Ryan Walters: We'll go after teachers who criticize the Bible in their classrooms

The Oklahoma education leader claimed forcing Bibles in school might lead to proselytizing... by liberals

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Ryan Walters wants you to know he opposes any attempt to indoctrinate students with religion in public schools. Specifically, atheists aren’t allow to criticize Christianity.

Ryan Walters holds up a book he’s never read (screenshot via YouTube)

By now, you’re all well aware of how Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Public Instruction temporarily canceled his request for bids to purchase 55,000 Trump bibles for public school classrooms even though he recently purchased 500 Trump bibles for use in Advanced Placement Government classes. Despite not being nominated as Secretary of Education, there’s no reason to think Walters is going to back off from his attempt to shove Christianity in public schools.

But in a recent interview with fellow right-wing propagandist Glenn Beck, Walters accidentally revealed how he hopes getting bibles in schools will lead to more Christianity.

Beck pointed out that he feared some public school teachers, even if they were forced to use the Bible in the classroom, might use the opportunity to criticize the book—or at least not teach it with the reverence Christians believe it’s owed.

That’s a bizarre fear. We know exactly what happens when Christianity is brought into public schools, whether we’re talking about chaplains or Bible-as-literature classes or after school clubs. Even when everything is supposed to be objective and neutral, Christianity always gets the upper hand. Christian teachers routinely turn into Sunday School preachers. Christian clubs are allowed while Satanic alternatives are banned. Bible stories are taught as if they’re based in fact. Jesus is treated like someone who actually lived. God is real, kids are told. The adults act like the book is a historical document and not an ancient collection of stories.

So if there’s any concern about using the Bible in public school classrooms, it’s the fear that some teachers will proselytize rather than use the book objectively, not that some teachers will trash the Bible in school.

Walters could have offered a neutral answer. He could have said that only objective teaching about the Bible will be allowed and no teacher is permitted to promote or denigrate Christian beliefs. After all, if the point is helping students learn history or literature, no one has to take any kind of stance on the Bible, right?

That’s not what he said, though. And the answer he gave was quite revealing.

… We have to do this the right way. We've already put out guidance that says, listen, you're not to come in here and push your view of religion onto the kids, okay? This is a history lesson. This is understanding its historical context.

So, again, we give these examples in our guidance and we say, listen, you are to teach it in its historical context in these specific standards. So we've laid out: This is how you teach it, this is where it is, this is the historical context around it, and, again, if we have somebody in there attacking religion, trying to push that view on kids, they're not going to teach in the state of Oklahoma. We're not going to tolerate that.

You know, you've seen these leftist activists. We've been crystal clear: Here are the educational standards. You will educate, not indoctrinate. And if you cross that line, you're gonna [have to find] another profession.

The people who are most likely to indoctrinate kids, he says, are “leftist activists” in the classrooms who are “attacking religion,” not Christian teachers in Oklahoma who see an opening and want to run with it.

Does anyone seriously think a teacher who says Adam and Eve really existed will be reprimanded in any way? Of course not. This is Oklahoma. But a teacher who (correctly) says Adam and Eve are fictional characters, even in the context of explaining the Genesis story so that kids understand a reference in another work of literature, would probably face Walters’ wrath.

Beck, of course, pushed back on none of that.

This is what teachers in Oklahoma can expect if Walters’ Bible mandate is ever taken seriously. They’ll be monitored like crazy to make sure they’re teaching the Bible exactly the way Ryan Walters wants them to teach the Bible. That means, according to his own guidance letter, that they have to explain “how biblical principles have shaped the foundational aspects of Western societies, such as the concepts of justice, human rights, and the rule of law.” And how composers have “interpreted and expressed biblical themes through music.” And they must assign “essays that require critical thinking and analysis of the Bible’s role in literature, history, and culture.”

Ironically, that guidance insists teachers must “not promote or favor any religious beliefs” and that these classes must be taught “in a neutral and objective manner.” That’s fine, but notice how Walters, talking to an ally rather than writing a document that might end up in court, quickly shifts to trashing imaginary liberal teachers who might criticize the Bible even after he forces them to use it in their lesson plans.

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