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This is not merely a church-state issue, but a theological one. If a Bible-as-literature curriculum is in fact an attempt to influence the religious views of students while purporting to be an objective account of the Bible as literature—well, it won't be long before students and teachers figure that out. That will only confirm to many minds that the Bible is a tool of the Religious Right in its attempt to take over America.

So, whether a curriculum denigrates the integrity of the Bible or uses it as an ideological weapon, the result of many a Bible-as-literature course is to tempt students, as Jesus warned, to trample the Bible underfoot—though I trust they have enough civility not to maul the curriculum's author, nor their teachers.

But my long-standing suspicion of Bible-as-literature courses was shaken when I ran across the Bible Literacy Project (BLP).

The BLP came to my attention earlier this year when the nonprofit organization published the Bible Literacy Report, in part a study by the Gallup Organization of the state of Bible literacy among American high schoolers.

First the good news. Eight out of ten teens correctly identified the Golden Rule; 72 percent knew that Moses led the Israelites out of bondage; 80 percent correctly identified Easter as associated with the resurrection of Jesus.

And then the bad: 8 percent of American teens believe Moses was one of the 12 apostles; two-thirds weren't aware that the road to Damascus was where Christ blinded Saul; 63 percent could not figure out that "Blessed are the poor in spirit" was from the Sermon on the Mount.

The researchers also did a qualitative survey of 41 of "the best" English teachers (determined by referral from colleagues, state teacher-of-the-year awards, and so on). They asked these teachers what their students knew and needed to know about the Bible.

Nearly three-fourths of the teachers believed that less than half their students were adequately literate in the Bible. One teacher put it this way: "Twenty-five years ago, I could count on more students knowing the Cain and Abel story. Knowing the Abraham and Isaac story. And knowing other allusions. For example, in All the King's Men, there's a reference to Saul on the road to Damascus. Now I'm lucky if one student knows it."

They defined a biblically literate student as one who knows the Bible as a book, is familiar with common biblical stories and popular characters, is able to recognize common biblical phrases, and can connect that knowledge in literature.

The teachers were nearly unanimous on the necessity of biblical literacy for understanding Western literature. They gave examples of biblical allusions in Shakespeare's Hamlet, Dickens's Great Expectations, Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon, and so forth. As a Wisconsin teacher put it, "It is difficult to pick up a work of literature that doesn't have some reference to the Bible."

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October 2005, Vol. 49, No. 10