Bible - links

Bible Class Can Be Difficult, But Legal

Thursday, January 25, 2007 9:20 AM CST

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series looking at issues surrounding a proposed elective looking at the Bible as a cultural document. Friday’s report will examine the history of the Bible in the classroom.

By Amy Sherrill

TIMES RECORD • ASHERRILL@SWTIMES.COM

The Bible can be taught in a secular manner in public schools, according to law professors, First Amendment advocates and religious leaders, but teachers and school districts must walk a fine line to do it legally.

In Fort Smith Public Schools, no classes incorporate the study of the Bible in history and literature, but a Fort Smith group hopes that the school district adopts its proposal to do so.
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The Rev. Richard Land, Southern Baptist Convention, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said that a public school attempting to teach a course on the Bible is fraught with difficulties that are exacerbated because schools deal mostly with minors.

“A lot of these questions are different questions when you’re dealing with college students,” Land said. “Even as an elective course, I don’t know how you’re going to teach the Bible objectively and fairly in a secular school. If you teach it as a secular subject, well, that’s going to be perceived as being an approach to the Bible that is not balanced or fair by people of religious faith.”

He added that when the school board gets ready to make its decision, members should ask the litmus test question: If the school board is willing to have an elective course on the Bible, is it also willing to have an elective course on the Koran?

Jan 25, 2007 - topic(s): Faith, Bible, Family, Children, Education, Citizenship, Church and State, Religious Liberty

CNN - What is a Christian? (T-script)

CNN
ANDERSON COOPER 360 DEGREES
What is a Christian?; New Moral Values; Evangelicals and Israel; End of Days; Capitalist Christian; The Seekers
Aired December 14, 2006 – 23:00 ET

As expert guests, Anderson will talk to Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Jim Wallis, author of “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It” and president of Sojourners, a progressive Christian ministry, along with Dwight Hopkins, a professor of theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Dec 15, 2006 - topic(s): Faith, Bible, Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, Church and State, Religious Liberty, Social Issues

WA Post: The Gospel According to Jim Wallis

Washington Post Magazine
By David Paul Kuhn
Sunday, November 26, 2006; Page W2

JIM WALLIS IS PREACHING ABOUT A BIBLE TORN APART. Wallis tells the crowd at the Seattle Pacific University chapel that when he was in seminary, a fellow student took hold of an old Bible and cut out “every single reference to the poor.”

“And when we were done, that Bible was literally in shreds. It was falling apart in my hands. It was a Bible full of holes. I would take it out to preach and say, ‘Brothers and sisters, this is our American Bible.’”

Nov 26, 2006 - topic(s): Faith, Apologetics, Bible, Citizenship, Christian Citizenship, Church and State, Social Issues, War

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