Bible in the Schools

Bible in the Schools is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit located in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that promotes biblical literacy in Hamilton County.

The organization develops curriculum, training and financial resources for elective, for-credit courses in Bible history, using the Bible as the text, taught in a controlled curriculum by trained and certified middle and high school teachers employed by the Hamilton County school system. The group works with other organizations with similar goals and consults with individuals, sponsorship groups and school districts.

Five course options are offered by licensed and state-certified teachers. Classes are for-credit and considered part of the social studies curriculum in the high schools and the Related Arts curriculum in the middle schools. The courses are non-sectarian and are taught as history and literature.

History
In 1922, J. P. McCallie, a co-founder of The McCallie School and chair of the Religious Work Committee of the Chattanooga YMCA, approached the Chattanooga City Commission to provide Bible courses adapted to the various ages from 4th grade through high school, taught by teachers selected and paid by the Bible Study Committee, and that were subject to the principals and the Board of Education in scholarship and discipline. The program was approved and later expanded into the Hamilton County Schools. In the 2020-2021 academic year, 4,615 public school students took a Bible History course.

In January 2017, two residents of Mercer County, West Virginia with school-age children, supported by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, argued in a lawsuit that the programme violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the Constitution of West Virginia. The parents of one child said that she had been ostracised and bullied by other students when opting out of the program. U. S. District Court Judge David A. Faber dismissed the lawsuit in November 2017, and said that the school was considering possible revisions to the Bible course curriculum. In December 2018, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overturned Faber's ruling, and remanded the case back to the lower court. In January 2019, the Mercer County Board of Education passed a resolution that ended the Bible class program rather than make revisions to it. The school district subsequently agreed to pay a settlement of $225,000 in plaintiffs' court costs to end the lawsuit.