Texas has adopted what appears to be the nation’s first statewide, mandatory reading list for public school students, centered on classic literature and incorporating excerpts from the Bible and other religious texts. The reading list has drawn national attention, mostly because it includes Bible excerpts in nearly every grade from K to 12.
Critics warn of creeping theocracy, and lawsuits are being discussed. The rhetoric is familiar. But the core claim — that reading religious texts in English class amounts to indoctrination — doesn’t hold up.
Including Bible passages by itself is not religious instruction. It’s an acknowledgment that certain texts, including religious ones, have shaped the language, stories, and cultural references students need to understand to be literate. The real threat to secular education isn’t exposure to these texts; it’s pretending they don’t matter.
I say this as someone who grew up in a Christian household. My mother was raised as a Baptist in Alabama, and my father came up in the A.M.E. church in New York. When they married, they joined a United Methodist congregation, and I was baptized and confirmed in that faith. From first through eighth grade, I attended a Lutheran elementary school, where Bible stories were part of the daily curriculum.
My mother also worked as a nurse in a Jewish nursing home and had close Jewish friends, so I grew up with exposure to Jewish culture and traditions. At different points in my life, I explored other religions. I considered converting to Judaism in college and Buddhism in my thirties.
I consider myself an agnostic theist — someone who believes a god may exist but doesn’t claim certainty. If exposure to religious texts were enough to indoctrinate a child, I would be a case study. Instead, I’m proof of the opposite: students can read religious texts without being shaped spiritually by them.
The real risk of indoctrination isn’t the list itself. It’s the possibility of a teacher blurring the line between teaching literature and teaching belief. A reading list can’t indoctrinate anyone; only a person can. The danger arises when an educator doesn’t understand — or doesn’t respect — the difference between analyzing a text and promoting a faith.
If a student is going to understand Western literature and major periods of Western history, like the Civil Rights Movement, it helps to understand biblical references. So much of the language of justice, liberation, and moral struggle in American history is drawn from scripture.
Think about the way Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke about reaching “the Promised Land” in the last hours of his life. You don’t need to be a Christian to understand that metaphor, but you should know where it originates. Biblical literacy is cultural literacy.
For many American children, Bible stories are the first narratives they encounter, often before they ever step foot in a classroom. They show up in picture books, family conversations, and the background noise of public life. Cultural idioms, political speeches, U.S. currency, and works of art rooted in Judeo-Christian tradition are everywhere. Ignoring that influence obscures its role in shaping English-language literature and American civic culture.
Texas’s list aspires to treat the Bible the same way it treats Shakespeare, Austen, or MLK: as a text that has shaped the canon. Students are not being asked to pray, memorize doctrine, or adopt beliefs. They’re being asked to read excerpts and understand how passages have influenced storytelling, rhetoric, and public discourse. That’s not proselytizing. That’s literacy.
Still, the list has blind spots that deserve scrutiny. No passages from the Koran are included, and only a single text from the Tanakh, which encompasses the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings (the Hebrew Bible), is present. The list has other gaps too — including the absence of texts by Black women, despite their central role in American literature. The absence of those voices is a legitimate critique. However, those issues deserve their own conversation. My focus here is on the claim that including religious texts amounts to indoctrination.
I suspect the deeper discomfort comes from the shifting relationship families have with reading itself. Schools tell parents that literacy depends on reading at home, while simultaneously positioning themselves as the sole experts on how reading “should” happen. Reading becomes a performance and an obligation instead of something families do for enjoyment, not evaluation. When reading feels like a test, families read less, not more.
Religious texts on the list are not the threat people claim they are. The risk has always been misuse in the classroom. Literature is not faith, and exposure is not indoctrination. If Texas wants to treat the Bible as classic literature, it should do so academically and alongside other foundational religious texts. That’s the best safeguard against the very indoctrination critics fear.