Austin, USA - A Texas-based religious freedom advocate claims a course of study on the Bible is sectarian and error-filled and shouldn't be offered in public schools.
The Texas Freedom Network, which says it's a watchdog "monitoring far-right issues, organizations, money and leaders," said in a release Monday the Bible course "is a sectarian document."
The course put together by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools is offered in some 312 school districts in 37 states, with 175,000 students enrolled, The New York Times said. The group told the newspaper the course "is concerned with education rather than indoctrination of students."
The council said the plan is to look at the Bible as a "fundamental document of society," which it says is appropriate with a secular education.
TFN, however, cited a report it commissioned from Southern Methodist Professor Mark Chancey as saying: "It attempts to persuade students within certain conservative Protestant circles but not among most Roman Catholics, other Christians and Jews and certainly not within the scholarly community."