{"id":72298,"date":"2024-07-09T10:30:23","date_gmt":"2024-07-09T14:30:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historians.org\/?p=72298"},"modified":"2025-04-21T09:11:37","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T13:11:37","slug":"aha-statement-on-oklahoma-mandate-for-religious-content-in-public-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.historians.org\/news\/aha-statement-on-oklahoma-mandate-for-religious-content-in-public-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"AHA Statement on Oklahoma Mandate for Religious Content in Public Schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

The AHA <\/span>has issued a statement <\/span>condem<\/span>ning<\/span> the recent<\/span> order from Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters requiring<\/span> \u201call<\/span> Oklahoma schools … to incorporate the Bible, which includes the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support into the curriculum.\u201d<\/span> \u201cOklahoma<\/span> students deserve to learn about the complex and nuanced conversations among early national America\u2019s already diverse religious traditions, the Constitution, and the First Amendment,\u201d the statement reads.<\/span> \u201cThis<\/span> order violates that right, threatening the integrity of history instruction in public education and the basic constitutional rights of Oklahomans.\u201d<\/span> To date, 18 organizations have signed on to the statement.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Approved by AHA Council, July 9. 2024<\/em><\/p>\n

The American Historical Association condemns the recent order<\/a> from Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters requiring \u201call Oklahoma schools … to incorporate the Bible, which includes the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support into the curriculum.\u201d This proclamation invokes the authority of state government to assert that the Christian Bible had a \u201csubstantial influence\u201d on the founding generation and the Constitution, as if this were a settled question among professional historians, legal scholars, and the judiciary. This is not true, and Oklahoma students deserve history education that is accurate and consistent with professional standards.<\/p>\n

The character and extent of the influence of the Christian Bible in the Founding era has stimulated decades of thoughtful historical investigation. This order, rather than helping students participate in and learn from those conversations, inhibits their ability to understand the culture of revolutionary America and the early republic. Moreover, the superintendent\u2019s proclamation imposes a rigid and dangerously undefined assertion about the Christian Bible\u2019s \u201cinfluence\u201d into a Constitution famously lacking even any direct reference to the Bible or Christianity. Indeed, Article 6 specifically guarantees that \u201cno religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

What will this order mean for Oklahoma students? The declaration fails to recognize that many Oklahoma public schools justifiably already teach about<\/em> the Bible and its influence in both US and global history. The state\u2019s Academic Standards for Social Studies<\/a> require students to learn about the origins, beliefs, and influence of Judaism and Christianity alongside other major world religions. In this context, students consider and interpret the Bible as a historic primary source to help understand how religious principles have shaped their adherents and influenced American culture. To do so is consistent with broad and deep traditions of professional historical scholarship.<\/p>\n

But Walters\u2019s order goes far further. It demands that schools treat the \u201cBible, which includes the Ten Commandments,\u201d as \u201cFoundational Texts in [the] Curriculum\u201d to guide instruction and specifies that Oklahoma\u2019s Department of Education \u201cmay supply teaching materials\u201d to \u201censure uniformity in delivery.\u201d When presenting his order to the state Board of Education, Walters insisted that \u201cevery teacher … in the state … will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom.\u201d These requirements predict narrow and official assertions about the Christian Bible\u2019s influence in revolutionary and early national America that students may be expected to learn by rote. This \u201cuniformity\u201d precludes wide-ranging, interesting classroom inquiry into the extent, character, and role of the Bible in a new republic awash with multiple Protestant, Jewish, traditional African, Catholic, Native American, and Islamic religious traditions.<\/p>\n

The silence of the Constitution on religious matters beyond Article 6, and the provisions of the First Amendment guaranteeing no \u201cestablishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise\u201d did not go unnoticed in the republic\u2019s earliest years. The 1796 treaty<\/a> between the United States and Tripoli stipulated that the young nation\u2019s government was \u201cnot in any sense founded on the Christian religion.\u201d Writing to Baptist supporters in Connecticut in 1802 Thomas Jefferson described the First Amendment protection of the free exercise of religion as \u201cbuilding a wall between church and State.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oklahoma students deserve to learn about the complex and nuanced conversations among early national America\u2019s already diverse religious traditions, the Constitution, and the First Amendment. This order violates that right, threatening the integrity of history instruction in public education and the basic constitutional rights of Oklahomans.<\/p>\n

The following organizations have signed on to this statement:<\/strong><\/p>\n

American Academy of Religion
\nAmerican Association of University Professors
\nAmerican Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
\nAmerican Society for Environmental History
\nAssociation for the Study of African American Life and History
\nCalifornia Scholars for Academic Freedom
\nFlorida Freedom To Read Project
\nHistorians for Peace and Democracy
\nImmigration and Ethnic History Society
\nLatin American Studies Association
\nNational Council on Public History
\nNational Women’s Studies Association
\nNetwork of Concerned Historians
\nNorth American Victorian Studies Association
\nOrganization of American Historians
\nSociety for French Historical Studies
\nSociety of Biblical Literature
\nSociety for the History of Children and Youth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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