Oklahoma Has a New Plan for Putting Christianity Back in the Classroom. Except It’s Not New at All.

Like the award-winning teacher he once was, the Oklahoma state superintendent of public instruction, Ryan Walters, arrived at his presentation with props in tow. Speaking to the Oklahoma Board of Education on June 27, Walters announced his controversial mandate requiring the Bible in public schools while posing with a stack of five books. Among them? A brand-new copy of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Our God Is Marching On. A copy of The U.S. Constitution: A Reader, a collection compiled by Hillsdale College professors that represents the separation of church and state as a “popular misunderstanding.” And finally, three Bibles, including a copy of The Founders’ Bible, which interleaves the religious text with Christian nationalist writings by discredited “historian” David Barton. As visual aids to Walters’ announcement, these volumes spoke volumes.

At the June Board of Education meeting, Walters justified his decision by describing the Bible as a “necessary historical document” that has inspired American leaders such as Dr. King, whose legacy conservative politicians have increasingly manipulated to their advantage. Going beyond the text of his written memorandum, which states simply that Oklahoma schools must “incorporate the Bible … as an instructional support,” Walters announced that effective this fall, “every teacher, every classroom in the state, will have a Bible in the classroom and will be teaching from the Bible.” In late July, he doubled down, issuing a set of instructional support guidelines that decree that “a physical copy of the Bible, the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Ten Commandments [must be provided] as resources in every classroom.”

Walters has leaned heavily on historically inaccurate claims that the Bible is, as he stated at the June meeting, “one of the most foundational documents used for the Constitution.” Yet Walters’ repeated insistence on a Bible in “every classroom” shows that his ideological roots lie not with 18^th-century framers like Thomas Jefferson—who placed a library, not a church, at the center of his University of Virginia—but rather with evangelical mass media organizations formed during the 19^th century. Like once influential publishers including the American Bible Society and the American Sunday-School Union, Walters understands that the power of print has as much to do with the physical presence of books as it does with the intellectual work of reading.

The American Bible Society was founded in 1816 as a national organization with a single goal: distributing the Bible. Early adoption of cutting-edge printing technologies enabled the society to produce its own inexpensive Bibles on an unprecedented scale. Buoyed by its rapid progress, in 1829 the group launched a campaign to provide a Bible to every American family that needed one—a plan the organization dubbed “General Supply.”

Two other national evangelical publishing organizations—the American Sunday-School Union and the American Tract Society—soon followed suit with similar projects. As media historian David Paul Nord has documented, combined general supply efforts of the 1830s alone resulted in the publication of approximately 1 million Bibles, 15 million religious tracts, and more than 500,000 Sunday school books.

By attempting to circulate publications “in every part of the land,” including regions where print was scarce, general supply programs provided Americans with inexpensive reading materials and contributed to the increase of national literacy rates. But 19^th-century evangelical publishers also had another, less generous goal in birthing American mass media: ousting books they didn’t like from readers’ hands.

All three national organizations hoped that mass supply of religious print would stimulate new demand. They also solicited support for their activities by fueling 19^th-century fears about the mental and physical effects of reading “improper books.”

At the forefront of this anxious politics was the Sunday-School Union, which argued that secular books including “novels” were “sweet poison” for children. For the union, whose leaders viewed the Bible as “essential to the proper training of the young,” the solution lay in publishing vast quantities of religious children’s texts and introducing them into schools—including schools unaffiliated with the organization. By doing so, union leaders believed they could “force out of circulation those [books] which tend to mislead the mind.”

Such statements advance a logic of physical replacement as much as they insist on the persuasive power of God’s word. If you could just get the right books in the same room as young readers, the Sunday-School Union reasoned, “good little books” would take up space, money, and attention that might otherwise go toward “bad books.”

This 19^th-century history raises questions about what, exactly, Walters hopes to achieve by requiring a Bible in “every” Oklahoma classroom. Because by “every classroom,” he really means every classroom.

Although Walters’ July guidelines detail only how the Bible might be incorporated into humanities instruction, he has stated in interviews that the Bible will also be integrated into the study of math and science. Walters has argued that the Bible should be taught to explain its influence on Western civilization and the history of the United States—a proposal, it’s worth noting, that mistakes the text for its reception history. But his insistence on placing physical copies of the Bible in “every classroom” indicates that the intended scope of his program is much broader, even as he has insisted that classroom Bibles are “not to be used for religious purposes such as … proselytizing.” As 19^th-century religious organizations well knew, getting religious books in as many places as possible is itself a form of evangelical activity. By implementing his 21^st-century version of general supply, Walters promises to use the Bible to occupy both valuable instructional time and the public school classroom as site.

Like the paper-obsessed Donald Trump, who inspired the June mandate and has himself published a Bible better suited for display than reading, Walters understands that books make good props for the art of hijacking attention. That he wants Bibles in the “classroom” rather than a more obvious place for books—the school library—also channels the desire of his evangelical forebears to control what children read.

If 19^th-century language about “vice-engendering, lust-influencing, and soul-destroying literature” sounds oddly familiar, you’re not wrong. In Oklahoma, Walters has joined efforts to ban LGTBQ+ children’s books and campaigned for the removal of “pornographic” material from school libraries. Walters’ Bible mandate may appear to divert attention from the state Supreme Court’s late-June rejection of a proposed Catholic charter school supported by taxpayers—an initiative that Walters supported. But the Bible mandate also follows an equally important Oklahoma Supreme Court decision made earlier in June, which checked Walters’ authority over school libraries by determining that decisions about library book selection should remain with local school boards.  Although the court shot down Walters’ attempts to wrest control over school libraries, by demanding the inclusion of the Bible in the “classroom” it seems that Walters has found a way to bypass librarians—and put children in the same room as his preferred reading—after all.

As the school year approaches, Walters has yet to answer questions about which Bible edition he would require should his plan be allowed to proceed. Hopefully it’s not The Founders’ Bible, which Barton peppers with out-of-context quotes from historical figures including Thomas Paine, a Deist who once described the Bible as a “book of lies.” Obvious legal questions aside, the presence of Barton’s Christian nationalist book at the Board of Education meeting sends a damning message about Walters’ ability and willingness to uphold basic educational standards. This message has not been lost on Oklahoma school districts, several of which have stated publicly that they will not change their curricula despite the July guidelines. In a subtle clapback to Walters, Jenks Public Schools in suburban Tulsa have insisted they will use only “approved resources aligned to the Oklahoma Academic Standards” in their classrooms.

In the wake of Walters’ mandate, advocacy organizations have stressed that “public schools are not Sunday schools.” But Walters would do well to take a cue from the American Sunday-School Union, which, for all its flaws, valued children’s “desire for knowledge” and believed, without a doubt, that free access to school libraries was of “vital importance” to the next generation’s future.