Superintendent Walters is following a well-worn path forged by the U.S. Supreme Court | Opinion

I was surprised by the gasping media coverage of Oklahoma schools Superintendent Ryan Walters’ memo regarding teaching the Bible in public schools. Superintendent Walters is simply following in the footsteps of many elected officials from the left and right who promoted the same thing using very similar language.

In 1995, in his Memorandum on Religious Expression in Schools, President Bill Clinton stated that “[p]ublic schools … may teach about religion, including the Bible … the history of religion, comparative religion, the Bible (or other scripture) ― as ― literature, and the role of religion in the history of the United States.” Compare that to Superintendent Walters’s language the Bible “will be referenced as an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like …” Walters goes on to say that the Bible is worthy of study for its “influence on our nation’s founders and the foundational principles of our Constitution.”

During their time in the White House, Presidents George W. Bush, Donald Trump and Joe Biden issued similar guidance. President Barack Obama kept President Bush’s guidance without change.

None of the guidance offered by presidents of both political parties differ in effect from Superintendent Walters’ guidance.

The praise of teaching about the Bible in public schools is not only an elected official phenomenon, the Supreme Court of the United States likewise endorses the practice.

The court stated in Engel v. Vitale in 1962 that the “history of man is inseparable from the history of religion” and that “since the beginning of that history many people have devoutly believed that ‘More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.’” In Zorach v. Clauson in 1952, the Court said, “[w]e are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” And for the sake of brevity, I include only one more of many from Abington v. Schempp in 1963 ― “[t]he fact that the Founding Fathers believed devotedly that there was a God and that the unalienable rights of man were rooted in Him is clearly evidenced in their writings, from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution itself.”

Some critics may seize upon Superintendent Walters’ reference to the Ten Commandments in his memo by citing the Supreme Court’s 1980 opinion in Stone v. Graham that found a display of the Ten Commandments in school classrooms unlawful. But read Walters’ memo carefully. He clearly indicates the Ten Commandments should be “referenced as an appropriate study of history, civilization, ethics, comparative religion, or the like.” Though not cited in his memo, Walters is directly quoting Stone v. Graham, which states that it is entirely appropriate to educate students about the Ten Commandments for such purposes. If any critic has a problem with this reasoning, their issue is with the version of the Supreme Court that struck down displaying the Ten Commandments in the classroom. Walters is merely following the favorite case of the critics.

Finally, that case mentioned above ― Stone v. Graham ― is the sole authority many use to scrub the Ten Commandments from classrooms. Most never mention that it was a close 5-4 per curiam opinion, meaning none of the five were willing to admit authorship. It was also decided without oral argument and is a terse five pages. Moreover, the only case upon which the court rested its reasoning was Lemon v. Kurtzman, the primary case used to strike down religious displays and end public religious practices for half a century. But Lemon is dead because First Liberty Institute and its network attorneys, through a series of wins at the Supreme Court, including Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, ended its reign.

Superintendent Walters is following a well-worn path forged by the U.S. Supreme Court and presidents from both major political parties. His memo simply calls upon the schools to enrich the education and cultural currency of the students of Oklahoma in accordance with Supreme Court precedent. As the Supreme Court reiterated in Van Orden v. Perry in 2005, “[t]here is an unbroken history of official acknowledgement by all three branches of government of the role of religion in American life from at least 1789.” There is nothing wrong with continuing that history and tradition in Oklahoma.

Hiram Sasser is the executive general counsel for First Liberty Institute, a law firm dedicated to First Amendment litigation, and he serves as an adjunct law professor at both the University of Texas at Austin School of Law and Oklahoma City University School of Law.