Oklahoma’s top education official Ryan Walters is directing all school districts in The Sooner State teach the importance of the Bible and the Ten Commandments.
Walters, who serves as Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction, sent a letter to all school districts on June 27, 2024, telling them to incorporate the Bible into curriculum for 5th through 12th grades.
The directive “requires immediate compliance from the school districts and notes that guidance and teaching materials from the state Department of Education will soon be provided,” the Washington Examiner reports.
“Oklahoma kids will learn that the Bible and the Ten Commandments are foundational for western civilization,” Walters said in a post on X. “The left is upset, but one cannot rewrite history.”
In a press conference announcing the decision, Superintendent Walters said,
The Bible is a necessary historical document to teach our kids about the history of this country, to have a complete understanding of Western Civilization, to have an understanding of the basis of our legal system, and it’s frankly … one of the most foundational documents used for the Constitution and the birth of our country.
Many on the left today dismiss the role that Christianity and the Bible played in the founding of the United States.
But as scholar Daniel Dreisbach, Professor in the Department of Justice, Law, and Criminology at American University, writes in his book, Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers,
The American founders read the Bible. Their many quotations from and allusions to both familiar and obscure scriptural passages confirm that they knew the Bible from cover to cover. Biblical language and themes liberally seasoned their rhetoric. …
Many founders were students of the Bible, and a few even wrote Bible commentaries and learned discourses on theology and Christian doctrine and practice. The Bible left its mark on the political culture of the founding era.
The news from Oklahoma comes just a few days after Louisiana enacted a law requiring the state’s public universities and K-12 schools to display the Ten Commandments in each classroom; a lawsuit was filed against the act this week.
It’s greatly important that our nation’s students learn the vital role that the Bible and the Ten Commandments had upon the development of our society. Superintendent Walter’s efforts in that vein should be greatly commended.
For more information about the important role that the Bible played in the American Founding, check out Professor Daniel Dresbach’s book, Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers.
Related articles and resources:
Louisiana’s Ten Commandments Bill is Good for Kids, Communities, and the Nation
Oklahoma Governor Declares June 2024 the ‘Month for Life’
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