The Texas State Board of Education has approved a required K-12 reading list, the first state to mandate a common core of books for all its 5.5 million schoolchildren statewide. Such selections are usually left to individual teachers, English departments, local school boards, or a mix of all three. 

The Republican-controlled education board recently voted 9-5 to incorporate the reading list into the curriculum beginning in 2030. This gives opponents several more years to raise their concerns that have already surfaced. The central objection centers on the inclusion of one book in particular: the Bible. This book is arguably the second-most-banned book in the United States, topped only by Heather Has Two Mommies.

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Many of the biblical passages on the list refer to God, Jesus, Satan, and other divine figures. “We have a good, healthy portion of people of other religions or no religion,” said Rebecca Bell-Metereau, a Democrat on the Texas education board and former professor of English at Texas State University. “So there really isn’t, in my view, a good justification for trying to turn our public schools into Sunday schools.” 

This is precisely what Texas is not doing. It is not an unconstitutional attempt to infuse the Sunday sermon into the public school arena. Including snippets from the Bible in an overall reading list of almost 200 titles, including George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s farewell speech to West Point cadets, does not add up to Sunday school. 

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