Tag: SMU Department of Religious Studies

Houston Chronicle: Bible courses a mixed bag in school

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 19, 2013

A new report by SMU religious studies expert Mark A. Chancey has received widespread coverage by the media.

The report by Chancey, “Reading, Writing & Religion II,” found that most of the 60 public school districts in Texas that offer Bible study courses aren’t meeting a 2007 state law mandating that the courses be fair as well as academically and legally sound. On March 9 the Houston Chronicle published a piece by Chancey about the research study titled “Bible courses a mixed bag in school.”

Chancey prepared the report for the Austin-based education watchdog group Texas Freedom Network. His study uncovered bias, factual errors and insufficient curriculum standards in Texas public school Bible courses.

An SMU Religious Studies professor, Chancey recommends the Texas State Board of Education develop Bible course curriculum standards and the Texas Education Agency be allowed funds for a teacher training program.

“As a biblical scholar and especially as a parent, I want our state’s public schools to take the study of the Bible’s influence as seriously as they do the study of science or history,” Chancey told The Dallas Morning News. “Academically, many of these classes lack rigor and substance, and some seem less interested in cultivating religious literacy than in promoting religious beliefs. Their approach puts their school districts in legal jeopardy and their taxpayers in financial jeopardy.”

Chancey, a professor in SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, has devoted considerable attention to the constitutional, political and academic issues raised by religion courses in public schools.

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EXCERPT:

By Mark Chancey
for the Houston Chronicle
In one recent Texas Bible course, students learned that modern racial groups trace their origins back to Noah’s three sons. In another, students considered the pros and cons of different theories regarding when Christians will be “raptured” to Heaven. Elsewhere, students spent two days watching a video exploring the possibility that biblical stories about angels actually record visits by space aliens. Yet another class utilized a resource that suggests God cut off his relationship with Jews because they rejected his son Jesus.

These classes weren’t taught in Sunday school or private religious academies. These were all offered in public high schools for academic credit. I had the opportunity to review the materials for 60 courses taught in school districts and charter schools for the report “Reading, Writing & Religion II: Texas Public School Bible Courses in 2011-12,” which was recently published by Texas Freedom Network Education Fund. What I discovered was that while such courses are legally required to be religiously neutral and are supposed to be academically rigorous, all too often, the opposite is the case.

Some successes

To be sure, there were notable success stories, such as the courses taught in Conroe and Goose Creek ISDs. In courses like these, students learned about the Bible’s rich impact not only on religious life but also on literature, music, art, philosophy, politics and other spheres of culture in legally and academically appropriate ways. These courses typically recognized that different religious communities not only have different Bibles but different ways of reading the Bible. They took such variations seriously without promoting one religious viewpoint over all others – the hallmark characteristic of constitutional courses that respect the religious freedom of their students and the religious diversity of their communities.

Most courses, however, were less successful. Intentionally or not, they often presented material from a particular religious perspective.

What were some of the recurring problems?

Most courses focused solely on the Protestant Bible, as if Jewish, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles did not even exist.

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SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

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Tags Dedman College, Mark A. Chancey, SMU Department of Religious Studies

Culture, Society & Family Learning & Education Researcher news SMU In The News

State of Belief: Teaching the bible at public schools in Texas

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 14, 2013

Religious radio State of Belief with Rev. Welton Gaddy interviewed SMU religious studies expert Mark A. Chancey for its program “Teaching the bible at public schools in Texas,” which aired March 11.

A new report by Chancey, “Reading, Writing & Religion II,” found that most of the 60 public school districts in Texas that offer Bible study courses aren’t meeting a 2007 state law mandating that the courses be fair as well as academically and legally sound.

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EXCERPT:

By Jonathan Craig
State of Belief
The Texas Freedom Network Education fund has released a new report taking a closer look at biblical religious teaching in the state’s public schools. The author of the report, Dr. Mark Chancey joins Welton to discuss the implications of his findings. Dr. Chancey is Professor of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

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Tags Dedman College, Mark A. Chancey, SMU Department of Religious Studies

Culture, Society & Family Learning & Education Researcher news SMU In The News

Salon: How the religious right is undermining education

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 4, 2013

News web site Salon covered the research of SMU religious studies expert Mark A. Chancey. A new report by Chancey, “Reading, Writing & Religion II,” found that most of the 60 public school districts in Texas that offer Bible study courses aren’t meeting a 2007 state law mandating that the courses be fair as well as academically and legally sound. The Salon article “How the religious right is undermining education” published Feb. 25.

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EXCERPT:

By K.C. Boyd
Salon
One can trace the development of today’s right wing Christian think takes to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. Religiously conservative people, motivated by their perceived degradation of society, quietly perfected their skills, all the while grooming their own young adherents, played an effective long-game that continues to win (and corrupt) the hearts and minds of a significant segment of our youth. Indeed, there is no better way to affect the future than by propagandizing the young. In this current post election season, the Biblically driven, often racist, members of society are once again regrouping to fight another day.

With the money of wealth funders like Richard and Betsy DeVos (sister of Blackwater scion Eric Prince and daughter of Elsa and Edgar Prince of the Amway fortune) and the Walton, Koch and Scaife Foundations, simpatico politicians are hard at work bringing Dominionist [3] ideals quietly into the forefront of American education policy. While much of the country argues about budgets, deficits, and guns, a cleverly camouflaged package of School Choice and ”Bible-driven curricula“ make their way up the ladder.

On the surface, School Choice is purportedly about increasing opportunities for inner city and rural youth. The all-important subtext, however, is that School Choice is really about freeing up dollars for Christian-based education. An important arrow that energizes today’s religious quiver is the intentional misuse of language in changing the debate by referring to public schools as “government schools” and public education as a “government school monopoly,” thus instantly and directly speaking to Tea Partiers and Libertarians.

To still relatively scant notice, the call for “School Choice” or Vouchers continues to play out in state capitols across the nation in an effort to increase Biblically based education through a redirection of tax dollars from public to private religious schools. In order to accomplish the end goal of Christianizing all students, stealth remains largely the rule of the day. In 2002, Dick DeVos told The Heritage Foundation [4],

“We need to be cautious about talking too much about these activities. Many of the activities and the political work that needs to go on will go on at the grass roots. It will go on quietly and it will go on in the form that often politics is done – one person at a time, speaking to another person in privacy. And so these issues will not be, maybe, as visible or as noteworthy, but they will set a framework within states for the possibility of action on education reform issues.”

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SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

Tags Dedman College, Mark A. Chancey, SMU Department of Religious Studies

Culture, Society & Family Learning & Education Researcher news SMU In The News

The New York Times: In Texas, Public School Bible Classes Inch Toward Evangelism

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 1, 2013

The New York Times has written about the research of SMU religious studies expert Mark A. Chancey. A recent report by Chancey, “Reading, Writing & Religion II,” found that most of the 60 public school districts in Texas that offer Bible study courses aren’t meeting a 2007 state law mandating that the courses be fair as well as academically and legally sound. The March 1 article by Mark Oppenheimer, “In Texas, Public School Bible Classes Inch Toward Evangelism,” quotes Chancey and cites his research.

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EXCERPT:

By Mark Oppenheimer
The New York Times
It may be a little late for the holiday of Purim, but this coming Tuesday, in Eastland, Tex., Gay Hart will be baking hamantaschen — the traditional doughy, triangle-shaped pastries accented with dollops of prune, Nutella or some other delectable paste — for the mostly Protestant students in her class on the Bible at Eastland High School. Her curriculum also includes latke recipes for Hanukkah, “challah-days” and the Hebrew melody “Hava Nagila.”

Mrs. Hart, a Baptist, offers such tidbits of Jewish folk culture to help make her class, offered at a public school, welcoming to people of all beliefs. But according to a new study by Mark A. Chancey of Southern Methodist University, such efforts are not enough to make her class pass Constitutional muster.

Dr. Chancey asserts that Mrs. Hart’s class, while offering what he calls a “sympathetic appreciation” of differing points of view, is taught from an evangelical Christian perspective and probably runs afoul of the Constitution.

And Dr. Chancey says that Mrs. Hart, 77, is not alone in using a high school elective to pole-vault the wall between church and state. “Reading, Writing and Religion II,” released Jan. 16 by the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund, a watchdog organization focused on the separation of church and state, is Dr. Chancey’s second study of public school Bible courses in Texas. He wrote the first in 2006, after becoming intrigued by a lawsuit in Odessa, Tex., brought on behalf of a Jewish student concerned about her public high school’s evangelical Bible curriculum.

That case was eventually settled, but in 2007, Texas passed a law requiring school districts to pay attention in their curriculums to religious literature, including the Bible, and its “impact on the history and literature of Western Civilization.” The requirement can be met through classes specifically on the Bible or through readings in other classes, like social studies or English.

There has long been disagreement about the legitimate place of religion in student-led and extracurricular activities, like after-school prayer groups, and at public school sporting events. But the new trend is to push the Bible into the heart of the instructional day. Since 2006, public schools in four other states — Arizona, Georgia, Oklahoma and Tennessee — have passed laws similar to the one in Texas, and North Carolina is considering such a bill. South Carolina allows students to receive credit for Bible courses taken off campus, for example, at a church or a Christian college.

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Tags Dedman College, Mark A. Chancey, SMU Department of Religious Studies

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Huffington Post: Texas Public Schools Teaching ‘End Times’ Theology, Creationism: Study

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date February 7, 2013

The Huffington Post covered the research of SMU religious studies expert Mark A. Chancey. A new report by Chancey, “Reading, Writing & Religion II,” found that most of the 60 public school districts in Texas that offer Bible study courses aren’t meeting a 2007 state law mandating that the courses be fair as well as academically and legally sound.

Reidus hilli, John Graf, SMU, coelacanth, Dipluridae,

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EXCERPT:

Huffington Post
Students in Texas’ public schools are still learning that the Bible provides scientific evidence that the Earth is 6,000 years old, that astronauts have discovered “a day missing in space in elapsed time” that affirms biblical stories of the sun standing still and moving backwards, and that the United States was founded as a Christian nation based on biblical Christian principles.

As more Texas schools are teaching Bible courses, many still fail to adhere to guidelines outlined in House Bill 1287, passed in 2007 to improve the academic quality of elective Bible courses while protecting the religious freedom of students and families, according to a new report by the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund. The study covered the state’s 57 districts and three charter schools offering Bible courses in the 2011-12 academic year.

Among the findings from “Reading, Writing & Religion II: Texas Public School Bible courses in 2011-2010,” students are being taught:

“The Bible is the written word of God… The Bible is united in content because there is no contradictions in the writing

sic]. The reason for this is because the Bible is written under God’s direction and inspiration.”

“Giving God his rightful place in the national life of this country has provided a rich heritage for all its citizens.”

“Christ’s resurrection was an event that occurred in time and space — that it was, in reality, historical and not mythological (cf. 2 Pet. 1:16).”

“Survival of the Jewish nations [sic] is one of the miracles of history and her greatest agony is yet to come.”

“The first time the Lord gathered his people back was after the Babylonian captivity. The second time the Lord will gather his people back will be at the end of the age.

“Sad to say mainstream anti-God media do not portray these true facts [of Moses and the Red Sea crossing] in the light of faith but prefer to sceptically [sic] doubt such archaeological proofs of the veracity & historicity of the Biblical account, one of the most accurate history books in the world[.]

Students are also reportedly being taught the theology of the “end times” and that they may be living in the last days.
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Tags Dedman College, Mark A. Chancey, SMU Department of Religious Studies

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