For 70 years the Texas educational system has been offering bible courses.  Now that the legislature has signed off and made it “official,” the editors at the Austin-American Statesman are using scare tactics to shoot the concept down.  Jonathan Saenz is an attorney and legislative director for the Free Market Foundation.

“I think its absolutely clear that they want to scare people from taking this class they want to scare school districts from offering the class.

“We have pushed back the ACLU here recently who tried to attack one of these courses and the result of that was the ACLU agreed to have the bible as the main textbook in a school here in Texas.”

In fact, Saenz says there has only been one lawsuit in the past 70 years, brought by that same ACLU.

“What the Supreme Court has said is that it’s ok to have these type of courses for literary and historical purposes in a public school.”

Eric Buehrer with Gateways to Better Education says spiritual instruction isn’t the only reason to teach from the Bible.

“Professors of English are saying that students need to have a working knowledge of the bible.

“These are professors from Berkeley, from MIT, from Yale saying, ‘When students come into my class, if they don’t have this knowledge, then they’re educationally disadvantaged.”

Right now the Lone Star State is awaiting the final approval from Attorney General Greg Abbott.