WASHINGTON (AP) — Conservative lawmakers across the U.S. are pushing to introduce more Christianity to public school classrooms, testing the separation of church and state by inserting Bible references into reading lessons and requiring teachers to post the Ten Commandments.
The efforts come as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office pledging to champion the First Amendment right to pray and read the Bible in school, practices that are already allowed as long as they are not government-sponsored.
While the federal government is explicitly barred from directing states on what to teach, Trump can indirectly influence what is taught in public schools and his election may embolden state-level activists.
Trump and his fellow Republicans support school choice, hoping to expand the practice of using taxpayer-funded vouchers to help parents send their children to religious schools.
But there is a parallel push to incorporate more Christianity into the mainstream public schools that serve the overwhelming majority of students, including those of other faiths. And with the help of judicial appointees from Trump’s first presidential term, courts have begun to bless the notion of more religion in the public sphere, including in schools.
“The effect of even Trump being the president-elect, let alone the president again, is Christian nationalists are emboldened like never before,” said Rachel Laser, the president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
Large numbers of Americans believe the founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation. A smaller group, part of a movement widely called Christian nationalism, champions a fusion of American and Christian identity and believes the U.S. has a mandate to build an explicitly Christian society.
Many historians argue the opposite, claiming the framers created the United States as an alternative to European monarchies with official state churches and oppression of religious minorities.
Efforts to introduce more Christianity into classrooms have taken hold in several states.
In Louisiana, Republicans passed a law requiring every public school classroom to post the Ten Commandments, which begin with “I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Families have sued.
In Texas, officials in November approved a curriculum intertwining language arts with biblical lessons. And in Oklahoma, the state superintendent of education has called for lessons to incorporate the Bible from grades 5 through 12, a requirement schools have declined to follow.
Utah state lawmakers designated the Ten Commandments as a historic document, in the same category as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, so teachers could post it in their classrooms. Many other states have seen legislation that would put them in more classrooms. And attorneys general from 17 GOP-led states recently filed a brief supporting Louisiana’s Ten Commandments mandate.
Schools are permitted — and even encouraged — to teach about religion and to expose students to religious texts. But some say the new measures are indoctrinating students, not educating them.
Critics have raised concerns also about proliferating lesson plans. Some states have allowed teachers to use videos from Prager U, a nonprofit founded by a conservative talk show host, despite criticism that the videos positively highlight the spread of Christianity and include Christian nationalist talking points.
During his first administration, Trump commissioned the 1776 Project, a report that attempted to promote a more patriotic version of American history. It was panned by historians and scholars who said it credited Christianity for many of the positive turns in U.S. history without mentioning the religion’s role in perpetuating slavery, for example.
The project was developed into a curriculum by the conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan and is now taught in a network of publicly funded charter schools supported by the college. It also has influenced state standards in South Dakota.
Challenges to some state measures are now working their way through the courts, which have grown friendlier to religious interests thanks to Trump’s judicial appointments.
In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a football coach in Washington state who was fired for praying with players at midfield after a game, saying the school district infringed on his rights to religious expression. Dissenting justices noted some players felt pressure to join the coach. But the high court said a public school can’t restrict an employee’s religious activity just because it could be construed as an endorsement of religion, reversing a five-decade precedent.
The ruling could pave the way for conservatives to introduce more Christianity in public schools, said Derek Black, a law professor at the University of South Carolina.
“Donald Trump’s judicial appointees have emboldened states” to test the separation of church and state, he said.
In the wake of the football coach’s case, courts now analyze church-state separation through the lens of history, said Joseph Davis of Becket, a public interest law firm focused on religious freedom that is defending Louisiana over its Ten Commandments mandate.
The Supreme Court has endorsed the idea that “it’s OK to have religious expression in the public spaces,” Davis said, “and that we should sort of expect that … if it’s a big part of our history.”
Critics say some measures to introduce more historical references to Christianity in classrooms have taken things too far, inserting biblical references gratuitously, while erasing the role Christianity played in justifying atrocities perpetuated by Americans, like genocide of Native people.
These are among the criticisms facing the new reading curriculum in Texas. Created by the state, districts aren’t required to use it, but they receive financial incentives for adopting it.
“The authors appear to go out of their way to work detailed Bible lessons into the curriculum even when they are both unnecessary and unwarranted,” religious studies scholar David R. Brockman wrote in a report on the material. “Though religious freedom is vital to American democracy, the curriculum distorts its role in the nation’s founding while underplaying the importance of other fundamental liberties cherished by Americans.”
Texas Values, a conservative think tank that backed the new reading curriculum, said in a statement that the court’s pivot toward permitting more Christianity in schools, and allowing more taxpayer money to flow to religious institutions, is corrective.
The football coach case has rightfully returned protections for religion and free speech in public school, said Jonathan Saenz, the Texas Values president.
“Voters and lawmakers (are) getting tired of the attacks on God and our heritage of being ‘One Nation Under God,’” he said.
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Associated Press writers Sara Cline, Kimberlee Kruesi and Peter Smith contributed.
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