Tag: SMU Department of Religious Studies

RD Magazine: New Report on Angels & Aliens in Texas Schools

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date February 5, 2013

An essay by SMU religious studies expert Mark A. Chancey details his research findings published in his new report, “Reading, Writing & Religion II.” Chancey’s research 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.

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.

Read the full essay.

EXCERPT:

By Mark A. Chancey
What would Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark think of public school Bible courses that taught that Jewish festivals are actually typological predictions of Jesus, that the “African races” are descendants of Noah’s cursed son Ham, that biblical stories about angels may have referred to extraterrestrial visitors, or that Genesis’ six-day creation story is scientifically accurate if interpreted correctly?

Clark is the justice who penned the Court’s majority opinion in the 1963 case of Abington Township School District v. Schempp, known primarily for prohibiting public school officials from reading Bible verses to captive student audiences, though it also hinted at the possibility of constitutionally appropriate study of religion in public education:

“It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities. Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment.”

However, the above examples from the state of Texas—where 57 school districts and three charter school systems offered high school Bible courses in 2011-2012—suggest that 50 years after the gavel dropped in Schempp, some schools are still struggling when it comes to discussing the Good Book “objectively.”

Recently, citing the Texas Public Information Act, Texas Freedom Network contacted those schools and asked that they provide it with their course materials. TFN then asked me to examine the accumulated boxes of syllabi, tests, handouts, lecture notes, and PowerPoint presentations for academic quality and evenhandedness toward diverse religious sensibilities (full disclosure: I was compensated for my efforts, though I’m otherwise unaffiliated with TFN).

I was interested in the extent to which schools succeeded in meeting the bar set for them by federal district courts; namely, that discussions of religion should neither promote nor disparage particular religious beliefs, nor favor religion or non-religion over the other. The First Amendment Center’s The Bible & Public Schools: A First Amendment Guide and the Society of Biblical Literature’s Bible Electives in Public Schools: A Guide provided a starting point from which to consider whether a course’s approach could be considered nonsectarian.

The results of the study, presented in the new report Reading, Writing & Religion II: Texas Public School Bible Courses in 2011-12, were decidedly mixed. On the one hand, eleven school districts did quite well, offering courses that were careful not to promote one religious perspective over all others, and which encouraged critical thinking, careful communication skills, and creativity. Twenty-eight districts had courses that reflected a combination of successful and unsuccessful elements, sometimes achieving a nonsectarian approach, but other times lapsing—sometimes considerably—into religious bias of the kinds noted by federal courts. The courses of twenty-one districts were thoroughly religious in nature, sometimes openly promoting particular beliefs.

The most successful courses typically had several characteristics in common. They recognized that no single religious tradition had a monopoly on the Bible, but that Protestants, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, and Jews all have very different collections they called by that name. Likewise, they taught students that different religious traditions approached the biblical text with different lenses, and that interpretations some readers take for granted (the traditional Christian understanding of the serpent in the Garden of Eden as Satan, for example) are rejected by others.

Read the full essay.

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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

Star-Telegram: Movie on PBS puts Texas in odd light

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date January 28, 2013

The Star-Telegram noted 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 Jan. 26 column by Bud Kennedy, “Movie on PBS puts Texas in odd light,” makes note of the research.

Read the full column.

EXCERPT:

Bud Kennedy
Star-Telegram
An embarrassing movie about Texas comes to PBS this week.

Yes, another one.

This time, it’s The Revisionaries. But it ought to be called Texas vs. Science.

It’s a documentary on how Texas school leaders write religion into science and history books.

It “stars” Don McLeroy, an amiable dentist who rose to chairman of the State Board of Education even though he believes humans and dinosaurs walked the earth together — Flintstones-style.

Yet he is not embarrassed.

“The way I look at it, it’s a good movie because frankly, it makes our point,” McLeroy, 66, said by phone from Bryan.

“It shows our message. It talks about creationism. I consider that a victory.”

McLeroy, chairman for two years and a board member for 13 before losing in the 2010 election, is shown as both a hero and goat as he debates scientists over evolution theory.

As a young-Earth creationist at odds even with some in his own Bible church Sunday school class, he is portrayed as eccentric but sincere.

His most quoted line from a 2009 board meeting: “Somebody’s got to stand up to experts.”

Director Scott Thurman, born in Lubbock, started the project as a graduate thesis at the University of North Texas. His movie depicts McLeroy more gently than another religious conservative board member, the also-gone Cynthia Dunbar of Richmond.

On the PBS website for the “Independent Lens” documentary series, McLeroy has posted comments praising Thurman but also complaining that the movie says conservatives want “separation of church and state” edited out of lessons. (They want that phrase from an 1802 Thomas Jefferson letter “examined,” he clarified.)

Ironically — or maybe not — the movie hits PBS the same week as a new Texas Freedom Network report finding excessive religion in what is supposed to be a neutral, Bible-as-historical-literature course in Texas public schools.

For example, Southern Methodist University religion professor Mark Chancey found Amarillo schools teaching that African-Americans are descended from Noah’s son Ham, while Eastland schools covered a Biblical rapture and an imaginary “lost day” of prophecy.

“I agree with the Texas Freedom Network — I wouldn’t teach doctrine in public school,” McLeroy said.

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

Culture, Society & Family Learning & Education

Most Texas ISDs teaching Bible skirt 2007 state law

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date January 18, 2013

Study uncovered bias, factual errors and insufficient curriculum standards in most Texas public school Bible courses

Most of the 60 public school districts in Texas that offer courses on the Bible aren’t meeting a 2007 state law mandating that those courses be fair as well as academically and legally sound, according to a new study by religious studies expert Mark A. Chancey.

The study uncovered bias, factual errors and insufficient curriculum standards in Texas public school Bible courses. The report “Reading, Writing & Religion II” was carried out for the Austin-based education watchdog group Texas Freedom Network (TFN).

Chancey, an SMU Religious Studies professor, 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.

“If public schools are going to have courses on the Bible, those courses need to be just as academically rigorous as courses in history, English, and math, not less rigorous. Some schools’ courses seemed more intent on promoting religious belief than religious literacy,” said Chancey, who reviewed tens of thousands of pages of material from Texas school districts.

“When public schools teach about religion, it’s essential that they do so in a way that does not promote some people’s religious beliefs over others,” he said. “Students and the Bible deserve our very best efforts, and at this point, as a state we’re not giving them that.”

Unable to lawfully insert creation science into science classes, some schools inserted it into Bible classes, Chancey said.

His research found, for example, that courses in several districts included efforts to reconcile a literalistic reading of the Genesis creation story with modern science. Some suggested that assuming lengthy gaps of time between each of the six days of creation explained why scientists believed the earth is so old. Several courses implied that belief in evolution was incompatible with being religious.

“One course’s materials even included a religious tract claiming that NASA had discovered a missing day in time that corresponded to the story of the sun standing still in the biblical book of Joshua,” Chancey said. “The first time I heard this claim, I did what any reasonable person would do: I called NASA. I knew that this story was an urban legend, of course, and NASA was able to direct me to a web page discrediting it.”

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

Chancey’s two earlier reports on Bible courses for the TFN led to the drastic revision of a nationally used Bible curriculum and helped draw attention to the ways in which Bible courses are often used for the unconstitutional promotion of certain religious views over others in public school classrooms. He said the newest report has the potential to have an impact at the local, state, and national level.

“These two studies [the 2006 and 2013 reports] are the only data of this type that we have for understanding this issue, anywhere in the country,” he said. “There are solid civic reasons for public schools to teach about religion. Religious literacy is essential for the smooth functioning of a pluralistic democracy.”

Chancey, an Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor at SMU, is a member of the editorial boards for the peer-reviewed academic journal Religion & Education and Teaching the Bible.

He has written two books with Cambridge University Press — “The Myth of a Gentile Galilee” (2002) and “Greco-Roman Culture and the Galilee of Jesus” (2005). Chancey recently co-authored “Alexander to Constantine: Archaeology of the Land of the Bible” for Yale University Press (2012). He’s active in the Society of Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion. — Denise Gee

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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

ABC News 13: Study finds many school Bible classes ‘problematic’

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date January 18, 2013

ABC News 13 and the Associated Press 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. Weissert’s AP article was published in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

ABC News 13
Some 60 public school districts across Texas offer courses on the Bible, but at least a third aren’t meeting state requirements to be unbiased and academically and legally sound, a study released Wednesday concluded.

Written by Mark Chancey, a professor of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University, the study found that many districts’ courses favor conservative Protestant interpretations of the Bible. Many also present “problematic treatment of Judaism” while “promoting pseudo-scholarship, particularly regarding science and American history.”

“At a basic level, students are often being taught to experience Judaism only through Christian eyes,” said Chancey, who completed the study for the Texas Freedom Network, which monitors the State Board of Education from a progressive perspective.

He said no courses in Texas were found to be favoring Jewish, Roman Catholic or mainstream Protestant views – only those held by conservative Protestants.

Statewide, 57 districts and three charter schools offered elective courses on the Bible during the 2011-12 school year. Chancey listed 11 of them as having the most successful classes, but concluded that 20 had the “most problematic courses.”

The total overall number of districts offering Bible classes is more than double the 25 districts that taught them during the 2005-06 school year. But Chancey further found that of the 25 that taught them back then, just nine districts still offered Bible classes last school year.

He said Bible classes tend to have a short half-life because they are generally offered in high school, when there’s little interest among students to take them. The courses also must meet a series of state requirements that make them difficult to begin teaching and then to maintain for more than a few years.

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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

Austin Statesman: Texas schools get poor marks on teaching unbiased Bible course

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date January 18, 2013

Reporter Ben Kamisar of the Austin Statesman has 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.

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.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

Ben Kamisar
Austin Statesman
Among the 60 school districts that took advantage of a 2007 state law allowing them to teach Bible courses as a separate elective, a new study released Wednesday revealed widespread failure to comply with the law that requires the courses to be fair and unbiased.

“The bottom line is that (public schools) are not supposed to promote any particular religious view over other religious views, nor can they promote religion or non-religion over the other,” said Mark Chancey, the Southern Methodist University professor who authored the study for the Texas Freedom Network. The organization monitors activities of the so-called religious right in Texas.

Chancey examined the 57 school districts and three charter schools offering Bible courses in the 2011-12 school year to see whether guidelines established by House Bill 1287 in 2007 improved the impartiality of Texas Bible courses. The legislation sought to regulate courses for the first time. His research identified just 11 schools he considered “most successful,” defined as largely constitutional and academically rigorous.

The bill provided an outline for districts offering elective Bible courses on the condition that they were religiously neutral and for the purpose of educating students on the Bible’s historical and cultural influence.

“We knew that this was going to be an argument,” said Rob Eissler, the former chair of the state House Public Education Committee. “So the approach we took on the Public Education Committee was to make the Bible study course a real course (and) the TEA (Texas Education Agency) would develop a curriculum for it.”

But according to a letter signed by Eissler and two other colleagues in 2008 to the TEA, the State Board of Education proposed education standards that were too vague and did not mention any specific religious texts. Withoutspecific curriculum requirements, the Texas Freedom Network said that the bill was toothless and failed to adequately prepare teachers to teach an unbiased curriculum.

“The Legislature actually got ahead of a very thorny and sometimes controversial issue and passed very strong guidelines to ensure that these courses are rigorous and constitutional,” said Kathy Miller, president of the TFN Education Fund. “But clearly, based on Professor Chancey’s research, too many districts are ignoring those guidelines, so they don’t have teeth.”

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

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Study uncovered bias, factual errors and insufficient curriculum standards in most Texas public school Bible courses

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