Oklahoma Education Department seeks to use public money on Bible lessons for kids

While its effort to buy Bibles for classrooms is tied up in court, the Oklahoma Department of Education initiated a new vendor search to purchase materials containing Bible-infused character lessons for elementary-aged students.

The department is looking to buy supplemental instructional materials containing age-appropriate biblical content that demonstrates how biblical figures influenced the United States. Additionally, the materials must emphasize virtues, significant historical events, and key figures throughout Oklahoma history, according to bid documents published Friday.

The request for proposals doesn’t specify how many copies the state wants to buy, only that the vendor must be willing to ship directly to districts.

Like the Bibles the department sought in the fall, this request could be challenged under the state constitution, which prohibits public money from being spent for religious purposes.

“This RFP seems to be another constitutional violation,” said Alex Luchenitser, an attorney for Americans United for Separation of Church and State and one of the attorneys representing Oklahomans in the Bible lawsuit.

“It seeks to inject the Bible into public school curricula, and only refers to the Bible and doesn’t refer to any other religious texts, so it’s clearly a move to push Christianity,” he said.

The Education Department wants the character materials to align with Oklahoma’s new social studies standards, which have been revised to contain more than 40 references to the Bible and Christianity, compared to two in the current version. But the proposed standards haven’t been approved.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters is expected to present the standards to the Board of Education at its next meeting, scheduled for Thursday. It will be the first time the board meets since Gov. Kevin Stitt replaced three members. If approved, the standards will move to the Legislature for consideration.

The standards review committee included several nationally prominent conservatives: Dennis Prager of PragerU, David Barton of the Christian Nationalist organization Wallbuilders, and the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts.

While standards guide what schools are to teach, school districts have sole authority to choose curriculum and books.

In November, the state abruptly canceled a search to buy 55,000 King James Bibles, an effort that attracted criticism for appearing to exclude all Bibles except an expensive version endorsed by President Donald Trump.

Walters vowed to reissue that request, but a coalition of parents, students, teachers and faith leaders asked the Oklahoma State Supreme Court to block the purchase and Walters’ mandate to teach the Bible.

The Office of Management and Enterprise Services, the state’s central purchasing agency, also wants to wait. It asked the court for an order allowing it to delay the new Bible request for proposals until the case is resolved. Two OMES employees are named in the lawsuit.