UPDATE (Oct. 8, 2024, 10:21 a.m. ET): After the controversy over the state’s specifications for school Bibles, the Oklahoma State Department of Education changed its criteria to allow the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights to be bound with the Bible or separately from it. It also extended the proposal deadline from Oct. 14 to Oct. 21.
A mandate for Oklahoma public schools to teach the Bible in class went into effect in August amid sharp national criticism and opposition from local school districts. This week, Oklahoma’s Department of Education opened bids for a contract to provide 55,000 Bibles for classrooms across the state, with criteria so specific as to exclude thousands of available Bibles — but not Donald Trump’s infamous “God bless the USA” Bible.
According to the state’s specifications, the Bible must be in the King James version — and must also contain the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It “must also be bound in leather or leather-like material for durability.”
As Oklahoma Watch points out, many — if not most — Bibles in the marketplace don’t fit those criteria. But one that does tick all the state’s boxes is a $60 Trump-endorsed “God Bless the USA” Bible, which began selling in March and from which Trump has made $300,000 in royalties, according to his latest financial disclosure from August. (A version with Trump’s signature sells for $1,000.)
Another Bible that meets the criteria is a $90 “We The People” Bible, which Donald Trump Jr. promoted in late 2022.
Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters, the Republican who imposed the school Bible mandate, is a staunch Trump supporter. He endorsed Trump for president last year, saying that he was “excited to see him dismantle the Department of Education.”
A spokesperson for the superintendent told The Hill that “it would be inappropriate to comment while bids are being placed” for a Bible supplier and described the process as “open and transparent” and “consistent with the norms for state procurement.”
“There are hundreds of Bible publishers, and we expect a robust competition for this proposal,” the spokesperson said. Walters has come under fire for enacting a Christian nationalist agenda in Oklahoma’s public schools through his position as state superintendent. Among other things, he has quashed LBGTQ rights in schools, pushed for book bans, denounced “critical race theory” (he said last year that teachers should tell students that the Tulsa race massacre was not about race), and appointed the creator of the far-right doxxing account Libs of TikTok to a state education committee. Walters’ mandate for Bible instruction in public schools, issued over the summer, drew massive outrage, and many critics called it blatantly unconstitutional. Several school districts have maintained that their educators will not teach the Bible in class. Walters has warned that he “will use every means to make sure” teachers comply, but it’s still unclear how his office intends to enforce that requirement, since Oklahoma school districts set their own curricula. When the Trump-endorsed Bible was announced in 2021, Paul Miller, a professor at Georgetown University, pointed out to The Washington Post one reason why many Bibles don’t include additional texts like the Constitution: “The Bible includes a passage in the Book of Revelation that says anyone who adds to the words of the Bible will be cursed, which leads many Christians to believe that adding anything to scripture would be blasphemous,” Miller said.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
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