Christian Religious appropriation in Texas

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Editor’s Note: The Texas State Board of Education voted 8-7 on Friday to approve the controversial “Bluebonnet” curriculum, which offers public schools Bible-infused lessons.

Rabbi Neil Blumofe, dressed in a dark suit and white cowboy hat, was standing near dozens of worshippers — one shouting “In Jesus’ name!,” another carrying a Christian flag, someone else blowing a shofar — in a scene that could easily have been confused for a Pentacostal tent revival.

But it was actually a gathering in the lobby of a Texas state office building in downtown Austin ahead of a vote by the state board of education. Blumofe was not surprised by the scene. “It’s not my first rodeo,” said the rabbi of Congregation Agudas Achim, a Conservative synagogue with 700 families.

The clash of religion and pedagogy took center stage this week as Texas decides whether or not to incorporate a controversial curriculum that would offer public schools Bible-infused lessons, with a strong emphasis on Christianity — and a strange fascination with Queen Esther.

What’s in the Bluebonnet curriculum?
The curriculum, known as Bluebonnet Learning and developed by the Texas Education Agency, first made headlines in the spring, when it was introduced for public feedback. It immediately drew criticism for prioritizing Christianity at the expense of other religions, including inaccurate Jewish content and devoting little attention to Islam. (A brief mention of the Prophet Muhammad was added to a revised draft.)

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that teaching the Bible in public schools is allowed, as long as it doesn’t cross into mandatory religious activity, which would be a violation of the First Amendment. Texas’ Bluebonnet curriculum uses Bible stories not to teach about religion, though, but for lessons in art appreciation, math, poetry and other subjects. For example, a fifth grade unit on the Renaissance teaches about Jesus and his disciples as part of instruction on Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper.

“The authors appear to go out of their way to work detailed Bible lessons into the curriculum even when they are both unnecessary and unwarranted,” said David Brockman, a religious studies scholar who reviewed the curriculum. “They look like excuses for the student to do Bible study.”

In a unit teaching kindergartners how to place events in chronological order, Bluebonnet uses the story of God establishing the world in six days — creating light on the first day and humans on the last — as a sequencing task.

“This is a lot of weaving in of Christianity where it doesn’t really belong,” said Sharyn Vane, a Jewish parent of two Texas public school graduates who spoke at a September hearing against the curriculum. This mixing of faith and fact is likely to confuse the “youngest, most impressionable learners,” she said. “They’re not going to be able to make that distinction. They’ll say, ‘This is how the world was created. This is what we talked about in school.’”

The fascination with Queen Esther
The proposed second grade Bluebonnet curriculum has a unit called “Fighting for a Cause.” There are 14 sections; two of them focus on Queen Esther. The others are about historical figures, including Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Cesar Chavez and William Penn.

The Esther sections are used to teach, among other things, reading comprehension — “fasted” means someone “did not eat for a period of time, sometimes for religious reasons” — and writing, including asking the students to compose a free verse poem about the Jewish queen.

In a section teaching the meaning of the words “perish” and “plot,” students are told about Haman who, in the Old Testament, used a lottery system to determine what date to murder all of Persia’s Jews. In the original draft of this lesson, students were told to roll a dice to see if their number was chosen. “It just feels really problematic that you would have elementary schoolers reenacting this,” Vane said. “You wouldn’t have people do a slave auction, or have kindergartners pretend to be Hitler.”

Another section told the story of how Mordechai could not bow down to Haman because it was prohibited by Jewish law. “This is demonstrably false,” said Mark Chancey, a professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, who found several errors in the curriculum. “You basically had this lesson making up a new commandment in the Torah.”

After complaints from Chancey, Jewish parents and others, the dice-rolling game and the made-up mitzvah were ultimately removed from the final version of the curriculum being voted on this week. In the section on historical figures, the word “historical” was removed. But other Esther references remain, often with glaring mischaracterizations.

One unit frames the Esther narrative — which took place centuries before Jesus — as a heroine fighting so her people are “free to practice their religion without being harmed by her country’s government.” In this telling, Haman targets the Jews because of a xenophobic aversion to different customs. “What is at stake in the Book [of Esther] is Jewish survival,” Chancey said, “not freedom of religious practice.”

Bluebonnet also refers to Esther’s faith in God. But, Chancey pointed out, “the Book of Esther famously does not even include the word God,” adding that “they are just adding content, adapting the lesson for a particular political agenda and imposing particular religious interpretations on this lesson.”

While Christian appropriation of Queen Esther’s story is not new — VeggieTales, the Christian cartoon series, aired an Esther episode back in 2000 — there is a renewed focus on the heroine. “This comes at a time when, in some evangelical circles, Esther is being appropriated for particular ideological ends,” said Chancey.

During this year’s presidential election, Christian activists invoked the story of Esther, most notably at a D.C. rally called “A Million Women: an Esther Call to the Mall,” which drew tens of thousands. Inspired by Esther’s courage to speak up, they were calling on modern-day Esthers to stand up against issues like abortion and transgender rights.

The group behind Project 2025, the controversial blueprint for a second Trump administration, released a plan to counter antisemitism that’s called Project Esther. The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind the plan, said it worked with 57 Jewish organizations on the 33-page document, but several of the groups listed said they played no part in the process. It was instead drafted by a coalition made up largely of evangelical Christian groups.

The Lord in the Lone Star State
The authors of the Bluebonnet curriculum, like the Bible itself, are somewhat shrouded in secrecy. The work was contracted as part of a pandemic-era order, with usual state requirements for transparency waived.

The 74, a nonprofit news outlet covering education issues, reported Monday that Texas outsourced the work to many companies — including Espired, a conservative publishing house co-founded by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Last week, President-elect Donald Trump tapped Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister and evangelical hardliner, to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel.

“The problem is Texas is underfunding our schools,” said Courtney Toretto, who works for the Anti-Defamation League and whose five-year-old daughter, Charley, is a student in the Austin public school system. “This is a big incentive for schools that are already cash strapped.”

The Bible-infused Bluebonnet curriculum is just the latest step Texas is taking to bring religion into taxpayer-funded schools. A 2021 law requires public schools to display all “In God We Trust” posters that are donated to them. A 2023 law allows unlicensed religious chaplains to offer mental health counseling at public schools. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has vowed to push for legislation in 2025 that would require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom in Texas, following a similar requirement in Louisiana, which has been blocked by a federal judge.

“The context of what this curriculum comes into is not a vacuum,” said Vane. “We see a lot of efforts to elevate Christianity and blur that line in the separation between church and state.”

More empathy, less favoritism
Chancey, a United Methodist, said he got into the field of religion and education because he was concerned about the experiences that Jewish children were having in public schools. “If the public school can play religious favorites,” he said, “then my tradition might benefit this week and be demonized next week.”

Many ministers testified against Bluebonnet in front of the board of education in September and again this week. “Christians differ theologically among themselves,” said Chancey, who also works with Christians Against Christian Nationalism. “The schools might not teach the Bible stories the way that parents would like.”

Rabbi Blumofe emphasized the importance of empathy in remarks he gave Monday on the steps of the state office building, forced to relocate from the lobby because of the group praying inside. “Let us teach citizenship, compassion, confidence, and inquiry in our classrooms,” he said. “And yet, let us neither sleepwalk nor strut in this time of great confusion and divisiveness in our world. We can do well by our students — teaching a narrow view of God’s word is not the answer.”

'It left scars’
Brockman, who is Episcopalian, was invited to speak about the curriculum at a Dallas synagogue, where he described being bullied growing up. “It left scars,” he said. “I think that what we’re seeing here is actually a minority group of Christians attempting to force their religious perspective and using the levers of power to essentially lord it over all the rest of us, those of us who are not evangelical Christians, and those who are not Christian and not religious either. For me, this is just another form of bullying.”

Toretto of the ADL also testified in front of the school board this week. “We put together a team and combed through the curriculum,” said Toretto. “We’ve been training parents, grandparents and potential future parents [on] the difference between teaching about religion and teaching religion.”

She added: “This does a real disservice to Texas school kids. They deserve a strong, unbiased taxpayer-funded education system, and that is not what they’re getting with this curriculum.”

Toretto grew up in Orange County, California, and attended a school where she was one of the few Jewish students. “I was told I was not going to heaven,” she recalled. “I was told I was going to be left behind. And right now, my child is very proud of being Jewish, and a curriculum like this can take that away from her and make her feel that she’s so different, that she doesn’t fit in.”

As the Texas State Board of Education prepared to vote last month on whether to allow public school districts to opt in to a new elementary school curriculum featuring Bible-based lessons, board member Staci Childs asked her pastor for prayer.

“I’d think that learning some things about the Bible on a historical account is not necessarily bad. But if I’m saying less Christianity, what kind of Christian am I?” Childs said last week. “This was conflicting for me.”

The material won narrow approval in a Republican-led 8-7 vote, although three Republican members, including Childs, joined the four Democrats on the board in opposition.

“In the law, there is a clear separation of church and state,” Childs, an attorney who represents the Houston area on the board, said of her decision.

If the constitutionality of mixing religious doctrine with public school education had seemed to be largely decided, with U.S. Supreme Court rulings in the 1960s and ’80s limiting how religious activity and teachings can be enforced, a wave of new laws and mandates in states, particularly in the South, is stirring debate and testing the bounds of what may be legally permissible.

Officials, educators and parents in those states are now being confronted by what, if any, amount of religious-infused lessons they want children to have access to at a time when many conservative Christians have been emboldened by President-elect Donald Trump and embraced the ideology of Christian nationalism, which considers the Bible a key facet of America’s history and tradition.

“Bible wins in Texas!” Jonathan Saenz, president of Texas Values, a conservative and religious think tank, posted on X after the school board’s curriculum vote. “Liberal efforts to Target, Deny & Ban the Bible’s influence on English literature/history FAILS!!”

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, responded on X that the approval of the curriculum, known as the “state-developed” Bluebonnet Learning, “will ensure all students are receiving appropriate grade-level instruction and is an important step to boosting student outcomes statewide.”

School districts won’t be forced to introduce the curriculum in their kindergarten through fifth-grade classrooms, but if they choose to do so, they would earn a financial incentive of $60 per child beginning next year.

While the material itself mentions other religions, including Judaism and Islam, the Bible-related lessons and Christianity are more prominent, said Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. That’s problematic, he added.

“When a public school plays religious favorites by emphasizing Christianity more than any other tradition, and by teaching about Christianity in a way that’s likely to promote encouragement of Christianity’s religious claims, then that violates all of our religious freedom,” Chancey said on NBC News Now.

Although the material is optional, Childs believes it may still be challenged in court.

Litigation is already playing out in other states that have recently adopted Bible-based rules in schools.

In Louisiana, a law set to go into effect on Jan. 1 that would require all public K-12 schools and colleges to display posters featuring the Ten Commandments was temporarily blocked after a group of parents sued in federal court. The state is appealing and arguments are expected in January.

This year, Oklahoma’s top education official began ordering public schools with students in grades five through 12 to incorporate the Bible into lesson plans. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters, a Republican, has purchased 500 Bibles and asked for $3 million from the state to buy copies for every classroom.

A group of parents filed a lawsuit in October challenging the state, arguing the mandate violates the Oklahoma Constitution.

Plaintiff Erika Wright, the founder of the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition and a mother of three children, said the state, which is consistently at the bottom of nationwide educational rankings, needs to prioritize the basics and leave discussing religion to families at home.

“Public school is not Sunday school,” Wright said.

Walters has suggested teachers who don’t want to comply may lose their licenses.

In a recent interview with NBC News, the former high school history teacher said he believes the requirements would “absolutely” hold up if the litigation were to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority.

“We want our kids to understand American exceptionalism, what made America great,” Walters said, adding: “You can be offended by Christianity, you can not agree with Christianity, but that doesn’t give you the right to take Christianity out of American history. And that’s what we’ve seen the left do.”

State officials like Walters have relied on national Republican leaders to show support for their initiatives. Trump on social media endorsed Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law as the “first major step in the revival of religion,” while last year, House Speaker Mike Johnson decried people’s understanding of the separation of church and state as a “misnomer,” saying on CNBC after he had prayed on the House floor that the founders “did not want the government to encroach upon the church — not that they didn’t want principles of faith to have influence on our public life. It’s exactly the opposite.”

While the words “separation of church and state” are not written explicitly in the Constitution, legal scholars say the phrase refers to the establishment clause in the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from validating an official religion or favoring one over another.

Joshua Blackman, a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, said public schools that explicitly teach how Christianity or any religion is the “one true faith” will fall afoul of the Constitution. But, he said, arguments could be made that “passive” actions, such as having a Bible in the classroom or the Ten Commandments on the wall, could be viewed as acceptable if “you don’t have to do something with it.”

Rachel Laser, the president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit advocacy organization supporting the lawsuits in Louisiana and Oklahoma, agreed that teaching about the Bible or religion has a place in the correct context. Older students, she said, can question and discern what they are taught, but younger students are more impressionable.

“There’s nothing wrong with teaching a comparative religion class,” Laser said. “It’s a problem when you teach one religion as truth or give preference, including preference of religion over nonreligion.”

Meanwhile, lawmakers and school officials in other states are reviewing religion-related proposals that may not be considered as extreme as requiring Bibles in classrooms but are still drawing scrutiny.

A bill being debated in Ohio could mandate that all school districts make policies allowing for students to be released during the school day for religious instruction.

In Florida, school boards are considering whether to allow volunteers to serve as chaplains or religious representatives for willing students after a law was passed this year.

Childs, the Texas State Board of Education member, sees the current push for increased religious influence in public schools as concerning, as it comes amid a dialing back of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at companies and institutions.

Wanna have some real fun? Teach you child to recite Ezekiel 23:18-21 and see what the schools do then. Look it up in the Bible so see what I mean.