opinion

I worry that Bible bill is a way to enforce Christianity in Iowa schools

Twelve state representatives who've introduced a bill that would require Iowa education officials to develop a public high-school curriculum on the Bible may know their holy book well. It’s their critical thinking that could use a reboot.

The dozen Republican elected officials claim the purpose would not be religious indoctrination but to teach the centrality of biblical thought to American civilization.

And that's not impartial?

As it is, national “school-choice” advocates, including the president’s education secretary, have set out to erode the wall between church and state and shift public education funds to private and parochial schools. Now Iowa lawmakers are looking to get around state and federal laws requiring religious neutrality by bringing Christ in through the curricula.

“A course offered and taught in accordance with this subsection shall not endorse, favor, promote, or disfavor, or be hostile toward, any particular religion, faith, or nonreligious perspective,” says House File 2031. But that doesn’t negate the fact that Christianity would be the only religion required to have a state-approved curriculum and teacher training in a high-school elective social studies course. How is that not favoritism?

The bill was introduced Wednesday by Rep. Dean Fisher of Tama along with Skyler Wheeler, Larry Sheets, Sandy Salmon, Ralph Watts, Tedd Gassman, Steven Holt, Terry C. Baxter, Shannon Lundgren, Kristi Hager, Greg Heartsill and David Kerr. It’s endorsed by the Iowa Family Leader, the conservative Christian organization best known for its opposition to same-sex marriage and its campaigns to unseat Iowa judges who ruled for it.

Its spokesman, Drew Zahn, told a Register reporter that the Bible represents the core of American values but “we are raising generations of American children ignorant of the origin” of those values.

I suspect he means people like me. I didn’t grow up studying the Bible as the core of American values, though Christian beliefs and practices were included in the comparative religions course I took in high school. If you really want to be secular about it, comparative religions is the way to study religion.

Nothing against the Bible, or any other faith’s holy book, as long as their tenets are not used to violate others’ civil rights. But I had to pass a U.S. citizenship test to become an American, and I don’t think my appreciation of American values suffered from not having been taught they all stem from the Bible.

I associate America’s core values more with the Constitution in which they are enshrined, and the many struggles for freedoms and rights throughout American history. One of those which makes this country so special, and so inviting to people from all over, is the freedom from a state religion. There can be no religious litmus test in America.

Religious stories can have good moral implications. But they can also be interpreted to have repressive ones. We saw that in the divisive campaigns against marriage equality. We'll be seeing more of it in a new legislative push for a personhood bill declaring that life begins at conception. That means another push to limit or abolish abortions.

So my worry is the opposite of Zahn’s. It’s that with all these politically motivated versions of truth being floated out there, including denials about evolution and climate change, Americans are at risk of confusing religious beliefs with provable fact. That could really put our democracy in peril.

There are options for parents who want a religious education for their kids: Church or parochial school. It’s noteworthy that no educational organizations have registered in support of the bill. Because in fact, under Iowa law as it is, an elective course that focuses on a religion’s literature, history or art can already be offered.

Zahn’s contention that American values “did not spring from the cornucopia of ‘world religions’ but specifically from the Judeo-Christian scriptures” hints at something else, a mindset that America is not a place for a new immigrant population of different faiths. It has disturbing echoes of Rep. Steve King’s contention that America can’t restore its civilization with "someone else’s babies."

The sad thing is that you can’t really evaluate a proposal like this for its educational merits alone. No matter how legitimate a course it could turn out to be, the motivations behind it are just too suspect. You can already see where groups like the Family Leader might try to use so-called biblical teachings to sway public opinion and policy to meddle with people’s rights to be who they are, whether that’s gay, transgender, Muslim or atheist.

So let’s leave religious instruction to parents and places of worship, and leave curricular matters to the educational professionals. There’s no need for this bill, and it carries too much baggage.

Rekha Basu is an opinion columnist for The Des Moines Register. Contact: rbasu@dmreg.com Follow her on Twitter @RekhaBasu and at Facebook.com/ColumnistRekha. Her book, "Finding Her Voice: A collection of Des Moines Register columns about women's struggles and triumphs in the Midwest," is available at ShopDMRegister.com/FindingHerVoice