A project to install a Bible course curriculum in public high schools is gaining steam across the United States.
The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools is promoting an elective course in which the Bible is taught as history and literature on campus, during school hours, for credit. The group's founder and president, Elizabeth Ridenour, says contrary to what groups like the ACLU claim, the course is constitutionally legal.
"We have an open door. The National Secretary of Education and the Supreme Court have said it's legal. We need to not be silent like we were in 1963 when God was removed from the classrooms," she says.
Response to the program -- not only from school boards but from the students themselves -- has been tremendous, Ridenour says. The course has become so popular that school officials have had to turn students away in some districts because they lacked enough teachers.
"This has already been voted into 236 school districts in 33 states, and we have already had 153,000 students take the course nationwide," the Council's founder adds.
The North Carolina-based organization has been enlisting the help of numerous public figures, including several popular Christian leaders and Hollywood celebrities, to bring back the Bible in public schools through the course. The one-year Bible curriculum has received numerous endorsements.
"We've had some wonderful people join our advisory board. They're also doing television commercials for us," Ridenour says. Among those well-known people involved in promoting the curriculum are television evangelists Dr. D. James Kennedy (coralridge.org) and Joyce Meyer (JoyceMeyer.org); actors Chuck Norris, Jane Russell, and Dean Jones; and military hero Captain Scott O'Grady, the U.S. Air Force pilot who was shot down over Bosnia in 1995 and avoided capture until his rescue six days later.
Ridenour says the central approach of the course is simply to study the Bible as a foundation document of society, an approach that is altogether appropriate in a comprehensive secular education program. In the course, the Old Testament is taught the first semester, and the New Testament is offered the second semester. Students who only want to take the Old Testament are allowed to do so.