Oklahoma Opens Bids For Bibles In Every School With Curiously Specific Requirements

When it comes to how you include religious texts in public school classrooms and libraries, the devil, as they say, is in the details. Want those texts of various world religions in place for secular teaching of topics they pertain to? All good! But picking one particular religion’s iconography and injecting it into public schools is a fairly blatant First Amendment violation. And if you’re one of those state officials looking to ban certain books due discussions about sexuality, gender, slavery, or violence and you aren’t banning most religious texts, including the bible, then you’re a flat-out hypocrite.

The point is that public schools are secular in nature. Any desire to put religious texts in them should be done so for secular reasons and not for the overt promotion of either a single religion or for political reasons.

And that brings us to Oklahoma and its state Superintendent, Ryan Walters. Walters decided that he wanted a bible in every public classroom in Oklahoma, suggesting it would be used due to the nature of American history and our founding fathers. I would normally simply argue about that history and talk about just how many of our founding fathers either weren’t religious at all, or were religious in a way that today’s conservative religious folks would find abhorrent (see: Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and Thomas Paine). But instead I’m going to focus more on the original requirements Walters had in the state’s RFP.

Bids opened Monday for a contract to supply the state Department of Education with 55,000 Bibles. According to the bid documents, vendors must meet certain specifications: Bibles must be the King James Version; must contain the Old and New Testaments; must include copies of the Pledge of Allegiance, Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights; and must be bound in leather or leather-like material.

Now, most bibles don’t include those other historical documents, and certainly they aren’t all bound in material best served for the interior of a car. But at least one does. And if you’ve followed politics and the news closely enough over the last year or so, you may have already guessed which one that is.

A salesperson at Mardel Christian & Education searched, and though they carry 2,900 Bibles, none fit the parameters. But one Bible fits perfectly: Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the U.S.A. Bible, endorsed by former President Donald Trump and commonly referred to as the Trump Bible. They cost $60 each online, with Trump receiving fees for his endorsement. 

Mardel doesn’t carry the God Bless the U.S.A. Bible or another Bible that could meet the specifications, the We The People Bible, which was also endorsed by Donald Trump Jr. It sells for $90. 

Was this a politically motivated move to get specifically Trump-endorsed bibles, for which he receives payment, into the public schools of Oklahoma, thereby using taxpayer funds to enrich the former President. Well, gosh golly gee, we just can’t say for certain, can we? But if that was the motivation, this is exactly the action a person so motivated would take.

Now, after many people in the state and nationally lost their collective shit over what is, at minimum, the appearance of a conflict of taxpayer interests, the state amended the RFP to make it so other, less expensive bibles would qualify. But of course that came along with Walters blaming everyone else for the concern expressed about his very, very tailored RFP.

Walters, in a Monday video on X, said the Bible will be used “because of its historical significance throughout this nation’s history,” blaming what he called the “fake news media” for lies about the program.

“The left-wing media hates Donald Trump so much, and they hate the Bible so much, they will lie and go to any means necessary to stop this initiative from happening,” Walters said.

I’m trying to picture Jesus saying this very thing and somehow I just can’t manage it.

In any case, it should go without saying that when we’re talking about introducing religious texts, paid for by taxpayers and for use in secular schools, it should be done with great care. Having a bloviating boot-licker go about it in this way ought to anger Oklahoman taxpayers, whether they are Christian or not.