What Do Democrats Fear About the Bible?

What is it about the Bible that the Democratic Party so fears? We ask because of the controversy that is erupting over the prospect that third graders in Utah could be required to learn such verses from the Bible as are “alluded to” in America’s founding documents. Plus, get this: The governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, who signed the measure, thinks it’s okay because the state won’t be using the Bible for “spiritual study.”Gawwww. The idea of the schools teaching the Bible on the condition that students don’t study, among other things, the spiritual aspect of the most spiritual of all texts is the latest absurdity being foisted on Americans in the name of secularism. And in the face of a desire by millions of parents for their children to learn something of the role of religion in public life. This may be happening in Utah, but Utah’s sentiments are widely felt.The Beehive State Bible brouhaha comes at a time of ferment in America over the role of religion in the public sphere. President Trump is getting grief for having the gall, as critics see it, to recite a passage from scripture during a livestreamed Bible-reading marathon. Texas lawmakers face legal scrutiny, too, for mandating that the bedrock text of Judeo-Christian ethics and law, the Ten Commandments, be placed in Lone Star State classrooms.In Mr. Trump’s case, liberals are fretting over his choice to read from the Oval Office a passage from the second Book of Chronicles. The AP reports that the text “carries a highly charged significance in the current religious and political climate” because it is “quoted and promoted by those who believe America was founded as a Christian nation and should be one.” Critics, per the AP, gripe that the passage is popular among so-called Christian Nationalists.Yet the passage itself was quoted by President Reagan in a 1984 proclamation. President Eisenhower, too, at his inauguration placed his hand on a Bible that was open to the passage. The purportedly alarming language, in the 14th verse, states: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”This language hardly warrants the fantods on the left over an alleged overreach of religion into the public sphere. The same could be said of posting the Commandments in schools. The riders of the United States Fifth Appeals Circuit just ruled in favor of Texas on this head. Its attorney general, Ken Paxton, avers that the Commandments “have had a profound impact on our nation, and it’s important that students learn from them every single day.”Yet the American Civil Liberties Union reckons that the Fifth Circuit’s “ruling goes against fundamental First Amendment principles.” That is echoed in Utah by critics who want to bar any public school study of the Bible, deriding it as what the Freedom From Religion Foundation calls “unconstitutional proselytizing.” Let these critics revisit the Supreme Court’s decision from 2014 in Town of Greece v. Galloway.In that dispute, the Nine, who have a depiction of Moses and his Commandments in their own Courtroom, protected prayer at government meetings. The case stands as an antidote to today’s fear of public expressions of faith. Such prayers, the high court held, “with due respect for those who adhere to other beliefs,” jibe with Americans’ views that “their own existence must be understood by precepts far beyond the authority of government to alter or define.”

What Do Democrats Fear About the Bible?

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