Ready To Rumble: Texas Bible Classes Draw Reactions

Last Friday the Texas state board of education passed a measure allowing Texas high schools to teach bible classes, but did not provide guidelines for legal and illegal material. I am quite frequently wrong but this seems like an obvious disaster waiting to happen. Guidelines are very important for all class curricula, electives not withstanding. In fact, in the Spring of '09 the state board is going to be setting some interesting guidelines in the sciences classes which will effectively refute evolution by bringing in religion masked as academic freedom.

Mark Chancey, chairman of the religious studies department at Southern Methodist University offered some scathing words about the board's decision. "I predict we're headed for a constitutional train wreck. The people who suffer will be the educators and the students, and the people who will foot the bill will be us the taxpayers...the state board is sending them into a minefield without a map." Thank you Mark, that's what I've been saying about this, are there really that many people here that don't?

John Ferguson, Baptist minister, first amendment lawyer and professor at Howard Payne University in Brownwood what say you???

"It's deeply distressing," said John Ferguson, a Baptist minister, first amendment lawyer and professor at Howard Payne University in Brownwood.

State board members, who balked at establishing state standards because they might be too difficult to write, were wrong, Ferguson said. How can small school districts develop sound standards, he wondered?

"I'm not sure where these small districts with the six-man football teams in West Texas are going to come up with constitutional Bible scholars to help them craft these (standards)," Ferguson said.

The reason and rationality in this issue just came from a Baptist minister, take cover, the world may end soon.

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