Bible as literature in public schools.

I dislike the "Bible as literature" approach in public schools for several reasons.

First, it's most often used as a pretext for reading the gospel narratives as straightforward accounts of healings miracles etc. where the crowd exclaims at the end of everything stuff like "Who is this man?", and thus the original evangelistic intent of the gospel texts substitutes in for the evangelism of the teacher within some sort of Born-Again Christianity framework within the present day.

Second, since you do have to teach some sort of "where did this text come from?" before you begin to analyze it as literature, most often when gets taught is non-mainstream versions of the historical origins of the gospels that is essential to certain groups because it upholds using the text evangelistically (e.g. this and that evangelist are eyewitnesses, so you shouldn't doubt the miracle accounts) , so by teaching that information, you're establishing one religion over another in a public school.

That said, the conversation with the high school teacher made me re-think my opposition to "Bible as literature" courses, and I think they can work if you do certain things right:

- intro the mainstream history, however briefly.
- teach how to closely read a narrative to understand its values, narrative devices that make you side with one character versus another, what are the major categories/divisions (good/evil, light/dark, foolish/wise) and how they're employed.
- teach it beside other accounts from other cultures that include the supernatural and miraculous and morally didactic (e.g. Babylonian creation accounts, Greek myths, Aesop's fables, Buddhist texts, etc.).

That last is very important - teaching other texts that include miracles as narrative undercuts the possibility that the gospels can be used to evangelize, since the miracles that support their proclamation are matched by the miracles in the other texts.