Texas has decided that 5 million children's reading lists should be written by people who think the KJV is a textbook and the First Amendment is a suggestion.

"We're going to stop watering down American history. We're going to teach the truth. Our nation was founded as a Christian nation, and Texas is a Christian state."

— Brandon Hall, Republican member, Texas State Board of Education

The Texas State Board of Education voted 9-4 along party lines on Friday, June 26th, to mandate Bible passages in the English language arts curriculum for public school students from kindergarten through 12th grade. The vote caps months of contentious debate, nearly 500 public speakers, and meetings that ran past 2 a.m. The changes will take effect in the 2030-31 school year, phased in over multiple years.

By the board's own accounting, the mandate covers approximately 5 million students. The passages span from Noah's Ark in early elementary to the Beatitudes and the Parable of the Prodigal Son in secondary school. Students as young as six will read from picture-book versions of "David and Goliath" and "Daniel and the Lion's Den" in English class. The source material for Daniel's story will be supplied by the Christian Broadcasting Network, a media organization founded by Pat Robertson.

Translation: the state of Texas has effectively turned its public schools into part-time Sunday schools and called it literature.

The curriculum's chosen Bible translation is the New Reader International Version, a simplified variant of the New International Version. Bible scholar Dan McClellan describes the NIV as a translation that "consistently, repeatedly, alters the text of the Bible in order to bring it into alignment with an evangelical worldview that does not allow the Bible to disagree with itself." There is no equivalent inclusion of Catholic, Orthodox, or Jewish scripture. No Tanakh. No Quran. No Bhagavad Gita. The reading list is overwhelmingly Christian, with no guidance on how teachers should situate these stories in historical or comparative context.

The board made this choice knowingly. It rejected alternatives that would have included diverse religious texts. It rejected amendments that would have required teachers to present the Bible as one tradition among many rather than as the foundation of Western civilization. It rejected a standard that asked students to consider "the perspectives of groups whose voices are less represented in traditional historical accounts."

Supporters argue that biblical literacy is essential for understanding English literature, American history, and Western art. In theory, they have a point. You cannot read Milton, King, or Shakespeare without encountering biblical references. The Supreme Court itself has acknowledged that the Bible may be studied for its "literary and historic qualities" as part of a secular curriculum.

In practice, the Texas plan is a masterclass in distinguishing between teaching about religion and teaching religion. The difference matters enormously, because the First Amendment draws the line precisely there.

The Bible mandate arrived alongside a sweeping rewrite of K-8 social studies standards that strips racial, geographic, and cultural diversity from state curricula. The board eliminated a sixth-grade world cultures course. It deemphasized non-European history. It removed standards defining racial segregation as "keeping people apart based on the color of their skin." It eliminated a requirement that students learn about Henry O. Flipper, the first Black graduate of West Point.

The advisory panel guiding the rewrite changed a lesson about the Ku Klux Klan that previously specified the group's violence against Black people, leaving only the Klan's hostility toward Catholics and Jews. The Tulsa Race Massacre was renamed the "Tulsa Race Riots." A lesson describing the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II initially called it one of their "contributions" to the war effort. That was amended to "changes" before the final vote, but the original language tells you everything about the editorial direction.

State Sen. Bob Hall, a Republican from Edgewood, testified that "Islam is not a religion. It is a totalitarian theocracy, not unlike totalitarian systems of communism, Nazism, and globalism." When asked whether he had visited a Muslim-majority country, he said no. The board approved a lesson requiring students to learn about the Prophet Muhammad "in the context of brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization of slavery, and the taking of female captives as harem slaves." A prior standard on Muslim contributions to algebra and astronomy was removed in April.

Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the reading list part of a broader movement to "misuse public schools to impose one narrow set of religious beliefs and indoctrinate a new generation of Americans in the lie that America is a Christian country."

The advisory panel that shaped these standards consisted of nine members, almost none of whom have Texas K-12 classroom experience. Several are conservative activists or closely affiliated with them. One panelist, Yolanda Chávez Leyva, a historian at the University of Texas at El Paso, told the board she "didn't feel that every adviser's input was treated equally." Kate Rogers, a former president of the Alamo Trust who also served on the panel, confirmed that some changes were adopted without being reviewed by all advisers.

The most brazen detail: Texas allows parents to opt their children out of the Bible curriculum. The problem is that the state acknowledged earlier this year that opted-out students could still be tested on the material. You can refuse to sit through your child's mandated Bible study, but you cannot refuse to be graded on it.

Rabbi Joshua Fixler at Congregation Emanu El in Houston summarized what educators across faith traditions are saying: "This list is full of Christian texts that are inappropriate for public school classrooms. As a rabbi and a parent of Jewish kids, I think it is vital that this board make a distinction between teaching about religion and teaching religion. This list will force teachers to cross that line."

The Supreme Court struck down mandatory school prayer in 1962 and mandatory Bible readings in 1963. The Court explicitly rejected the argument that an opt-out provision would cure the constitutional violation. The rationale was straightforward: you cannot use the state's compulsion to force children into a religious exercise, even if you give them the option to abstain. The act of being the only child in a room who does not participate in a government-sponsored religious ritual is its own form of coercion.

The Texas board is well aware of this precedent. The strategy is not to argue that the Bible mandate is constitutional. The strategy is to make it happen anyway, force parents and educators into costly litigation, and normalize the concept of government-directed religious instruction one state at a time. With the current Supreme Court super-majority, the precedents from 1962 and 1963 no longer carry the same weight. The board members know this. They are betting on it.

The broader picture connects to a national movement that has already achieved similar goals in other states. School voucher programs that funnel public money to religious institutions are now legal in 13 states. A federal initiative to seek medical records of transgender minors has pressured hospitals in blue states to drop gender-affirming care despite state-level protections. The DOJ has moved to access Pennsylvania voter lists. The Feds are rewriting immigration rules to shield corporations from forced labor lawsuits.

The pattern is consistent: identify a constitutional boundary, test it with enough political force, and count on institutional weariness to bend the line. The Texas State Board of Education is not an outlier. It is a vanguard.

What happens next depends on the strength of the legal challenges and the willingness of parents, teachers, and school districts to fight. But the signal the board sent on Friday night is unmistakable: they are done asking permission to reshape public education in the image of their own faith. The question is whether anyone else still thinks they need permission.

The founders built a system where government would not decide theological questions. Texas has just decided to decide them anyway.