Texas Brings the Bible Back into Schools

Leftists will scream that studying Scripture in public schools is unconstitutional, but is it really?

Carole Hornsby Haynes | July 5, 2026

In the 1963 landmark decision Abington School District v. Schempp, the U.S. Supreme Court banished Bible reading and prayer in public classrooms, ending a practice that had been commonplace since the nation’s founding.  With the State Board of Education (SBOE)’s approval of a sweeping K–12 state required literature list, Texas has now returned the Bible to the classroom.

Though teachers typically make the decision about what students read, based on a state list of suggested book titles, Texas leads the nation in issuing an established literary canon.  The SBOE has included important literary texts of around 200 Bible passages, essays, and books designed to integrate with historical events that students are studying in social studies.  Since Texas educates approximately one in 10 of the nation’s public school students, this is transformational.

Critics claim that the selections from the Bible violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prevents the government from establishing an official, state-sponsored religion.  But federal law allows public schools to teach the Bible objectively as a part of secular history, culture, or a literature curriculum. 

Critic Northrup Frye said, “A student of English literature who does not know the Bible does not understand a good deal of what is going on in what he reads.”  It is essential for students to understand biblical stories when analyzing Western literature because the Bible is a pillar of Western civilization.  Passages, moral frameworks, and narrative structures have informed the classical literary canon since antiquity. 

Some of the greatest classics........

© American Thinker