Does the ACLU agree with religious groups on teaching the Bible in Schools?

[MineralMan]

Last edited Thu Jun 13, 2019, 09:51 AM - Edit history (1)

Recently, a thread in this group quoted an author's article on the religionnews.com website. That quote said:

In its Joint Statement on Current Law and Religion in the Public Schools, the organization {ACLU} declared, “It is both permissible and desirable to teach objectively about the role of religion in the history of the United States and other countries.”

As another poster pointed out, that joint statement was made by a committee made up of representatives of the following organizations:

American Jewish Congress, Chair
American Civil Liberties Union
American Jewish Committee
American Muslim Council
Anti-Defamation League
Baptist Joint Committee
Christian Legal Society
General Conference of Seventh day Adventists
National Association of Evangelicals
National Council of Churches People for the American Way
Union of American Hebrew Congregations

So, it's sort of partly true, but note the word "objectively" in that statement.

But, here's the kicker: That limited joint statement was issued 24 years ago, in 1995.

The date was not mentioned in the original article, leading readers to think that that statement was a recent one. It was not.

Why did I start a new thread about this? Because it is an example of how bias in publications often makes what one reads on biased websites deceptive. Unless the article was carefully fact-checked, it would be easy to believe that the ACLU recently agreed with some unnamed religious groups about teaching the Bible in public schools. That the date of that joint statement was not included in the article at religionnews.com was not just an oversight. It was a deliberate omission, made to add weight to something that happened almost a quarter-century ago. My new thread was created to bring attention to that fact.

Both I and another DUer, AtheistCrusader, searched for that statement and found the information that it was 24 years old. We both posted that in existing threads here, just to make sure that people had the whole story - not just the slanted story from religionnews.com. Just because something is written on the Internet does not mean that the writing is not heavily biased and deliberately deceptive. All too often, articles posted on sites like religionnews.com do not tell the whole story. They tell just what is useful for that site to put forward.

The ACLU, indeed, believes that teaching about the Bible's impact on history and its part in our literary history is OK. That, however, is not the goal of the religious right, which seeks to, and is succeeding in, getting the bible taught in schools as a means of evangelizing students. The ACLU is unalterably opposed to that, and files several lawsuits each year to stop such illegal government promotion of religious beliefs. It is not working with religious organizations to promote religion in public schools, and never will.