Who knew? Oklahoma needs Bibles.
Lots of them. Like 55,000. That’s the scale of the request issued by Ryan Walters, superintendent of public instruction for Oklahoma. Walters earlier mandated that every public school classroom in the state be equipped with a Bible and that the Bible be taught in those classrooms.
I suspect that the citizens of Oklahoma, located squarely in the Bible Belt, might have a Bible or two lying around that could be contributed to the cause. When I wrote about what was then called the Christian Booksellers Association several decades ago, I learned that many Christian families had as many as a dozen Bibles on their bookshelves, so I imagine that the good Christian folks in Enid or Tahlequah or Stillwater could send a few to school and save the taxpayers some money.
But Walters has other ideas. His original plan asked the Legislature for more than $3 million to purchase 55,000 Bibles. And not just any Bibles.
He at first specified that they be the King James Version and include the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Pledge of Allegiance. Once reporters made the plan public, he amended it — the Bibles may include all that.