Jennifer Palmer, Oklahoma Watch
February 21, 2025
Reading the Bible (Shutterstock)
While its effort to buy Bibles for classrooms is tied up in court, the Oklahoma Department of Education initiated a new vendor search to purchase materials containing Bible-infused character lessons for elementary-aged students.
The department is looking to buy supplemental instructional materials containing age-appropriate biblical content that demonstrates how biblical figures influenced the United States. Additionally, the materials must emphasize virtues, significant historical events, and key figures throughout Oklahoma history, according to bid documents published Friday.
The request for proposals doesn’t specify how many copies the state wants to buy, only that the vendor must be willing to ship directly to districts.
Like the Bibles the department sought in the fall, this request could be challenged under the state constitution, which prohibits public money from being spent for religious purposes.
“This RFP seems to be another constitutional violation,” said Alex Luchenitser, an attorney for Americans United for Separation of Church and State and one of the attorneys representing Oklahomans in the Bible lawsuit.
“It seeks to inject the Bible into public school curricula, and only refers to the Bible and doesn’t refer to any other religious texts, so it’s clearly a move to push Christianity,” he said.
The Education Department wants the character materials to align with Oklahoma’s new social studies standards, which have been revised to contain more than 40 references to the Bible and Christianity, compared to two in the current version. But the proposed standards haven’t been approved.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters is expected to present the standards to the Board of Education at its next meeting, scheduled for Thursday. It will be the first time the board meets since Gov. Kevin Stitt replaced three members. If approved, the standards will move to the Legislature for consideration.
The standards review committee included several nationally prominent conservatives: Dennis Prager of PragerU, David Barton of the Christian Nationalist organization Wallbuilders, and the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts.
While standards guide what schools are to teach, school districts have sole authority to choose curriculum and books.
In November, the state abruptly canceled a search to buy 55,000 King James Bibles, an effort that attracted criticism for appearing to exclude all Bibles except an expensive version endorsed by President Donald Trump.
Walters vowed to reissue that request, but a coalition of parents, students, teachers and faith leaders asked the Oklahoma State Supreme Court to block the purchase and Walters’ mandate to teach the Bible.
The Office of Management and Enterprise Services, the state’s central purchasing agency, also wants to wait. It asked the court for an order allowing it to delay the new Bible request for proposals until the case is resolved. Two OMES employees are named in the lawsuit.
This article first appeared on Oklahoma Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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'Not the greatest pick': 'Religious row' reportedly ignites over Trump's new appointment
Erik De La Garza
February 21, 2025
A Crucifix and an American flag stand at St Mary's Church in Champlain, a town at the Canada-U.S. border between the U.S. state of New York and the Canadian province of Quebec, in Champlain, New York, U.S., January 22, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Osorio
A disagreement in conservative Christian circles being described as a “religious row” has broken out over President Donald Trump’s re-appointment of the evangelical Rev. Paula White-Cain to head the White House Faith Office, according to a new report.
That decision set off a flurry of criticism among the Christian far-right – with naming-calling, second-guessing and accusations of potentially incriminating videos on the horizon – flying from religious leaders angry at the pick.
Right-wing megachurch pastor Doug Wilson, an influential Trump supporter, described White-Cain to Religion News Service as an “erratic woman preacher who has been all over the map.”
“It’s not the greatest pick in the world,” he told the outlet, adding that she was “the kind of person that embarrassing video footage can be rolled out almost at will.”
His remarks are just the latest in a series of blowbacks set off just after Trump announced earlier this month that the Faith Office would once again be run by White-Cain, who Religion News Service said has been “long regarded as Trump’s closest religious adviser.”
“Unlike critiques from Trump and White-Cain’s numerous liberal detractors, the latest round of criticism has pitted prominent Pentecostal and charismatic Christians such as White-Cain, who have made up an important part of Trump’s evangelical Christian base, against a cadre of conservative Calvinists — including a subset influential among some of Trump’s advisers and cabinet members,” according to the religious outlet.
Matthew Taylor, a scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies who has studied the influence of charismatic Christianity on Trump, told Religion News Service that while White-Cain faced opposition during Trump’s first term from moderate evangelicals uncomfortable with Pentecostalism, “this time the fight is more of a ‘sibling rivalry’ between different factions of the ‘Christian far-right.’”
“Paula White and her circle truly dominate the Trump advisory circles, the evangelical advisory circles,” Taylor told Religion News Service. “Now you have these kind of natalist, radical traditionalist Catholics that see an avenue to power through JD Vance, and you see these kind of Reconstructionist Calvinist-types who see an avenue through Pete Hegseth and maybe Russ Vought. So now there’s real power and policy in play.”
White-Cain served in the same position toward the end of Trump's first term and was among the speakers at the "Stop the Steal" rally on Jan. 6, 2021, before a mob of MAGA rioters attacked the Capitol.
Erik De La Garza
February 21, 2025
A Crucifix and an American flag stand at St Mary's Church in Champlain, a town at the Canada-U.S. border between the U.S. state of New York and the Canadian province of Quebec, in Champlain, New York, U.S., January 22, 2025. REUTERS/Carlos Osorio
A disagreement in conservative Christian circles being described as a “religious row” has broken out over President Donald Trump’s re-appointment of the evangelical Rev. Paula White-Cain to head the White House Faith Office, according to a new report.
That decision set off a flurry of criticism among the Christian far-right – with naming-calling, second-guessing and accusations of potentially incriminating videos on the horizon – flying from religious leaders angry at the pick.
Right-wing megachurch pastor Doug Wilson, an influential Trump supporter, described White-Cain to Religion News Service as an “erratic woman preacher who has been all over the map.”
“It’s not the greatest pick in the world,” he told the outlet, adding that she was “the kind of person that embarrassing video footage can be rolled out almost at will.”
His remarks are just the latest in a series of blowbacks set off just after Trump announced earlier this month that the Faith Office would once again be run by White-Cain, who Religion News Service said has been “long regarded as Trump’s closest religious adviser.”
“Unlike critiques from Trump and White-Cain’s numerous liberal detractors, the latest round of criticism has pitted prominent Pentecostal and charismatic Christians such as White-Cain, who have made up an important part of Trump’s evangelical Christian base, against a cadre of conservative Calvinists — including a subset influential among some of Trump’s advisers and cabinet members,” according to the religious outlet.
Matthew Taylor, a scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies who has studied the influence of charismatic Christianity on Trump, told Religion News Service that while White-Cain faced opposition during Trump’s first term from moderate evangelicals uncomfortable with Pentecostalism, “this time the fight is more of a ‘sibling rivalry’ between different factions of the ‘Christian far-right.’”
“Paula White and her circle truly dominate the Trump advisory circles, the evangelical advisory circles,” Taylor told Religion News Service. “Now you have these kind of natalist, radical traditionalist Catholics that see an avenue to power through JD Vance, and you see these kind of Reconstructionist Calvinist-types who see an avenue through Pete Hegseth and maybe Russ Vought. So now there’s real power and policy in play.”
White-Cain served in the same position toward the end of Trump's first term and was among the speakers at the "Stop the Steal" rally on Jan. 6, 2021, before a mob of MAGA rioters attacked the Capitol.
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