To the editor:

What is constitutional? This question consumes us these days. But one answer is certain. Requiring students to read the Bible in public schools is unconstitutional.

Our country’s Founding Fathers knew the importance of freedom of religion and wrote it into the first amendment of the Constitution. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” They went further in the 10th Amendment, which prevents individual states from overriding federal mandates, as the state of Oklahoma is now trying to do, by requiring that the Bible be taught in grades 5-12 in public schools.

What we are witnessing today is, at best, ignorance of the nearly 250-year-old foundational law or, at worst, a deliberate violation of it to serve the ends of Christian Nationalists who would replace our liberal democracy with a faith-based theocracy.

Our public education, which has historically been one of the great strengths of our country, must be kept separate from religious instruction. There is much for teachers to teach and students to learn: essential subjects like math and communication skills, history, social studies, various sciences, arts and music. All of these expand the capacity for developing life skills and critical thinking. Faith-based elementary education can be taught by family and church or temple, or within religious schools, but not in public schools, where teachers have been trained for a rigorous public-school curriculum, not to teach religion.

Priscilla McKinney,

Lawrence