NY Times Article
Macon Telegraph Article
The classes in question would be extra curricular "literature" classes using the Old and New Testament but I think anyone who has spent five minutes in this particular section of the site alone knows that even that's not so easy.
Who will these literature classes be geared to? Will they assume belief in the existance of God? It seems like calling it a literature class is just sneaky when you have people saying things like this:
I learned about the Good Samaritan Law before I'd read the New Testament and I understood it just fine. I can't think of a single topic in the bible that supports this guy's point. It's true that the bible is a nice condensed source of allegory, but it's not the only source."Kids are illiterate of the Bible," Mr. Williams said. "They don't understand the text and how it affects government or history. If we're teaching a kid what the Good Samaritan law was about, they wouldn't know."
Stuff like this bugs me because when the government takes on religion ecumenicism is immediatley called into question. I was in a multi-denominational bible study class reading the old testament and nobody running it knew a thing about Judaism. Yet here they were talking about the history of the Jews!
This was in New York and while I hate to show prejudice about the south, there are a lot more Jews in New York than there are in Georgia. (It's the heart of the Baptist Bible Belt, according to a friend even the Catholics get funny looks.) The classes might be truly comparative as they promise, but the probability is lower. This doesn't even get into which version/translation they are going to use, because even that is an issue if you're going to call it "literature" and then preach the gospel.
The ACLU is going to be all over this like a rash.
-e