Hobby Lobby Backed Curriculum Credits Bible For Ending Slavery

 

A Hobby Lobby in Stow, Ohio. (courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
A Hobby Lobby in Stow, Ohio. (courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

 

 
The Texas Freedom Network recently issued an alert about a new high school Bible curriculum backed by Hobby Lobby president Steve Green. Its verdict? The proposed curriculum not only plays fast and loose with history, but also comes very close to violating constitutional standards on religious instruction in public schools.

Green, the son of Hobby Lobby founder and CEO David Green, recently helped a curriculum called “The Book: The Bible’s History, Narrative And Impact.” It’s offered under the auspices of the Museum of the Bible, which is currently under development to house a number of antiquities being exhibited by the Green family.

At least one school district has already decided to take a look at it. In April, the school board of Mustang, Oklahoma–near Hobby Lobby’s hometown of Oklahoma City–voted to implement “The Book” on a trial basis.

When TFN found out about this curriculum, it asked Mark Chancy, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University, to peer into its guts. Chancy released his report today. Read it here. It’s absolutely scathing.

In Chancy’s view, “The Book” is laden with “oversimplifications, misrepresentations, logical fallacies, and outright mistakes.” For instance, it makes a bizarre attempt to use Einstein’s theory of relativity to support the biblical account of creation.

To reconcile Genesis’s description of the creation of light on the first day of creation with the fact that the sun is not created until day four, the book appeals to the Theory of Relativity: Because ?energy and mass are equivalent and transmutable? and ?all matter is also energy,? then ?could it be that creation begins with the advent of energy?? Such reasoning, it suggests, ?seems to correlate nicely with the Big Bang Theory of creation, a mighty explosion releasing tremendous amounts of energy.? The section closes by asking, ?Could it be that light on day one refers to the initial energy [of the Big Bang] released into our cosmos??

 
The curriculum also gives the Bible credit for ending slavery and giving women the right to vote. In other words, the standard “Christian nation” party line–something that David Barton could have easily written.

Chancy also found that the curriculum is heavily biased toward the teachings of “some, but not all, conservative Protestant circles” and appears to be based more on “the literature of conservative Christian apologetics” than actual scholarship. It asserts without question that the Bible is completely true. Not only does it represent biblical characters as real people, but recounts their interactions with God as historical events.

Several sections explicitly encourage students to read biblical passages as historical events. Indeed, the bias is so strong that it may run afoul of long-standing precedent that public schools are not allowed to use lessons on the Bible to promote or discourage religion.

Looking at this, it sounds like something you might hear in a private Christian school or a fundamentalist-infused homeschooling curriculum. But does it belong in public schools? Absolutely not.


Darrell Lucus.jpg Darrell Lucus is a radical lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.