Thread by @AndrewLSeidel

Turning back to what, exactly? Here's the thing about bible class in public schools, they're really hard to get right and when they are done correctly, nobody wants them. THREAD:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1089876055224184833

First, note that these bills (there are others in FL, MO, and VA) are not about education, they're about promoting Christianity. We know that because they are part of the Christian nationalist legislative push called "Project Blitz."
theguardian.com/world/2018/jun…

But bible classes can only be taught in public schools critically and objectively, not religiously. That is, schools can teach about the bible, but can't preach the bible as truth. They can educate, but not indoctrinate.
School, not Sunday School.

It's difficult to teach the bible as the 1st Amendment requires. Scholars showed Texas's bible classes to be “blatantly and thoroughly sectarian, presenting religious views as fact and implicitly or explicitly encourage students to adopt those views.”
tfn.org/cms/assets/upl…

Objective classes mean students will learn that Jesus was NOT born of a virgin. This myth comes from a mistranslation of the Hebrew word almah meaning “young girl." It became the Greek parthenos, “virgin,” even though there is a different Hebrew word for virgin. These are facts.

Of course, none of the legislators proposing these bills want that taught. Nor do they want other aspects of the bible critically taught by the government to other people's children. Instead, they want to use the machinery of the state to inculcate religion. That's the real goal.

And it is likely to succeed with these classes because it is hard to find teachers that can walk this constitutional line. Rural districts with fewer resources and options end up hiring teachers with a religious agenda who promptly violate their students' rights. See TX above.

These two difficulties—preventing teachers from imposing a personal religious agenda, and presenting the class objectively—lead to inevitable lawsuits that can be disastrous for public schools. @FFRF has won a few, including in WV and TN (in Rhea County, where Scopes occurred).

Whenever religion is pushed through our civil institutions, division ensues. If parents want to teach their children about the bible, they should. When the government gets involved and starts dictating religious truth and myth, everyone is going to get upset.

Let's leave religion to the private sphere, where it belongs. As the Supreme Court wrote in 1992, “The design of the Constitution is that preservation and transmission of religious beliefs and worship is a responsibility and a choice committed to the private sphere..."
~Fin

Oh, and if you're hearing that America was founded on the bible, or founded on the Judeo-Christian principles in that bible, and so it MUST be taught in public schools—it's going around—you should pre-order my book, which puts that myth to bed.
amazon.com/Founding-Myth-…

Oh, and that North Dakota bible bill that Trump heard about on Fox and Friends and which made him tweet this nonsense? It failed. Miserably. Going down after its second reading in a 5-42 vote.
legis.nd.gov/assembly/66-20…