade schools were private and church-run, and they almost always included religious education. In colonial New England, which had early public schools, religious texts, including the Bible, were generally assigned a central role. In the 19th century, however, as a greater array of local governments started public schools to provide nonsectarian education for all children regardless of religion or social status, that began to change.

As the historian Steven K. Green writes in The Bible, the School, and the Constitution: The Clash That Shaped Modern Church-State Doctrine, many of these common schools still included Bible reading and were influenced to some degree by Protestantism. But they largely avoided providing devotional content and eschewed proselytizing students. After all, as Green says, “a chief hallmark of nonsectarian education was its purported appeal to children of all religious faiths.” The ostensibly secular nature and mission of these common schools miffed many Protestants at the time, much as they do today.

These early schools were controlled by the states, but the federal government began to assert a greater role in the 20th century, as the Supreme Court started to constrict the presence of religion in public schools. This included the landmark 1948 case of McCollum v. Board of Education, in which the Court ruled that “a state cannot consistently with the First [Amendment] utilize its public school system to aid any or all religious faiths or sects in the dissemination of their doctrines,” as well as the highly controversial 1962 case of Engel v. Vitale, in which the justices declared that compulsory prayer in public schools was unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause. These decisions helped spark the modern culture wars and the rise of the religious right, a movement that sought to fight the “secularization of public schools,” which included the reincorporation of prayer and Bible reading.

Read: Why schools are banning yoga

Donald Trump is an unlikely choice to play the role of champion for this cause. The thrice-married real-estate mogul who claims to have never asked God for forgiveness has said that he attended Manhattan’s Marble Collegiate Church, but the congregation responded that he is not “an active member.” Trump claimed on the campaign trail that the Bible was his favorite book, but he couldn’t cite his favorite verse when asked. (He finally named his favorite verse eight months later, but seemingly didn’t understand how to interpret or apply it.)

But while Trump might not care much about the Bible personally, he knows it is politically important to many of the conservative Christians who support him. According to a recent study conducted by the Barna Group, a staggering 97 percent of churchgoing Protestants and 88 percent of churchgoing Catholics said they believed that teaching the Bible’s values in public school was important. Trump’s odd tweet is likely an effort to shore up his base, rather than a passionate plea for a new educational initiative.