A Texas education panel has approved plans to make Bible stories mandatory for all five million public school students in the state, sparking a row about separation of church and state.
The required readings, which don’t come into effect until 2030, include Bible passages about Adam and Eve and from the book of Exodus, where God speaks to Moses through a burning bush.
Critics say the new reading requirements, which include Dickens and Shakespeare, infringe on religious freedoms and lack diversity.
The Republican-controlled State Board of Education approved the measure in a 9-5 vote with one Republican joining Democrats to vote against it.
“We are bringing the Bible back into schools this week for the first time in 60 years,” Brandon Hall, a Republican member of the board of education, said this week.
Supporters say schoolchildren ought to learn about Judeo-Christian traditions that they argue were essential to the nation’s founding.
The new reading list includes English literature classics such as Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.
But it is the mandatory religious texts that have drawn fiercest opposition from education and civil liberties groups.
The reading list “centers Christianity above all other religious faiths and traditions,” Felicia Martin, executive director Texas Freedom Network, a left-wing activist group, said ahead of the vote.
“[It has] a very Western-centric view of the world that omits the contributions and the histories of black, brown, indigenous people, of other religious faiths and traditions that are critical to the overall understanding of our history.”
Friday’s approval was the latest example of moves by conservatives to bolster the prescence of Christian beliefs in the Texas education system.
Last year, it became the largest US state to require classrooms to display the Ten Commandments – a set of biblical laws some Christians believe God mandated for humans.
In April, a federal appeals court upheld the law mandating the display after a legal challenge.
