Christian lobby pushes for daily Bible readings in Idaho schools
News Brief by FāVS Staff
The Idaho Family Policy Center, an influential Christian lobbying organization, has announced plans to propose legislation requiring Bible readings in all public schools across Idaho. The bill would mandate reading the entire Bible over a 10-year period, averaging about 20 verses per school day.
Blaine Conzatti, president of the center, indicated the organization has 2,500 signatures – and counting – supporting this effort. He said they have plans to move the proposal during the January legislative session. However, he has not yet revealed whether any lawmakers have agreed to sponsor the bill.
Under the proposed legislation, teachers would read Bible verses “without instruction or comment” to avoid constitutional conflicts. Conzatti says the bill would include opt-out provisions for teachers and students who object to the practice.
The proposal comes amid a broader national movement to increase Christian influence in public education, with similar initiatives recently launched in Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas. These efforts challenge long-standing Supreme Court precedents. This includes a 1963 ruling that banned school-sponsored prayer and Bible reading in public schools.
Some Republican leaders, including House Majority Caucus Chair Dustin Manwaring, have expressed reservations about potential First Amendment conflicts. Gov. Brad Little’s office and most Republican officials have not yet commented on the proposal.
If children get religious instruction at school, why take them to church? Won’t this actually harm church attendance? Parents are busy and if they think their child’s religious instruction is being done M-F, they won’t need to take them on Sunday. It’ll free up a whole day.
Secular schools strengthen church membership and personal faith. When students are presented with people of other faiths and practices, they get a chance to think about what they believe and why. We used to call them faith-building moments or opportunities.
Also, there are some parts of the bible that aren’t appropriate for children. But honestly, reading the Bible has created several atheists that I know personally, myself included.
Since the large majority of my north Idaho county were Protestant Christians, I was never privy to any complaints, even though my parents were agnostic. I heard the Bible being read every morning at school from 1958 to 1964. Then I heard all the fear that would happen to society when Bible reading stopped, which much has come true. But the world was not as good as many suspect and it has not become as bad as many feared.
I wrote this in response to infusing Christianity in curriculum on another site:
This should be struck down in court. It establishes the Christian view and I will assume ignore other views. Will the promoters of this bill infuse other belief systems into the curriculum such as Islam, Hindu, Buddhist, etc. into geography and history? It is just as much of their history as Christianity is of ours. Will they include Christian atrocities such as the Crusades, the Inquisition, the intolerance of numerous Protestant denominations that persecuted other Protestant groups that led to Christians leaving Europe for the Americas. How we treated the Native Americans? How we treated Irish Catholics? Jim Jones, David Koresh? The religion of white supremacy, KKK?
The U.S. has never been not-judgmental. Different churches have differing ways to deal with what they see as discrimination. The Catholics started their parochial schools because Catholic children were having the Bible read to them. Jews were shunned for killing Jesus. JW’s object to saluting the flag along with main stream Protestant doctrine. The LDS’s have “education centers” beside public high schools where they indoctrinate their beliefs. It is voluntary to go there. Some quietly pursue their faith while others throw it in your faith and demand “their rights” of freedom while trampling on others rights (but that is from all sides).
That said, “What then? notwithstanding, every way, whether in pretence, or in truth, Christ is preached; and I therein do rejoice, yea, and will rejoice,” Phil 1:18. It is good that people are talking about God, and, God willing, many will see what God says by reading their Bible and not trusting what others say and especially not base their faith on what others do.
If you want children to have a Christian view, pay for it and send them to a Christian school as I did and am doing with my grandchildren. But you still need to back that up with prayer, trust in God and living a Godly life as an example to them.