The Oklahoma Supreme Court has temporarily blocked the state’s superintendent from purchasing Bibles for school classrooms.
Superintendent Ryan Walters had intended to purchase more than 50,000 Bibles for fifth through 12th-grade classrooms.
The ruling was viewed as a victory for the plaintiff’s representatives, the Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Oklahoma Foundation, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, and Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law & Justice.
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The organizations said in a joint statement that the ruling was an “important step toward protecting the religious freedom of every student and parent in Oklahoma. Superintendent Ryan Walters has been abusing his power and the court checked those abuses today. Our diverse coalition of families and clergy remains united against Walters’s extremism and in favor of a core First Amendment principle: the separation of church and state.”
Walters recently announced a partnership with singer Lee Greenwood to develop a program allowing the public to donate Bibles to classrooms.
The effort is designed to bring back “foundational texts into the educational system, emphasizing their historical and cultural significance,” a press release on the partnership says. The initiative further underscores a “commitment to providing students with access to materials that offer profound historical context.”
Walters said in a statement that the “Bible is indispensable in understanding the development of Western civilization and American exceptionalism, history, and all similar subjects. The ongoing attempts to remove it from our classrooms is an attack on the foundation of our country.”
We’re bringing Bibles back to classrooms — honoring their role in shaping American history, law, and culture.
— Superintendent Ryan Walters (@RyanWaltersSupt) March 6, 2025
Thank you, @TheLeeGreenwood for standing with us to give students access to this foundational text. Let’s get back to the basics! pic.twitter.com/DwVWatxsJo
This article originally appeared on American Faith, and is reposted with permission.
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