State Superintendent Ryan Walters considers the initiative as a push for academic excellence, while critics say it violates the state’s Constitution.
Oklahoma’s top education official said Friday that the state purchased more than 500 Bibles for AP government classes as a step toward providing the religious text in every state classroom.
State Superintendent Ryan Walters said providing Bibles in Oklahoma’s classrooms would provide critical historical, cultural, and literary context for U.S. students and put the state on a path toward improved academic excellence.
“I will take every step possible to ensure Oklahoma students have the resources they need to fully understand American history,” he said in a Nov. 14 statement. “We are not going to change our history, and the Bible is a major part of that.”
While announcing his Bible program, Walters said that the Bible, along with the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights, are foundational documents in U.S. history.
“Our kids have to understand the role the Bible played in influencing American history,” he said. “It’s very clear that the radical left has driven the Bible out of the classroom, which leads to a lack of understanding of American history.”
The Bible purchases are part of a larger effort to provide Bibles and patriotic materials, including the Pledge of Allegiance and U.S. founding documents, to every classroom in Oklahoma.
This broader initiative has drawn legal challenges, with opponents arguing it violates the Oklahoma Constitution’s prohibition on public funding for religious purposes and favors one religion over others by using a Protestant version of the Bible.
A lawsuit filed by civil rights organizations, including the ACLU of Oklahoma and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which advocates for atheists, agnostics, and nontheists, seeks to block the mandate. The plaintiffs also allege Walters and the state Board of Education lack authority to enforce such a requirement.
New Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism
Separately, Walters announced on Nov. 12 the creation of a new Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism at the state’s Department of Education.
Walters said the office would protect teachers’ and students’ constitutional rights, citing a case in Skiatook, a city where Bible quotes were removed from a classroom under legal threat.
He linked the office to President-elect Donald Trump’s “Freedom to Pray” initiative and said Oklahoma would ensure that student and teacher’s rights to prayer are upheld.
Walters, who was elected in 2022 on a platform of opposing progressive ideologies and banning books with pornographic or sexualized content from schools, has faced opposition to his Bible program.
In October, a group of parents, teachers, and ministers filed a separate lawsuit challenging Walters’s policy to incorporate the Bible into public school lesson plans for grades 5–12.
The suit also targets Walters’s plan to spend $3 million on Bible purchases, alleging that it infringes on the state’s constitutional separation of church and state. Walters has dismissed the criticism, posting on social media platform X that he “will never back down.”
Amid legal challenges, Walters is pushing forward with his broader agenda, aligning the education department’s goals with Trump’s “Ten Principles for Great Schools Leading to Great Jobs” outlined in the president-elect’s Agenda 47 plan, which describes his plans for a second term in office.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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