Halloween season is just getting started, but this year’s scariest costume already belongs to Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters, who continues to masquerade his Christian Nationalism as bonafide American History. A former history teacher he may be, but a student of history he is not.
Walters began his summer fuming about two Oklahoma Supreme Court decisions: one that denied public funding to a Catholic charter school and another that rejected his own attempt to strip Edmond Public Schools of its accreditation status for refusing to ban two award-winning novels from the district’s high school libraries.
Walters responded by issuing a mandate requiring all public schools to incorporate the Bible into curriculum for students in grades 5-12. This will, he says, “ensure that the Bible hasn’t been driven out of Oklahoma classrooms, and… that we’re not allowing the left to censor American history.”
Walters frequently mentions what he considers a turning point in the 1960s, apparently referencing Abington v. Schempp, in which the U.S. Supreme Court found school-sanctioned Bible readings violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. (A related case brought by American Atheists’ founder Madalyn Murray O’Hair was consolidated with Abington.)
The Court’s decision did not, as Walters suggests, ban Bibles from schools. In fact, before he embarked on this summer’s sanctum bellum, Oklahoma law already permitted the Bible to be taught in classrooms. That wasn’t good enough.
Nor, apparently, was the $3,000,000 Walters already dedicated from the Oklahoma Department of Education’s budget to purchase and distribute Bibles. At a meeting on Thursday, Walters asked the State Board of Education to approve an additional $3,000,000 from the legislature “to continue to supply the schools with Bibles moving forward.” After posing a few softball questions, the governor-appointed members of the board gave Walters their unanimous support.
Should state lawmakers also sign off, that’s a grand total of $6,000,000 in public funds earmarked for Bibles even as dozens of Oklahoma’s district superintendents have said they will not supply physical copies of the Bible. While Oklahoma’s public schools remain some of the worst-funded in the country and one in four children is food insecure, Walters’ department is withholding $250,000 for emergency asthma inhalers in schools, and “Bibles in Schools” is at the tippy-top of his budget request.
The extra $3,000,000 far exceeds line items like teacher effectiveness programs and even school security. In fact, it’s twelve times the amount set aside for board-certified educators. Walters really should’ve asked Oklahoma’s sixth-grade math students to check his work: Assuming there are still about 43,000 public school teachers left in Oklahoma, this would amount to more than $130 per Bible. (Heck, even Trump only charged $60!)
An ominous message left for reporters by Walters’ chief policy advisor in June after lawmakers asked Oklahoma’s Attorney General to look into a potential “ghost employee” at the Education Department. In August, after Walters ghosted Oklahoma legislators for months, more than two dozen of his fellow Republicans called for an investigation that could lead to his impeachment. (Image: Daniel Shular, Tulsa World)
In explaining why “Bibles in Schools” is six-million-dollars-important, Walters again revealed he wasn’t paying attention in class, insisting it’s a “historical document” on par with the Constitution in terms of its importance in the founding of our nation. The Constitution, as Walters is surely aware, does not mention the Bible (or God or Jesus or Christianity). In fact, the only times religion is mentioned is to protect Americans against exactly this type of government overreach.
When a board member asked which version of the Bible would be purchased and how that determination was made, Walters suggested students couldn’t possibly understand the Pilgrims without a King James Bible (KJV) nearby. That these protestants fled the KJV-using Church of England and arrived on these shores with Geneva Bibles is not, evidently, the kind of “historical context” Walters is always harping on about.
Marked “not present” at Thursday’s meeting was any acknowledgement of religious freedom or pluralism or anything resembling historical accuracy.
And that’s how they want it. No matter how many times Walters insists otherwise, his Bible Blitz cannot be for anything else but proselytizing. The board briefly acknowledged other “world religions” (as if they do not exist here as well) and confirmed Students will hear about those, too. But it’s quite clear they won’t be hearing about them in equal measure — like, say, $6,000,000 worth.
What Oklahoma students will hear instead is still TBD by a committee of Christian Nationalists, hand-picked by Walters, who are developing new statewide social studies standards. Earlier this month, a draft was presented to the Social Studies Standards Committee. Media was denied entry to the closed meeting, and attendees signed non-disclosure agreements. Even so, one source said the proposal made them “want to throw up.” Another reported, “Disappointing is not a strong enough word. It’s disgusting…”
A copy of the proposed standards hasn’t been revealed, but we have a pretty good idea what they might look like given the executive committee includes propagandist Dennis Prager of PragerU, Heritage Foundation’s Kevin Roberts, and pseudohistorian David Barton of WallBuilders. Walters has already promised the new standards will promote American exceptionalism and “a proper understanding of the nation’s founding.”
What he and other Christian Nationalists mean by that, of course, is their own mythical misunderstanding (This was a Christian nation) and the scary story they tell themselves (Secularists ruined it).
In solidarity,
Melina Cohen
Communications Director
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