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Texas's new required school reading list includes stories from the Bible
Texas is the first state to establish such a list, as others generally give wide latitude to school districts and boards to select their own texts.
There are fourteen stories, listed in order of grade level: Jonah and the Whale (Jonah 1:1-5, 10-17, 2:10), David and Goliath (excerpt from The Children's Book of Heroes), Daniel and the Lion's Den (Children's Adapted Version), The Necessity of Humility (Luke 14:7-11), Moses (Exodus 3, 14), Do Not Be Anxious (Matthew 6:25-34), The Shepherd's Psalm (Psalms 23), Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12), To Everything There is a Season (Ecclesiastes 3), Lamentations 3, The Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32), Job (Job 1-7, 11, 14, 19, 28, 38-42), Adam and Eve (Genesis 2-3), The Definition of Love (1 Corinthians 13).
They also select a variety of translations: the New International Reader's Version, which is for a third-grade reading level, the English Standard Version, the King James Version, and the Jewish Publication Society. The ESV/KJV have their own history as evangelical texts; this is why there are so many parochial Catholic schools, though it's doubtful whether modern Catholics (who make up ~22% of Texas's population) care as much.
Teaching Biblical stories as cultural or historical texts does not violate the 1st amendment. Certainly the Bible is the most influential book in Western thought and has relevance to any serious study of literature and history. That being said, certain passages err on the side of theology and perhaps should be avoided outside of a comparative religion course. And some atheists will be disappointed that the more controversial passages have been excluded.
Is it? In 1900, sure.
But in 2026?
Do our politicians read the Bible and actually implement biblical doctrine, socially or economically? Is Christianity a major social movement in the West today? The recent pro-life moves in the US only gave individual states the ability to ban or legalize abortion, that doesn't seem Christian so much as federalist.
Sodomy is very fashionable, there are literal Pride parades. Bigamy has made a comeback with polyamory. The less said about usury, lust, greed, sloth and envy the better.
In media, any major new works of Christian art? Film? TV? Video games?
What about the Pope? Any Crusades recently? His powers to excommunicate, have they been relevant in world affairs much? Or does nobody really care if they're excommunicated, what does that say about the Pope's abilities?
The Church of England? Well the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, the King 'protects the space for Faith within the multi-faith nation' per the Palace description of the role of the Head of State. He still holds the role of being 'Defender of the Faith' but it seems fairly clear his heart is not really in it. De facto the King issues milquetoast proclamations that nobody pays much attention to:
No reference to Christ can be found in the whole 150 page document. Only in Russia, in Africa, in Latin America is Christianity taken more seriously. Defacing churches in Russia and LGBT behaviour is treated very seriously indeed.
Christianity's influence is mostly historical, like how mammals in the time of the dinosaurs were mostly tiny mouse creatures. They had tremendous influence in a certain sense. We are descended from tiny mouse creatures. There are still tiny mouse creatures around. But the tiny mouse creatures around today are not really influential and we are not really tiny mice. Even if most of our DNA is mouse there are important distinctions.
Marx is more relevant than the Bible to Western thought today, there are powerful cadres of communists, true believers (still!) Or the Limits to Growth - degrowthers and climatists have significant influence on the left and especially in Europe. They see datacentres, power plants, industry and development but unlike Christians they don't just murmur or complain about things they're against, they reach out and crush them to death. That's not to say that it would be good to teach people Marx or other bad ideologies but they're certainly more relevant.
The Bible’s influence is everywhere in our culture. The year’s biggest game so far is Resident Evil Requiem. The most anticipated launch next month is Halo, about the savior “John 117” and a covenant, flood, and ark. The most popular movie this year is Project Hail Mary. Not to mention that the Bible is essential for understanding Western music and literature before 1900. If we were thinking objectively about what readings to include in public education for the purpose of cultural literacy, easily half the readings would just be the Bible. Probably more like 80% of the readings.
It's Super Mario Galaxy: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/world/
Project Hail Mary doesn't have anything to do with Christianity thematically, it's a sci fi alien story.
Resident Evil Requiem doesn't seem to have anything to do with Christianity in the game. The word itself doesn't carry much weight.
The most anticipated game of 2026 is GTA 6, which is a pretty unchristian game thematically given it's all about shooting police, robbing people and girls in bikinis. GTA is a 5x bigger franchise than Halo too. The Combat Evolved remake isn't even a new game or a new remake (they already remade it in MCC)
The one part I agree with is that the Bible is needed to understand pre-1900 culture.
The cultural power of an iron age desert cult does not extend to a post-industrialized hyperurban internet economy. We are not shepherds, we don't give servants talents of gold to invest. We pick and choose various interpretations of biblical verses to suit our arguments at any given time, you of all people must be sick of the good samaritan being waved around as a leftist sigil. In that case, it's Christian arguments being made for fundamentally secular reasons, objectification of Christianity as a bludgeon, not actual sincere belief which would probably be smeared as fundamentalism. And it is kinda crazy to try to live by these rules in a thoroughly different society.
Ah yes, the story of Ryland Grace, the man whose existence throughout the story constitutes an undeserved favor to others and who ultimately has to decide freely whether or not he must sacrifice himself utterly in order to deliver the entire human race from disaster after they put him to death. The man whose sidekick is a "rock". Yeah nothing Christian to see here, pure coincidence. I guess the characters literally talking about God didn't lay it on thick enough.
You just think it doesn't because you are as a fish asked about water. What water?
"Forget about the industrial-scale killing of unborn children, parades devoted to sodomy and sexual deviance, pornography, breakdown of marriage rituals - the third biggest movie of the year's main character's name has Grace in it and he has to consider whether to sacrifice himself or not!'
Huh?
I confess I haven't read the book or watched the film, just skimmed the plot on wikipedia. But it's not exactly the Sistine Chapel! Looking at the themes, I see scientific materialism ranking ahead of Christian values.
The water I'm swimming in sure looks like it's about 98% iron oxide.
Go watch Mikhail Romm's Nine Days in One Year or Klushantsev's Road to the Stars and come back and tell me Project Hail Mary is a story of scientific materialism over Christian values.
Personal drama about redemption, survival and self sacrifice don't suddenly become something else because they drape themselves in soft-scifi technobabble.
Nor, frankly, does cultural influence work in the sort of all or nothing way you seem to imply. Post-Christian cultures are still determined by Christianity in the same way that post-Roman cultures are still determined by Roman influence. Cultural power reaches far further than naive notions of theocratic imposition, that it is a loose binding makes it no less scary a binding: rejection of the frame is still in the frame.
The Japanese routinely make stories that contain no Christian influence, but they're only able because it's not a core part of their civilization. Westerners don't have this luxury. The secular world you might want to see as separate does not contain a lot of mythic alternatives for artists to draw from. Either because the Catholic Church removed them in the high middle ages or because like Marxism they're themselves successors of Christian mythologies.
So Piss Christ is Christian art then? As far as I'm concerned, it's an insult dressed up as art. Defacing a Koran isn't Islamic art, no muslim would think that, they'd get really angry about it. Marxism may descend from Christianity in some respects but Marxists hate Christianity and work around the clock to undermine and suppress it as shown from when they get any scrap of power and usually start killing nuns and closing churches. It's not really Christian. Is /r/atheism Christian? Many users were Christian at one point. But it isn't a Christian website.
Cultural power is a kind of power, it has an effect on the world. Where is Christianity's cultural power? Are we getting new words from Christianity? Or just a sea of old words, old words that people can barely define anymore? Prelate, deacon, abbott, cardinal - even educated people might not know what they mean. When's the last time anyone went to a conventicle?
Power is about making things happen. What has Christianity made happen recently? You're saying that everything in Western civilization is drawn from Christianity in some respect and alluding to extremely broad ideas like redemption, survival and self-sacrifice (notably shared by other cultures that never heard of Christ). But what specifically has happened recently as a result of this power, tangibly? Gay marriage, pride parades, a tonne of porn everywhere, women wandering around with buttocks visible through some skimpy hot pants, a fountain of materialist greed in everyone's social media, gluttony, envy, sloth, revenge and more aborted kids in the last 60 years than died in every war in human history?
Where is the cultural power going exactly, what is it doing?
There are no live controversies about saying the lord's name in vain, only saying 'nigger'. What does that say about cultural power?
Christianity doesn't even measure up to long-dead religions in this respect. Drawing from pagans today: Age of Mythology, Titan Quest, God of War, Hades, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Jotun, Northgard, and The Banner Saga. Valheim. The Pharoah Series. The Witcher.
Drawing from Christianity today: Darksiders, Diablo and Dante's Inferno + maybe the Binding of Isaac which is anti-Abrahamist.
Both pale in comparison to thematically modern stories about man and technology which gives us huge rich veins of sci-fi, robots, ray guns, flying machines, totalitarian states.
What else could it possibly be? Iconoclasm is still, ultimately, a form of respect for the power of the idol. True contempt is indifference.
Since 2024 even Richard Dawkins calls himself a Cultural Christian. All the parts of New Atheism that aren't ex-muslim apostates are so pretty much. And Old Atheism was so self evidently.
No, it's also about making things not happen. Which is mostly what cultural victory is about. Long settled arguments about things you don't even think about like whether children owe anything to their parents, whether individuality has any value, whether you should obey the law or your own internal morality first or whether humans can be property.
People say Tradition has no power, and then go on to not do all the things Tradition managed to eradicate.
Where is the power of Christianity? In that a lot of the things you list as contrary to its doctrine are still viewed as either outright sins or objects of moral debate. A civilization without this influence simply does not ask such questions.
It is waning though, you are right about that. Time makes everything diminish. And Western civilization is old now and far into its second barbarism. But just because power wanes doesn't mean it ceases to exist as a factor. The Romans still have eminent effects on us down to how we record time itself, never mind half of the world's laws.
Almost none of these are actual pagan stories full of pagan virtue though. They're Christian subversions. God of War was almost so explicitly.
The stories that actually extol pagan values are few and far between, and almost all of them are products of Nietzscheans like Milius or Coppola who are still haunted by the corpse of God despite their best efforts to transcend him.
To be the most valiant opponent of something is to be its strongest proponent. Someone who isn't irremediably a son of Abraham would simply not think about him at all. Not make endless art about his mythology.
Gaze into the Abyss and it gazes back into you. Black Sabbath is Christian Rock.
Which are all still derived from a cultural substrate. A setting is nothing but set dressing for themes. Which are in turn simply expressions of a worldview. All art is propaganda for something as Orwell famously said.
The Soviets had scifi stories that weren't about Christian themes, or at least not so directly since those values were still filtered through Marxism and irrigated by non-western cultural input like Cosmism. Even China today exports award winning scifi that works from its own cultural lens.
But the West can't run away from its own shadow. It is futile to try.
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