State standard based on local Bible program

The committee that created the curriculum on how to teach Bible in public schools, approved by the Tennessee Board on Education late last month, leaned heavily on the program being used by the Hamilton County Department of Education.

"It was very much the Hamilton County curriculum," said state social studies specialist Brenda Ables, one of seven members of the committee that devised the curriculum standards. "We looked at what Hamilton County and Knox County had. (The final product) was a merger of those two with some tweaks and input from other groups."

Bible in the Schools, a Chattanooga nonprofit organization, has made the study of the Bible available at no cost to local public school students since 1922. Since a federal court decision in 1980, the group has offered Bible history courses as social studies electives in high schools and middle schools in Hamilton County.

The new guidelines set by the statewide committee are in response to 2008 legislation, which authorized the state to create a course for a "nonsectarian, nonreligious academic study of the Bible."

Gloria Moore, the middle and high school humanities coordinator for Hamilton County Schools and a member of the state curriculum committee, said the group had a copy of the Bible in the Schools curriculum because it was on record as having court approval.

"It just made sense to go along those lines," she said.

The ability to withstand a court challenge and the desire for students to use any translation of the Bible as the text were strong motivating factors, Ms. Ables said.

"We looked at what was out there and what was taught," she said. "We feel like we came up with a really good curriculum guide for Tennessee."

The new guidelines won't affect the program in Hamilton County because they don't require districts with existing courses to change to the new format.

Ralph Mohney Jr., president of Bible in the Schools, said he hasn't studied the new curriculum but didn't believe the local program would need to be altered.

"We don't see a need to change that curriculum," he said.

Hedy Weinberg, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, told the Tennessean newspaper that whether the classes are constitutional will depend on who teaches them and how they're taught.

In Hamilton County, teachers for the Bible course are hired by and are employees of Hamilton County Schools, but their salaries and benefits are reimbursed by Bible in the Schools.

The teachers are licensed and certified by the state.