By Religion News Service with BJC Staff Reports
After a series of challenges to the distribution of Gideon Bibles in the state’s school districts, Oklahoma’s attorney general stepped in to defend the practice.
On April 14, Attorney General Scott Pruitt sent a letter to superintendents. “Under the United States Constitution, school districts can permit private citizens to distribute to students religious literature, including bibles,” he wrote. “To allow private citizens to do so, the school should simply enact a neutral policy that allows equal access for all Oklahomans to engage their free exercise rights.”
Pruitt’s initiative comes in response to a letter that the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent to 26 Oklahoma school districts warning them that they may be violating the First Amendment of the Constitution by allowing the distribution of Bibles during the school day.
Pruitt may have inadvertently opened the public school doors to atheists, Satanists and others wishing to distribute literature to students.
Oklahoma’s Bible tussle began after a third-grade teacher in Duncan distributed Gideon Bibles to her students. In response, the Church of Ahriman, a Satanist church in Oklahoma City, has asked permission to distribute Satanist literature at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School.
When the American Humanist Association threatened to sue, the Duncan school district responded by forbidding teachers or administrators from distributing religious material to their students.
Meanwhile, Andrew Seidel, legal counsel for the Freedom From Religion Foundation, wrote to Pruitt in response: “If the goal of the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office is to allow public schools to be used to distribute atheist messages, then this is a brilliant idea.”
From the May 2015 Report from the Capital. Click here to read the next article.
