(RNS) — A month ago, Ryan Walters resigned as Oklahoma’s elected superintendent of public instruction to head a national anti-teachers-union organization, leaving as his most notable legacy his Bible education mandate, requiring all schools in the state to teach the Bible in grades five through 12.
His legacy did not last long. Lindel Fields, appointed by Gov. Kevin Stitt to serve out the remainder of Walters’ term, promptly did away with it.
Under the mandate, Walters had undertaken to purchase 55,000 copies of the King James Version of the Bible, one for each public school classroom in the state. He also issued an order to “integrate the Bible and character education into elementary-level social studies curriculum” and solicited bids for instructional materials to that end. Two weeks ago, Fields announced that his office has “no plans to distribute Bibles or a biblical character education curriculum in classrooms.”
Walters’ actions had never sat well with Oklahoma’s top legal authorities. After last year’s election, Walters sent public school administrators an email requiring them to show students a video announcement of a new Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism in which he prayed for President-elect Donald Trump and declared that religious liberty had been attacked and patriotism mocked “by woke teachers unions.” In response, a spokesman for Attorney General Gentner Drummond told CBS News, “Not only is this edict unenforceable, it is contrary to parents’ rights, local control and individual free-exercise rights.”
The state Supreme Court, for its part, ordered Walters to halt his effort to purchase the Bibles, pending resolution of a lawsuit opposing the Bible education mandate. In a separate case, the court blocked implementation of the Bible-based social studies curriculum.
To understand the court’s actions, a little state constitutional history is in order.
Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters speaks during a special state Board of Education meeting, April 12, 2023, in Oklahoma City. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)
When Oklahoma became a state in 1907, its constitution barred public material support for religion in no uncertain terms; to wit: “No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used, directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest, preacher, minister, or other religious teacher or dignitary, or sectarian institution as such.”
That sentence remains in the constitution to this day, as Article II, Section 5.
Not that the GOP-dominated Legislature in Oklahoma City hasn’t tried to kill it off. That happened in 2016, after the state Supreme Court ruled that a Ten Commandments monument that had been installed at the state Capitol violated the provision against the use of public property to support religion. The solons of Oklahoma City, who had authorized the monument, then instituted a public referendum to get rid of Article II, Section 5. By a margin of 57% to 43%, Oklahomans voted no.
Then, two years ago, there was the Oklahoma charter school board’s approval of an application from the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa to establish a publicly funded virtual charter school, named after St. Isidore of Seville, that would participate in “the evangelizing mission of the church.” That too was shot down by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, in a decision barely upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court last June.
In its decision, the Oklahoma court rejected the claim that Article II, Section 5 is a Blaine amendment, so-called after a failed U.S. constitutional amendment that resulted in some states banning public funding of parochial schools because of anti-Catholic prejudice. To the contrary, wrote the court, “Enforcing the St. Isidore Contract would create a slippery slope and what the framers warned against — the destruction of Oklahomans’ freedom to practice religion without fear of government intervention.”
Drummond, the state attorney general, also weighed in against the St. Isidore’s funding, in the name of the First Amendment. “I think its genesis is in Christian nationalism,” Drummond told Politico’s Weekly Education newsletter. “There are believers that are confusing true religion — and religious liberty, and faith in God — with political power. And this Christian nationalism is the movement that is giving oxygen to this attempt to eviscerate the Establishment Clause.”
Drummond, a decorated Air Force combat pilot and a rancher from an old Oklahoma family, is running to succeed Stitt as governor in 2026. Can an outspoken critic of Christian nationalism win a Republican primary in that state? Maybe.
