Texas Taliban Mandates Bible and Bill Bennett in Schools

Texas has a long history of repeated attempts to turn the public school curriculum into an indoctrination tool in support of Christofascist values promoted by the John Birch Society of the late 1950s—which had such profound influence on Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and the MAGAts that are now seeking to replace our constitutional republic with a fascist theocracy. 

The recent approval of a mandated book list for all K-12 Texas public school children is the latest, most brazen, and stupidest version of those many attempts to mold the next generation toward acceptance of the intellectual, ethical, religious, and social values of the late Jim Crow Era.

The religious indoctrination effort is underpinned by an unprecedented requirement for specified Protestant bible readings and/or bible lessons through elementary and high school.

The ethical training component comes in the form of required reading of neocon hypocrite, racist, and admitted habitual gambler, Bill Bennett, whose Book of Virtues and Children’s Book of Virtues serve as texts. (For some background on Bennett, see "The Bookie of Virtue" by Joshua Green writing for the Washington Monthly.)

Almost ten percent of all U.S. public school children attend Texas public schools.  Therefore, textbook companies are quick to yield to the monetary incentive to offer texts nationally that will sell in Texas as well. So if you think the retro pablum in the Texas required list of books will be limited to Texas, think again. 

By the way, the only significant differences between the new Texas requirements and what I was expected to read in school (1955-1967): we did not have a right-wing gambling addict teaching us ethical know-how, we didn’t have to read the bible (Protestant or otherwise), and we DID get to read Romeo and Juliet in 11th grade.  

Tennessee’s Christo-Fascist Supermajority On the March

It is clear that Tennessee's MAGAt legislators plan to convert God to a Trumpist and then put him charge of every public institution.

"Tennessee . . . [Taliban advances bill] to . . . mandate the Ten Commandments in public schools as part of a broader effort to reintroduce prayer and Christian teachings and challenge the separation of church and state." www.tennessean.com/story/news/p...

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— James Horn (@schools-matter24.bsky.social) March 20, 2026 at 6:32 AM

The Plan to Replace Education with Christian Nationalist Propaganda

 by Rachel Laser:

Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s President and CEO Rachel Laser issued the following statement in response to credible reports that President Donald Trump will sign an executive order declaring an end to the U.S. Department of Education later today:

Ending Dept. of Education is part of Christian Nationalist agenda set out in Project 2025

“The Trump Administration’s attempt to end the Department of Education is part of the Christian Nationalist agenda set out in Project 2025 to destroy public education that benefits all communities in favor of private, religious education. Every public school district and most colleges and universities in the country rely on the Department of Education as do the students and communities served by those schools.

“Among its many important functions, the Department of Education ensures that millions of American students receive financial aid for higher education and that public schools respect students’ civil rights. The stroke of a magic marker cannot take away those important functions and rights from American students.

“Public education is one of the great promises of America – our pledge to our children that they have the power to brighten our collective future. This order signals that Trump wants to betray that promise and indoctrinate a new generation of Americans into Christian Nationalism. Americans United will continue to fight for public schools and against the Christian Nationalist assault on public education.”

Oklahoma Approves Unconstitutional Religious Charter Schools

What's worse than a virtual charter school? A religious virtual charter school, the kind that Oklahoma's white christian nationalists recently approved.  Guest essay by Rachel Laser for the NYTimes:

Something deeply un-American is underway in the state of Oklahoma.

In June, Oklahoma’s Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved the nation’s first religious public charter school. The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa were given permission to open St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in August 2024.

That’s right, a religious public school, funded by the state’s taxpayers. Proponents hope this model will spread to the dozens of other states that allow charter schools. Seven percent of public school students in the country attended charter schools as of the fall of 2021, and that number continues to grow. That’s why Christian nationalist groups see charter schools as fertile ground for their full-on assault on the separation of church and state in public education.

In just the past year, significant progress has been made in infusing Christianity into public schools. Texas, for example, now allows public schools to replace certified school counselors with religious chaplains and came close to requiring every classroom to display the Ten Commandments. New laws in Idaho and Kentucky could allow teachers and other public school employees to pray in front of — and even with — students. Missouri and Louisiana authorized public schools to teach Bible classes. West Virginia nearly passed a bill that would allow public schools to teach intelligent design creationism. Accompanying these laws are increasingly successful efforts to ban books and lessons about race, sexual orientation, gender identity and even menstruation in public schools.

The establishment of a school that claims to be simultaneously public and religious — what has been a legal oxymoron in the United States since its founding — violates one of the foundational principles of American constitutional tradition: the separation of church and state. It also threatens religious freedom and undermines public education.

The United States Supreme Court has emboldened Christian nationalists by holding twice in the past three years that if a state funds private secular schools, it must also fund private religious schools. But charter schools are taxpayer-financed public schools — not private schools.

Oklahoma law stipulates that charter schools are public schools and “shall be nonsectarian in” their “programs, admission policies, employment practices and all other operations.” But late last year, the state’s attorney general at the time, John O’Connor, issued an advisory opinion requested by the executive director of the charter school board, in which he concluded that those restrictions most likely violated the First Amendment’s free exercise clause.

This is the same Mr. O’Connor who, in a speech to a Rotary Club earlier in 2022, expressed concern about a “godless America” and went on to say, according to The Sand Springs Leader, that a God-based country isn’t one in which “everybody is forced to believe the same thing. It means we acknowledge that there’s a God who has values and endows us or imbues us with those values that are not granted to us by the government. They are granted to us by God.”

Mr. O’Connor was defeated last summer in the state’s Republican primary, and his successor, a fellow Republican and the current attorney general, Gentner Drummond, rescinded his predecessor’s advisory opinion, called the charter school board’s decision “unconstitutional” and warned of possible legal action if a contract for the school is signed.

In a recent interview with Politico, Mr. Drummond said that he believed the “genesis” of efforts to have taxpayers pay for religious-based school instruction “is in Christian nationalism.” He told Politico’s Weekly Education newsletter that “this Christian nationalism is the movement that is giving oxygen to this attempt to eviscerate the establishment clause,” the doctrine of separation of church and state.

Indeed, it’s hard to think of a clearer violation of the religious freedom of Oklahoma taxpayers and public-school families than the state establishing a supposedly public school that is run as a religious school. Forcing taxpayers to fund religion, let alone a religion not their own, violates the Oklahoma Constitution’s explicit command that no public money or property “shall ever” be used to benefit or support religion. It’s exactly what Thomas Jefferson labeled “sinful and tyrannical.”

That is why the organization I head, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, together with the A.C.L.U., the Education Law Center and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, filed a lawsuit on Monday in state district court in Oklahoma to prevent the school from operating as a charter school.

Public schools must remain neutral when it comes to religion and must welcome all. St. Isidore claims it welcomes “students of all faiths or no faith.”

But here’s the catch: According to St. Isidore’s website, students must “appreciate and desire a robust Catholic education,” and students and families must have a “willingness to adhere with respect to the beliefs, expectations, policies and procedures of the school.” St. Isidore also said that it will operate “in harmony with faith and morals, including sexual morality, as taught and understood by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church based upon Holy Scripture and sacred tradition.” That’s a clear description of a Catholic school, not a public one.

A public school that is subsumed in any one church’s dogma is no longer a public school. Yet Oklahoma taxpayers will be on the hook to pay for it.

Rachel Laser is the president and chief executive of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Maine Neutralizes Theocratic SCOTUS Decision on Schools

When the six-member American Taliban majority on the U. S. Supreme Court decided that Maine's state assistance to private schools (due to many students not having public schools available in rural areas) must include aid to religious private schools as well, many defenders of the separation of church and state were alarmed.  

As alarming as the 6-3 decision was, Maine anticipated a path around the ruling by preemptively passing a law that denies state assistance to any private school that discriminates against LGBTQ students--which, in essence, eliminate the hateful Christian madrassas that would otherwise use taxpayer funds to instill the same hate into children. Genius. 

Details from the NY Times:

. . . . Anticipating this week’s decision, Maine lawmakers enacted a crucial amendment to the state’s anti-discrimination law last year in order to counteract the expected ruling. The revised law forbids discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, and it applies to every private school that chooses to accept public funds, without regard to religious affiliation.

The impact was immediate: The two religious schools at issue in the Carson case, Bangor Christian Schools and Temple Academy, said that they would decline state funds if, as Maine’s new law requires, accepting such funds would require them to change how they operate or alter their “admissions standards” to admit L.G.B.T.Q. students.

The legislative fix crafted by Maine lawmakers offers a model for lawmakers elsewhere who are alarmed by the court’s aggressive swing to the right. Maine’s example shows that those on the losing end of a case can often outmaneuver the court and avoid the consequences of a ruling. . . .

Religious Indoctination Provides Break from Test Prep: "It's a great day in South Carolina."

Story below the video from NYTimes.  More details on rally in video are provided here by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

JEFFERSON, S.C. — It has been nearly 50 years since the Supreme Court ruled that officially sponsored prayer in public schools violated the separation of church and state.

But in some corners of the country, especially in the rural South, open prayer and Christian symbols have never really disappeared from schools, with what legal advocates call brazen violations of the law coming to light many times each year.

But in some corners of the country, especially in the rural South, open prayer and Christian symbols have never really disappeared from schools, with what legal advocates call brazen violations of the law coming to light many times each year.

At a school assembly here in South Carolina on Sept. 1, a preacher described how Christ saved him from drugs, telling his rapt audience that “a relationship with Jesus is what you need more than anything else.” A rapper shouted the Lord’s praise to a light show and most of the audience stepped forward to pledge themselves to Christ while a few remained, uncomfortable, in their seats.

Such overt evangelizing would not be unusual at a prayer rally, but this was a daytime celebration in a public school gymnasium, arranged by the principal for sixth, seventh and eighth graders.

When the rapper posted a video on YouTube, announcing that “324 kids at this school have made a decision for Jesus Christ,” he drew unwelcome public and legal scrutiny to the event. It was the kind of religious advocacy that is increasingly coming to light, legal experts say, as school populations become more diverse and as the objection of non-Christians — or, in this case, the rejoicing of evangelists — is broadcast on the Internet.

In landmark decisions in 1962 and 1963, the Supreme Court barred official promotion of religion in schools. That principle has remained solid, if pilloried by conservatives who blame it for what they see as the nation’s moral and social decline. At the same time, the courts and Congress have also reinforced the rights of students to pray on their own and to form after-school religious clubs.

But battles over the place of religion in schools continue. This month, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit demanding that the Chesterfield County, S.C., school district end what the suit describes as the continuing promotion of religion in several of its schools, including the middle school that held the prayer rally. The A.C.L.U. brought the suit on behalf of a seventh grader who said he was subjected to unwanted proselytizing and has been harassed for his avowals of atheism.

Among other recent examples:

¶ At Pace High School near Pensacola, Fla., teachers cited the Bible as fact in class and one teacher preached to students with a bullhorn as they arrived at school. In litigation that ended in July, the Santa Rosa County district agreed to stop promotion of religion but said that teachers could pray in private settings and could use expressions like “God bless you.”

¶ In Sumner County, Tenn., teachers led students in prayer and Bible study, and allowed Gideons International to distribute Bibles during school hours. Officials agreed this month to end the practices.

¶ In Baltimore, under threat of a lawsuit last spring, district officials stopped a school principal from holding prayer services to help students prepare for a standardized test.

“We continue to see, on a regular basis across the country, public school officials who include prayer in school events, try to convert students and engage in other promotion of religion,” said Heather Weaver, a lawyer with the A.C.L.U.’s program on religious freedom.

“In recent years, public school officials have engaged in these activities even more aggressively,” Ms. Weaver added.
Christian legal advocates counter that such plain violations are far less common than the opposite problem:

overzealous officials trying to cleanse the schools of religion, punishing students for protected speech like personal prayer or handing out devotional messages to their friends.

“The free-speech rights of students and teachers are under an all-out assault,” said Kelly Shackelford, president of the Liberty Institute, a Christian legal group in Plano, Tex. He described one continuing legal case in which “children had pencils ripped out of their hands” because they carried a Christian message and students were “banned from writing Merry Christmas to the soldiers.”

Despite such disputes, legal religious expression is more present in schools now than it has been for decades, said Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center in Washington who advises school districts and helped develop teacher guidelines that are consistent with the law. It has been firmly established, he said, that students may pray if it is not disruptive, and can share their faith with other students. Teachers may pray with other teachers outside of class, though not in front of students during school hours.

But gray areas persist and dozens of bitter disputes erupt every year over the propriety of student prayers at graduations and football games (usually ruled illegal if given over a loudspeaker to a captive audience) or whether children can hand out written prayers at a Christmas party (permissible in theory, some experts say, but courts have allowed school officials to make judgments based on the circumstances).

Watchdog groups like the A.C.L.U., Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Freedom From Religion Foundation say that in the last few years, they have learned more often about what they call blatant violations like the South Carolina rally. It is unclear, they say, whether the number of such events is growing, or whether they are now more likely to come to light. But still, these advocates say, even when clear violations occur, concerned families are often reluctant to bring legal challenges because they fear social hostility.

The September prayer rally at New Heights Middle School in Jefferson had deep support in the community. With a population of 47,000, Chesterfield County supports at least 200 Christian churches, according to Paul Wood Jr., pastor of the First United Methodist Church in Cheraw, S.C.

“There’s not a lot of religious diversity here, so it becomes hard for people to believe that everybody isn’t a Christian,” said Mr. Wood, who was perhaps the only pastor in the county to publicly question the rally.

The students were addressed by Christian Chapman of Charlotte, N.C., who describes himself as a “traveling evangelist” and often speaks at schools, he said in an interview.

“I definitely think that we should try to get our relationship with Christ back into the schools,” said Mr. Chapman, 43. “Jesus represents everything we want our students to live by.”

For non-Christians to hear this message, he said, is no worse than Bible believers being forced to hear about evolution every day.

On the videotape about the rally, Mr. Chapman quotes the school principal, Larry Stinson, as saying, “I want these kids to know that eternal life is real, and I don’t care what happens to me, they’re going to hear it today.”

Mr. Stinson declined to comment, while a district spokesman, Ken Buck, said that the district was studying the lawsuit and would not intentionally violate the Constitution.

According to the suit, the rally during school hours was far from an isolated event. Mr. Stinson routinely opens school programs with prayer, it alleges, and has often invited Christian speakers. A large poster of the Ten Commandments hangs on a hallway wall, a picture of Jesus hangs in the lobby, and a cross and two Bibles are on a table in the main office.

The principal’s supporters noted that students were given the option of skipping the rally.

According to Jonathan Anderson, who is a plaintiff in the suit along with his seventh-grade son, the boy was told that to avoid the assembly he had to report to the suspension room, which the boy interpreted as a punishment.

In any case, said Ms. Weaver, the A.C.L.U. lawyer, “the law is clear that a school cannot hold a worship rally, irrespective of whether it is optional.”

Mr. Stinson, in an e-mail exchange with a local pastor who expressed support, wrote, “Please pray for the dark forces out there who would seek to do harm in this situation.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 27, 2011
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of Kelly Shackelford, president of the Liberty Institute.