Los Angeles, USA - It looks like a scene out of Sunday school: Students in a southern Orange County, Calif., classroom huddle over Bibles, as teacher Ryan Cox guides them in analyzing the relationship between God and Satan.
"If God is supposedly omnipotent, if he exists and is all-powerful, why let the serpent in the Garden" of Eden, Cox asks. "Why let him hurt Job? Why let him tempt Jesus?"
The lesson, at Aliso Niguel High School, is one of the growing number of Bible classes taught in US public schools.
There is broad agreement across the social, political, and religious spectrum, and, most importantly, the Supreme Court, that the Bible can be taught in public schools and that knowledge of the Bible is vital to students' understanding of literature and art, including "Moby Dick," Michelangelo, and "The Matrix."
But battles are raging in state houses, schools, and courtrooms over how to teach but not to preach.
As the number of these classes increases, civil libertarians, religious minorities, and others fear that Bible lessons cloaked in the guise of academics might provide cover for proselytizing in public schools.
"Theoretically, it can be taught in an appropriate manner, but it takes the wisdom of Solomon to do it," said Mark Chancey, professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Although exact numbers are unavailable, specialists agree that the number of Bible classes in public schools is growing because of new state mandates, increased attention to religion in public life, and the growing prominence of two national Bible curriculums.
Texas is the epicenter of the Bible battles. Legislation the governor signed in June set standards for such courses and could require every school in the state to offer them. Meanwhile, a legal battle in Odessa could invalidate the most widely used Bible curriculum.
Elsewhere, public high schools in Georgia will start offering state-funded Bible electives this fall. And in Riverside County, Calif., Murrieta voted in April to offer such a course in the fall.
"A lot of people thought it was one heck of a good idea," said Paul Diffley, a Murrieta school board member. "Others thought we were Satan's spawn."
Religion has a long, volatile history in the nation's public schools, even leading to killings and church burnings in Philadelphia in 1844 when Roman Catholics protested after their children were forced to read a Protestant translation of the Bible in school. Over the next century, religious education ebbed and flowed, with districts and states taking varying tacks in how they integrated the Bible into the school day.
In 1963, a landmark Supreme Court decision declared school-led Bible readings and prayer unconstitutional. Justice Tom C. Clark emphasized in the ruling that the court did not intend to discourage academic study of religion.
"It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities," he wrote. "Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment."
Despite that opinion, a 2004 Gallup poll found just 8 percent of teenagers in public school said their schools offered an elective Bible course.
A 2005 report by the Bible Literacy Project, which created a well-regarded Bible study course, found that while virtually all the teachers it surveyed said biblical knowledge was important to students' education, most felt that few students had a command of the subject.