Monday, March 26, 2007

Biblical literacy

I missed this last week, but Time magazine has embraced B.U. professor Stephen Prothero's call for new courses, in the public schools, on the Bible (the subject of my column three weeks ago). I say "has embraced," rather than "took note of," because the author of the cover story, David van Biema, wholeheartedly endorses the idea of (secular) Bible courses in public schools.

One curious aspect of the piece is its suggestion that endorsing a course on the Bible means, by definition, rejecting the comparative-religion approach. In fact, Prothero argues that there should be two required religion courses in every high school -- one on the Bible, one comparative. Odd that Time would leave that part out.

In pumping up the "trend" aspect of the story, Time also gives too much weight to the numbers of school districts that various groups claim have embraced various Biblical curricula. I left those out of my Ideas piece because some skeptics of the Bible courses say the numbers are inflated, and I didn't want to get bogged down in a subsidiary controversy. But if you're going to cite them, you should check them out, and it looks like Time didn't.

I tend to think courses on the Bible -- done well and done from a non-devotional perspective -- make sense (unless you live in a district prone to culture warfare, in which case who needs the hassle? But maybe there are more districts like this than I think ...). Still, there's something vaguely unsettling about this Time cover story. Time's new editor has said he's going to let his writers express their opinions more often in his pages. Yet it's hard to imagine a less courageous editorial stance than this resolutely pro-Bible one. I'm quite sure van Biema sincerely holds the opinions he expresses. But does anyone think he'd have gotten the cover if, after studying the issue, he'd concluded that schools should reject courses on the Bible in favor of the comparative approach? Or if he'd concluded that the Bible is just too potent for public-school teachers to handle -- as one evangelical historian I spoke to believes?

I hope the new pro-opinion era at Time allows room for opinions that don't happen to also, coincidentally or not, juice newsstand sales.

Posted by Christopher Shea at 01:30 PM

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