[3] The NCBCPS' proposed curriculum has been critiqued by scholars as "neither academically nor constitutionally sound" and an attempt to promote a single religious view of the Bible.
Announcing the settlement, the ACLU's Director of Litigation said in a press release that "We trust that any future curriculum will be appropriate for students of all faiths – including nonbelievers – and that it will respect the religious liberty of all Odessans.
Given that the curriculum has a sectarian nature and promotes religious viewpoints, the fact that the Bible serves as the only text makes the effect of the advancement of religion even more likely.
"[11] The syllabus of the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools has endorsed by D. James Kennedy, Bill Bright, Joyce Meyer, Jerry Falwell, John Hagee, T.D.
[13] The NCBCPS' proposed curriculum has been critiqued by scholars as "neither academically nor constitutionally sound" and an attempt to promote a single religious view of the Bible.
[3] On August 1, 2005, Dr. Mark Chancey, professor of Biblical studies at Southern Methodist University, released a report through the Texas Freedom Network detailing his concerns about the scholarly quality of the curriculum.
In particular, Chancey wrote that the curriculum "uses a discredited urban legend that NASA has evidence that two days are missing in time, thus 'confirming' a biblical passage about the sun standing still [pp.
[14] The NCBCPS responded with a press release describing the Texas Freedom Network as "a small group of far left, anti-religion extremists ... desperate to ban" the Bible from public schools.
... Why a purportedly problem-free book that had been published only five months earlier needed to be completely replaced was not explained.Robert Marus of the Associated Baptist Press Washington Bureau wrote that the revision of the curriculum "incorporat[ed] many of the changes recommended by an organization [the NCBCPS] characterized as 'anti-religion extremists.'"
[16] Writing in 2007, Chancey wrote that the NCBCPS's revised (2005) curriculum's was "an improvement" but was "still maintains a historicizing perspective that strongly reflects conservative Protestant views".
[5] In a 2007 article in Time magazine, David Van Biema wrote that the NCBCPS curriculum is not "legally palatable ... Its spokespeople claim it is refining itself as it goes and its most recent edition, which came out last month, eliminates much literalist bias—but still devotes 18 lines to the blatantly unscientific notion that the earth is only 6,000 years old."
[17] Similarly, in a 2007 editorial, the Chicago Tribune criticized the NCBCPS—citing the organization's "fundamentalist Protestant interpretation of the Bible that often ignores the differing beliefs and practices of Catholics, Jews, Eastern Orthodox Christians and mainline Protestants" and its "sloppy editing, factual errors and outright copying, word for word, from sources"—and praised the Bible Literacy Project's curriculum as an alternative that was "vetted, accepted and praised by a wide range of scholars, critics and education officials.