Democracy Dies in Darkness

Opinion Defenders of public-school Bible class need to study the Constitution

April 27, 2017 at 6:11 p.m. EDT

A portrait of Jesus Christ is seen on the side of a dilapidated building in Princeton, W.Va., on April 14. (Wade Payne/For The Washington Post)

Regarding the April 24 front-page article "W.Va. Bible class is popular, but is it constitutional?":

One may not teach that a religion is true in a public school in the United States. A church or community group can reserve space in a classroom after school to run a program, and the school can teach the facts about all the major religions as an unbiased academic subject, but that’s it. It’s about the Constitution, and as Charles C. Haynes, founding director of the Religious Freedom Center at the Newseum, said, “Liberty of conscience is not up for a vote.” The folks in Mercer County, W.Va., who are defending their Bible class as an ethics lesson are being disingenuous and they know it. That is not something Jesus would do.

Jay Lamb, Fairfax

In a county of 61,000 residents that is home to about 125 churches, a public school Bible-study class cannot possibly be "the only chance for some of these kids to even see the Bible," as claimed by parent and resident Brett Tolliver. If Mercer County, W.Va., parents want their children to learn about the Christian Bible, they clearly have a wide variety of appropriate places to make that happen: 125 churches and their own homes.

Lisa Paschal Snyder, Owings Mills