On Tuesday, Ryan Walters, Oklahoma's State Superintendent of Public Instruction, announced the creation of an Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism at the Oklahoma Department of Education. Advertised as a way to protect freedom of religion, this office will impose Orwellian-like practices that trample individual choice and religious freedom.
The taxpayer-funded office will be tasked with promoting religious liberty and patriotism in Oklahoma by protecting "parents, teachers, and students' abilities to practice their religion freely in all aspects" and will also "oversee the investigation of abuses to individual religious freedom or displays of patriotism," per a press release from Walters.
Oklahoma's Department of Education has a history of ignoring the separation of church and state in public schools. Last year, a high school classroom in Skiatook removed a prominent display of John 3:16 after the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF)—an organization that advocates for atheists, agnostics, and nontheists—filed a complaint on behalf of community members.
In July, Walters unveiled guidelines for how to teach the Bible in Oklahoma schools after he had ordered the inclusion of the Bible in History curriculums just the month prior. "Every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom and will be teaching from the Bible in the classroom," Walters stated in June.
By September, during an Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting, Walters had requested a total of $6 million to purchase the 55,000 Bibles needed for Oklahoma schools. At the time, the only biblical texts that met Walters' criteria were King James Version Bibles that included the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, and U.S. Bill of Rights. The Bible was also required to "be bound in leather or leather-like material."
According to Oklahoma Watch, only two Bibles fit the original requirements by the Oklahoma Department of Education, both of which had been endorsed by the Trump family and one of which Donald Trump received compensation for his endorsement.
By October, thanks to a flood of criticism, new guidelines were released that eased the narrow requirements and allowed copies of American founding documents to be provided separately from the Bible.
Walters has called public schools "ground zero for the erosion of religious liberty across our country," and claims that this "directly correlates with declining academic outcomes in our public schools."
In the announcement, Walters also revealed that the Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism was designed to align with Trump's "Freedom to Pray" initiative and to ensure "that both student and teacher's rights to prayer are protected and upheld."
Superintendent Walters' stated goal of promoting religious freedom runs contrary to the mandate of Bibles in public schools. Instead of advancing religious liberty, as the Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism claims it will likely promote more religious intervention and state endorsement of certain religious expressions.
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