Oklahoma Turns Public Schools Into Christian Nationalist Indoctrination Camps
The Constitution of the USA sets a clear standard: There can be no government establishment of religion. That includes, under the First and Fourteenth Amendment, a prohibition on government-established and government-funded religious schools. Nonetheless, the state government of Oklahoma is using public funds to create a Christian-only public school and forcing all public school science classes to teach the Christian Bible.
Forcing Christian Bibles into high school science classes is also unconstitutional by the standard of the Constitution of the state of Oklahoma. Oklahoma Constitution. Article 2, Section 5 states:
No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest, preacher, minister, or other religious teacher or dignitary, or sectarian institution as such.
There are many different Christian Bibles, each one favored by a different kind of church. Will Oklahoma schools be forced to buy and teach from copies of a Bible that has been endorced by the Roman Catholic Church? The King James Bible? The Trump Bible? What about the Book of Mormon? Differences between the various versions of the Bible reflect controversial ideological disputes between different branches of Christianity. So, which form of Christianity will the State of Oklahoma choose to promote? Once again, the State Government of Oklahoma will now get into the business of deciding which branch of Christianity will receive government support, and which branches of Christianity will be denied government support.
As Oklahoma mandates every public school classroom to teach the Christian Bible under state law HB1775, what’s ironic is that the Bible itself violates the standards of HB1775. The Bible preaches the degradation of women. It advocates for ethnic genocide through massacres. It includes pro-slavery messages and the doctrine of the Curse of Ham, which is used to this day by fundamentalist Christians to justify racism.
Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s superintendent of public instruction, also announced this week that the state government of Oklahoma is going to go ahead with plans to create the St. Isidore of Sienna Catholic Virtual School despite Oklahoma Supreme Court orders not to do so. Ryan Walters is violating the law in order to use big government power to force his religious views on all Oklahoma families.
20% percent of Oklahomans are not Christian. Are they no longer citizens of Oklahoma?