Texas Lost Its Ten Commandments Case And Now Wants 15 Bible Passages in Public School Lessons

A federal judge blocked Texas from posting the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom last year, ruling it likely violated First Amendment protections on religious freedom. The state’s response was not to retreat. The conservative-majority Texas State Board of Education is now considering adding at least 15 passages from the Bible to a required English reading list for public school students, beginning in middle school. The push is the latest and most expansive move yet in a years-long effort to bring Christianity formally into Texas classrooms.

The proposed reading list includes passages and stories that span both testaments: Jonah and the Whale, David and Goliath, Lamentations 3, and a New Testament excerpt titled The Definition of Love are among the selections reported by the New York Times. These would sit alongside established literary works already on the curriculum, including The Diary of Anne Frank, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Homer’s The Odyssey, plays by William Shakespeare, and poems by Edgar Allan Poe. The pairing is deliberate — framing the Biblical texts as cultural literacy rather than religious instruction.

At the same time, the board has proposed expanding the emphasis on U.S. and Texas history across nearly every grade level, with a shift toward chronological instruction. The combination of Biblical passages and intensified state-focused history has drawn sharp criticism from advocacy groups and academics, who argue the changes would give students a narrow, one-sided education. The board, comprised of 10 Republicans and five Democrats, was scheduled to meet to consider the proposals — and the debate that followed laid bare just how wide the disagreement runs.

Cultural Literacy or Religious Instruction? The Argument at the Center of the Debate

Supporters of the proposed changes have been careful about how they frame them. Will Hickman, a Republican board member representing Houston who serves as the board’s secretary, told the Texas Tribune in 2024 that the Biblical stories belong in education rather than religion. “In my view, these stories are on the education side and are establishing cultural literacy,” Hickman said. His argument holds that concepts like the Good Samaritan, the Golden Rule, and the story of Moses are foundational references that all students should be able to recognize, regardless of their own religious backgrounds.

Hickman has gone further than the board’s current proposal. He has separately suggested a reading list that would remove many of the literary works already on the curriculum and replace them with additional Biblical passages, including Noah’s Ark and Adam and Eve. That version of the list narrows the cultural breadth considerably, shifting the balance from a mix of secular and religious texts toward a curriculum weighted heavily toward scripture. Critics argue that shift makes the cultural literacy argument significantly harder to sustain.

The legal line between teaching about religion and teaching religion has been tested repeatedly in American courts, and Texas has already lost one recent case on that boundary. A federal judge ruled last year that requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every classroom; A mandate passed by the state legislature, likely violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from favoring one religion over others or over nonreligion. That ruling did not slow the board’s legislative momentum. If anything, the proposals now on the table suggest the opposite.

Legal Warnings, Watchdog Groups, and a Funding Incentive That Shapes Choices

Opposition to the proposed changes has come from multiple directions. Chris Line, legal counsel for the Freedom from Religion Foundation, warned that using an official government position to direct children toward Christian religious content sends a message the Constitution explicitly prohibits. “When you use your official position to instruct children to pray ‘as taught by Jesus Christ,’ you send a message to Texas students and families that the state favors Christianity over all other religions and over nonreligion,” Line said. “This is precisely what the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment forbids.”

Academic critics have raised a different but related concern: that the proposed history curriculum changes would leave students poorly equipped for a world beyond Texas. “If adopted as written, these recommendations would essentially leave our children able to recite disconnected Texas facts, but it would really undermine their ability to understand a global economy and the role that Texas plays outside of the state,” said Rocio Fierro-Perez, political director for the Texas Freedom Network, a watchdog organization. The concern is not only about religion but about the overall narrowing of what students are taught to understand.

Woven into this debate is a financial structure that has already begun shaping school district decisions. Last year, the board voted to adopt Bluebonnet Learning, a curriculum plan that critics say infuses Christianity into education. Participation is technically optional but districts that adopt it receive $60 per student in state funding, compared to $40 for districts that choose other approved materials. That $20 gap creates a quiet but powerful incentive. Schools facing tight budgets must weigh educational philosophy against financial reality, and the state has made one side of that scale considerably heavier than the other.

A Pattern Bigger Than Texas and the Question of Where the Line Gets Drawn

Texas is not operating in isolation. Several other Republican-led states have pursued similar legislation in recent years, attempting to introduce religious content into public school environments through display requirements, curriculum mandates, or prayer policies. Each effort has faced legal challenges, and courts have largely applied the same constitutional standard: government institutions cannot promote or establish a religion. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has not been deterred by those rulings. After the Ten Commandments decision, he encouraged schools to “begin the legal process of putting prayer back in classrooms.”

Paxton’s letter to schools was explicit: “In Texas classrooms, we want the Word of God opened, the Ten Commandments displayed, and prayers lifted up.” Statements like that one make it difficult to sustain the argument that the Bible passages being proposed for English class are purely about literary or cultural education. When the state’s top law enforcement official frames the goal in explicitly devotional terms, the distinction between teaching about religion and promoting it becomes harder for courts to accept. The legal exposure for the state is real, and it is growing.

What happens in Texas classrooms carries weight far beyond the state’s borders. Texas is one of the largest textbook and curriculum markets in the United States, and decisions made by its board of education have historically influenced what publishers produce for the rest of the country. If the proposed Biblical reading list is adopted, the debate over its legality will almost certainly reach federal courts, adding another chapter to a constitutional argument that has been running for decades. The Ten Commandments ruling was not the end of that argument. It was a comma, and Texas has already started the next sentence.