Earlier in the week President Trump promoted the efforts of some states to encourage Biblical literacy courses in public schools. He tweeted “Numerous states introducing Bible Literacy classes, giving students the option of studying the Bible. Starting to make a turn back? Great!”
Biblical illiteracy is a problem. I’ve encountered intelligent editors who stumble when they come upon Biblical allusion in something I’ve submitted. “Faith without works is dead,” is an odd phrase, can we substitute, “ideas” for ‘faith? And ‘plans’ for ‘works’?” That sort of thing. It leads an intelligent reporter for the Wall Street Journal to misquote the Israeli Prime Minister. “Moses brought water from Iraq,” the dispatch wrote. A biblically literate person would have recognized Bibi’s citation of Exodus, and knew that Moses “brought water from a rock.” In a column last year, Christine Emba noted that most reporters would be more likely to recognize a Harry Potter reference than one from the Bible. The disappearance of common Biblical knowledge from our culture represents a kind of civilizational disability. Intelligent people can’t recognize the allusions and images in American speeches, literature, or art that would have been known commonly even two generations ago.
Unfortunately, I can’t think of a worse place to solve this problem than our public-school system. Teaching the Bible as literature sounds nice in theory, but the fact is that the Bible’s cultural importance isn’t just because it provides a storehouse of allusions, but because it informs the doctrines of Judaism and Christianity.
The reality of the latter means that students will very naturally ask questions about the text that public-school teachers would be forbidden to answer. Bracketing religious questions entirely from students and teachers would be like trying to teach Moby Dick without letting students discuss ideas like ambition, pride, and vainglory.
My own public-school teachers would have been ill-prepared to confront students of a variety of religions who would be more Biblically literate than they are. I happened to go to a public school with a substantial number of Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Evangelicals. All of whom would have been prepared to use a Biblical literature class as an opportunity to gather souls for their contrary readings of Christian Scripture.
There are two solutions for increasing Biblical literacy. 1) The flourishing of rigorous sectarian and parochial education. 2) Widespread religious revival.
I expect American society would prefer to become deaf and mute to the great works of Western civilization than allow either of these things to happen.