Thursday, members of the Senate Education Committee heaped praise on a bill creating a new elective Biblical literacy course for Kentucky high school students.
If enacted, Senate Bill 278 would clear the way for an optional high school social studies class focusing on the cultural influence of the Old or New Testaments, or both, with an eye toward the books' impact on history, law, and government.
"It's inextricably intertwined with our history and therefore [we] should be able to discuss it freely in the historical context that it is," sponsor Grayson Democrat Robin Webb told reporters.
The state Department of Education would be tasked with developing guidelines that ensure religious neutrality in the class and prohibit teachers from endorsing or showing hostility toward any particular "faith or nonreligious faith." Students could opt for the course starting the ninth grade if a school-based decision making panel approves.
Asked if the measure would allow instructors to teach events in the Bible as historical fact, Webb said, "Well, I take the Bible as a fact, and that would be up to the individual and how they interpreted the teaching of the text of the document in its historical context."
As to whether that might include miracles or other supernatural events depicted in the Hebrew scriptures, she said the class would not include any "Sunday School type of teaching."
Similar bills have cleared the Senate in the past. Webb's version won unanimous support in committee.
