Secular group claims Texas 'pushing Christianity on schoolchildren' after Bible curriculum vote
State reading list includes passages from book of Job, Ecclesiastes, New Testament
Texas has become the first state in the U.S. to approve a required reading list for over 5 million public school students that includes passages from the Bible.
The State Board of Education on Friday voted 9-5 to approve the list of assigned reading, which includes everything from works by William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens to excerpts from the Old and New Testaments.
The state-mandated curriculum will go into effect in 2030.
As part of the proposed assigned reading, students in fourth grade and up are required to read at least one Bible passage per year, with recommended passages from the book of Job, Ecclesiastes 3 (“To Everything There is a Season”) and Luke 14 (“The Necessity of Humility”). Elementary student curriculum includes a picture-book version of David and Goliath from 1 Samuel 17, the Tower of Babel from Genesis 11, and Adam and Eve.
Older students will be taught selected Bible passages alongside literary classics, including the Apostle Paul’s famous discourse on love in 1 Corinthians 13 paired with Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” for senior high school students.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a national secularist group led by President and CEO Rachel Laser, called the vote “yet another example of Texas politicians pushing Christianity on public schoolchildren” and warned the vote would “misuse public schools to impose one narrow set of religious beliefs and indoctrinate a new generation of Americans in the lie that America is a Christian country.”
Mary Elizabeth Castle, director of government relations for conservative faith group Texas Values, cheered on the vote: “... If we want students to understand our American story, we have to stop cutting chapters out of the book. The process of reviewing and revising the standards ensures that accurate history is taught that will encourage an appreciation of the past and also encourage students to be informed citizens today. The revised social studies standards will determine what the next generation of Texans believe about their country and themselves.”
Calling the Bible “the most influential book in Western history,” David Closson of Family Research Council compared the move to the longstanding practice of teaching other literary classics.
“We routinely teach students the works of Homer and Shakespeare and other foundational texts because they have enduring cultural significance,” Closson wrote on X Monday. “The Bible is undoubtedly the most influential book in western history and it should not be excluded from that conversation.
SBOE member Marisa Perez, a San Antonio-area Democrat on the Republican-dominated panel, also took exception to language in the draft outline which states that curriculum will “evaluate the negative effects of the counterculture movement of the 1960s and 1970s” including “changing attitudes toward marriage” and “changes in rates of divorce.”
In a Facebook post hours before the final vote, Perez wrote: “This language forces ANY student of divorced parents to recognize their familial situation as ‘negative.’ What message are we sending to young people from homes where [had] divorce not occurred, they would be living in toxic situations? What about ANY student that is not part of a nuclear family?”
The SBOE vote is the latest move by state officials to highlight Christian principles in public schools after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed SB 10 into law in 2025, which mandated that schools post a 16-by-20-inch poster or framed copy of the Ten Commandments in every classroom.
Since then, the state law has faced a number of legal challenges in multiple school districts across Texas.
Ian M. Giatti is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ian.giatti@christianpost.com.
