texas textbooks

This year’s streamlining process managed to nudge the standards in the direction of less biased coverage of the world’s religions, but much work remains if Texas students are to receive balanced instruction.

In September 2014, I found myself standing before a mostly hostile Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) testifying about religious imbalance and inaccuracies in public school textbooks under…

What would Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark think of public school Bible courses that taught that Jewish festivals are actually typological predictions of Jesus, that the “African races” are descendants of Noah’s cursed son Ham, that biblical stories about angels may have referred to extraterrestrial visitors, or that Genesis’ six-day creation story is scientifically accurate if interpreted correctly?

“Biblical influences on America’s founding are exaggerated, if not invented.”

The church, in its ignorance of and hostility to evolution, is passing up one of its greatest opportunities to apprehend the very God it claims to represent. This irony is due to a terrible case of what may be called “small-god-ism” and is, unfortunately, encouraged by much popular theology. This theology makes claims about scripture and church practice that reduce God to a cheerleader, or a cosmic vending machine, or some domesticated and pale image of our own confused selves.

Creationist textbook publisher, who once got caught doing a sloppy revision of its materials, wants to submit “supplemental materials” for the classroom.

What will be creationists’ new strategies of denial?

Up to new board to review educational materials for new curriculum.

Some conservative Christians assert that the Constitution is “godless.”

Board members’ claims of pro-Islamic/anti-Christian bias don’t hold water.