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School district to modify Bible class in Odessa, Texas

The attorney for a Texas school system calls a settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union "a great victory" for the district's elective Bible course, reports Baptist Press.

The Ector County Independent School District in Odessa has agreed to modify the curriculum in settling an ACLU lawsuit that charged the curriculum with being unconstitutionally promoted conservative, Protestant Christianity.

Part of the settlement reached between eight parents represented by attorneys for the ACLU and People for the American Way, and the school district, represented by Liberty Legal Institute in Plano, Texas, requires that a school board-appointed committee develop a new curriculum by June 1 for review by the school board, the Midland (Texas) Reporter-Telegram reported the day after the March 5 settlement.

"This is a great victory for ECISD and the community," Hiram Sasser, Liberty Legal's director of litigation, said in a statement. "ECISD will continue to offer a Bible course, it will be a curriculum of its own choosing, it may use portions of any existing curriculum as a resource, and the Bible will be the main textbook for the course."

Sasser said the committee could pull from several sources, including the current curriculum, to develop a new one that meets state standards.

Mediator Hesha Abrams of Dallas said, "With hard work, and good people working together, we were able to forge a solution that works for this community. I am grateful for the trust that the parties placed in me allowing for a creative solution."

Meanwhile, an attorney for People for the American Way, Judith Schaeffer, was quoted by the paper as saying, "The goal of the lawsuit was achieved in this settlement. This is the relief plaintiffs were asking for in the litigation."

Schaeffer added, "We will all be monitoring this."

A Texas law that took effect in September allows school districts to offer Bible courses on the Old and New Testaments if at least 15 students request it.

The school district said about 40 students are enrolled in the Bible course at two high schools.

In 2005, the Ector County board commissioned a committee to review available Bible curricula. The committee endorsed one developed by the Virginia-based Bible Literacy Project, but the board chose the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools material, which the lawsuit said was "improperly designed to promote religious instruction."

Both curricula have endorsements from evangelical Christian leaders. Southern Baptist Chuck Colson, theologian and author Os Guinness and WORLD magazine columnist Gene Edward Veith have written favorably of the Bible Literacy Project's textbook -- as have mainline Protestants, some Jewish groups and First Amendment watchdogs.

Others, such as the late D. James Kennedy and Pentecostal pastor John Hagee, endorsed the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools curriculum.

However, Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, repeatedly has said Bible courses in public school classrooms invite problems.

"It is a dangerous move to place public schools in the business of teaching about religion and the Bible. We need to ask ourselves, 'Do we really want the state to teach our children the Bible? Do we want the Bible marginalized as simply a fine history and literature text?' If teachers set out to teach the Bible objectively, how do they teach the resurrection? Inevitably, their methods would offend those who are devout Christians. Yet, if they taught the resurrection from a Christian perspective, it would offend those who are not."

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[03/16/2008]

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