Whose Bible, Whose History, Whose Texas? When Curriculum Becomes a Civilizational Project by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. August 23, 2026

Whose Bible, Whose History, Whose Texas? When Curriculum Becomes a Civilizational Project

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

August 23, 2026

State Board of Education member Julie Pickren prays during the invocation before a meeting on social studies standards at the Barbara Jordan Building in Austin on Friday, June 26, 2026. The board is considering revisions that would place greater emphasis on Christian history and biblical content in public school classrooms.

Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman

To bring Texans up-to-date, they must know that our state is not simply putting the Bible back into public schools. It is making a much larger decision about which cultural and religious tradition will occupy the privileged center of public education—and therefore which version of America Texas children will be taught to inherit.

That distinction matters.

On June 26, the Texas State Board of Education approved a first-of-its-kind required literary works list for public schools, along with sweeping revisions to the state’s social studies standards. The literary list, approved 9–5, includes direct biblical passages and stories across grade levels, from Jonah and the Whale and David and Goliath in the elementary grades to passages from Corinthians and the Book of Job in later grades. The requirements will begin taking effect in phases starting in the 2030–31 school year.

The Board simultaneously rewrote social studies standards for kindergarten through eighth grade, placing substantially greater emphasis on biblical figures, Christian history, ancient Israel, the Ten Commandments, and what supporters call “Judeo-Christian values (Yu, 2026)."

Let me begin with something that should not be controversial: The Bible is worthy of study.

It is one of the most consequential collections of texts in human history. Students cannot fully understand Western literature, art, music, political rhetoric, abolitionism, the civil rights movement, or large portions of American history without some knowledge of biblical language and traditions.

The Supreme Court itself recognized precisely this point in School District of Abington Township v. Schempp (1963). The Court prohibited state-sponsored devotional Bible reading but expressly distinguished it from the objective academic study of religion. The Bible, the Court observed, may legitimately be studied for its literary and historical significance when presented objectively within a secular educational program.

So the question is not whether children should encounter the Bible.

The question is what happens when the state decides that one religious tradition should function as the organizing, colonizing grammar of public education that resides in the assumptive world of knowledge and skills standards and accountability regimes. And that is where the Texas story becomes troubling.

What Looks Like Addition Is Also Subtraction

Curriculum is never simply a collection of things we add. Every addition consumes instructional time, assigns cultural importance, and necessarily reduces the space available for something else. That is why the most revealing part of the Texas curriculum controversy may not be what the State Board added but what it simultaneously diminished.

According to reporting by Isaac Yu, staff writer with the Houston Chronicle, the new standards reduce or eliminate material addressing racial segregation, slave revolts, the Ku Klux Klan, Black and Hispanic history, and aspects of world cultures. Board members even removed language stating that Africans were enslaved in the U.S. because of the color of their skin. Meanwhile, critics testified that Islam is disproportionately introduced through warfare, invasion, jihad, piracy, radicalism, and terrorism, while proposed references to Muslim contributions to algebra and astronomy were removed. That juxtaposition is enormously important.

The issue is therefore not:

Bible or no Bible?

It is:

What knowledge is being elevated, what knowledge is being burdened, and what knowledge is disappearing to make room for the new canon?

The Texas curriculum is not merely becoming more religious. It is becoming more civilizational.

The State Board itself says the new standards will give students a historical arc extending from the “rise of Western Civilization” through the creation of the United States and its experiment in self-government. Its official announcement promises students the “full story,” while simultaneously describing the curriculum in terms of America's—and Texas'—greatness.(State Board of Education, 2026).

But no curriculum tells the “full story.” That an impossible proposition. Every curriculum selects. Every curriculum elevates. Every curriculum leaves something behind. The political question is who gets to do the selecting.

We Have Seen This Before

There is a deeper history here that Americans would do well to remember.

Religion was once much more explicitly present in American public schooling. Nineteenth-century common schools frequently incorporated Protestant religious practices and Bible reading. But what many Protestants regarded as simply “Christian” or “nonsectarian,” Catholics often experienced as Protestant domination. 

Conflicts over which Bible would be read—and whose Christianity would define the public school—became part of the great nineteenth-century “School Question.” Historian Steven K. Green (2012) has documented how disputes over Bible reading, Protestant cultural authority, Catholic immigration, and religious pluralism helped produce the modern American understanding of nonsectarian public education. 

That history should caution us against confusing majoritarian religion with religious neutrality.

American schooling also developed partly within a larger civilizational project that joined Christianity, racial hierarchy, assimilation, citizenship, and nation-building. Its most brutal expression appeared in federal Indian boarding schools. Native children were removed from their families, deprived of languages and cultural practices, and subjected to an educational regime explicitly intended to assimilate them into Anglo-American society. The federal government itself now acknowledges that religious organizations were deeply implicated in that system and that assimilation included efforts to strip Native children of their religions and cultures.

Obviously, today's Texas curriculum is not the Indian boarding-school system. Historical comparisons require precision. But the older history raises a question that remains hauntingly contemporary:

Who is the school supposed to make us into? That question lies at the center of this debate.

This Is Where Christian Nationalism Enters the Picture

It would also be a mistake to say that including biblical literature automatically constitutes Christian nationalism.

It does not.

Christian nationalism is not Christianity, nor is it ordinary Christian religious belief. It is a political ideology that fuses a particular understanding of Christianity with national identity and governmental authority.

The concern arises from the cumulative pattern.

Texas has adopted Bible-infused Bluebonnet instructional materials. The Legislature passed a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public-school classrooms. Now the State Board has mandated biblical texts within the statewide literary canon and expanded Christian and biblical content within social studies standards (Yu, 2026)

And proponents themselves are telling us what they believe they are accomplishing.

State Board member Brandon Hall celebrated the June action by declaring that Texas was “bringing the Bible back into schools.” Supporters described the overhaul as a restoration of Judeo-Christian values, moral formation, classical education, and American exceptionalism (Yu, 2026).

This is no longer simply an argument about whether students should recognize biblical allusions in Shakespeare.

It is an argument about national identity.

Who are “we”? Where did “we” come from? Which traditions made America Which traditions are peripheral? Whose stories constitute civilization And which children are expected to locate themselves inside somebody else's story?

There Is Also a Constitutional Question

The constitutional question deserves precision as well. The Supreme Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence has changed considerably since Schempp. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), the Court instructed courts to look closely to historical practices and understandings when evaluating Establishment Clause claims.

That makes predictions about future litigation less certain.

But Kennedy did not declare that states may convert public-school instruction into religious exercise, nor did it erase the longstanding distinction between teaching religion academically and using governmental authority to advance religion.

Indeed, Schempp's fundamental insight remains crucial: there is a difference between studying religion and practicing, promoting, or privileging it through the machinery of the state.

Whether particular provisions of the Texas standards ultimately cross the constitutional line will depend upon their language, implementation, context, and how courts apply today's Establishment Clause doctrine.

But there is another question that precedes the courtroom.

Is this wise public education?

Public Schools Belong to Everyone

Texas is one of the most religiously, racially, ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse states in the nation.

Our public schools therefore carry an especially demanding democratic responsibility.

They should absolutely teach Christianity.

They should also teach Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Indigenous spiritual traditions, secular philosophical traditions, and other belief systems that have shaped human civilization.

They should teach students why the Bible matters. And the Qur'an. And the Torah and Talmud. And Indigenous knowledge traditions. And classical Greek thought. And the intellectual achievements of the Islamic world. And the African civilizations that long preceded European colonization. And Enlightenment skepticism. And the struggle between faith and reason that has itself helped shape modern democracy.

That would be religious literacy. That would be intellectual rigor. That would prepare children for citizenship in a pluralistic democracy.

However, what Texas appears increasingly interested in doing is different.

It is constructing a canon in which Christianity and a particular rendering of Western civilization function as the cultural center of gravity while difficult histories of race, conquest, segregation, colonialization, and minority experience become easier to trim, soften, or remove.

That is why the argument over this curriculum cannot be reduced to whether the Bible is a “good book.” Of course it is an important book.

The real question is who possesses the authority to turn a sacred text into a state-sanctioned civilizational narrative.

Public schools should help children understand the many traditions that made the world they inhabit. They should not be used to tell millions of extraordinarily diverse children that there is only one tradition through which they can become fully American.

That is not religious literacy.

That is something much closer to curricular authoritarianism premised on a state-constructed hierarchy of knowledge.

And Texans should understand the difference.

References

Green, S. K. (2012). The Bible, the school, and the Constitution: The clash that shaped modern church-state doctrine. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199827909.001.0001

Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 597 U.S. 507 (2022). https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-418diff_k4l8.pdf

School District of Abington Township v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203 (1963). https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/374/203/

State Board of Education. (2026, June 26). Texas State Board of Education adopts new social studies standards and required literature reading list. https://sboe.texas.gov/state-board-of-education/sboe-news/texas-state-board-of-education-adopts-new-social-studies-standards-and-required-literature-reading-list

Yu, I. (2026, June 26). Texas becomes first state to require students read the Bible with required literary list. Houston Chronicle. (Houston Chronicle)

The Texas SBOE’s Bible mandate is Not Religious Literacy. It is State-Sponsored,Taxpayer Funded, Religious Favoritism, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Texas SBOE’s Bible mandate is Not Religious Literacy. It is State-Sponsored, Taxpayer Funded, Religious Favoritism

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

June 28, 2026

Last Friday’s decision by the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) to require Bible stories and Christian instruction in Texas K–12 public schools should alarm every Texan who cares about public education, religious freedom, democracy, and the constitutional separation of church and state (Yu, 2026)

This is not religious literacy. It is not a neutral study of religion. It is not a good-faith effort to help children understand the Bible’s influence on literature, history, or culture. A serious academic curriculum would introduce students to multiple religious traditions, secular traditions, Indigenous knowledge systems, and the diverse intellectual inheritance of a state where children come from every corner of the world. Instead, the SBOE has approved a state-mandated reading list and social studies framework that privileges Christianity, narrows the story of humanity, and forces teachers and students into a curriculum shaped less by scholarship than by ideology.

Let us be clear: the issue is not whether the Bible may be studied in public schools. It can be—and, in the appropriate context, should be—studied as literature, as history, and as a text with enormous cultural influence. But it should be studied alongside other sacred, philosophical, ethical, and cultural traditions. 

As a product of Texas public schools, I would have welcomed the opportunity to learn about the world’s religions in school—not in a reductive way, but in an expansive one. Indeed, if this curriculum is anything other than expansive, pluralistic, and intellectually honest, it is dead on arrival.

The real issue is whether the state should use public schools—and exorbitant taxpayer dollars—to elevate one religious tradition above others and present that tradition as the moral foundation of civic life. That is not education. That is state-sponsored religious favoritism. It is constitutionally suspect, pedagogically flawed, and morally dangerous in a state as religiously, culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse as Texas.

Ironically, this approach may also fail on its own terms. A shallow, politicized, and coercive treatment of the Bible may not deepen students’ understanding of scripture. It may turn them away from it. When sacred texts are reduced to political instruments, they lose the very depth, mystery, and moral seriousness that make them meaningful to believers and worthy of study by nonbelievers. A curriculum built on such a flawed foundation does not honor the Bible. It weaponizes it.

This is where Katherine Stewart’s work is so helpful (Stewart, 2012, 2020, 2025). Stewart reminds us that Christian nationalism is not simply a matter of private faith or religious devotion. It is a political project. It operates through donor networks, legal organizations, advocacy groups, media platforms, think tanks, and elected officials who seek to capture public institutions and bend them toward an authoritarian vision of society. 

In this sense, the SBOE’s decision is not an isolated curriculum dispute. It is part of a broader movement to remake public education in the image of Christian nationalist power.

That movement is also visible in Project 2025 and in the larger effort to weaken public institutions, centralize executive authority, privatize public goods, and subordinate democratic deliberation to ideological control (Dans & Groves, 2023). In Texas, this matters enormously because governors appoint key officials, including the Commissioner of Education, who oversees the Texas Education Agency. These appointments help shape the direction of public schooling for millions of children. Curriculum, therefore, is not merely a classroom matter. It is a governance matter. It is a democracy matter.

A democratic public school system should not be argumentative in the narrow sense of imposing one worldview on everyone else. It should be deliberative. It should teach students how to think across difference, how to ask hard questions, how to understand history in its complexity, and how to live ethically in a pluralistic society. 

The SBOE’s decision moves us in the opposite direction. It turns curriculum into a vehicle for religious and political domination.

Texas children deserve better than this. They deserve schools that respect their families, their faiths, their questions, and their futures. They deserve a curriculum capacious enough to include the Bible without turning public school into Sunday school; rigorous enough to study Christianity without privileging Christian nationalism; and democratic enough to honor the full humanity of every child in the classroom.

Recent testimony before the SBOE made this danger plain. Parents, educators, religious freedom advocates, historians, and community members warned that the proposed standards and required reading list distort education by subordinating academic integrity to a sectarian political agenda. Texas Freedom Network President Felicia Martin captured the problem forcefully:

 “The Bible isn’t a history book, public school isn’t Sunday school, and ignorance is not a Texas value.” 

That line deserves to be remembered because it names the issue exactly. Public schools belong to all children—not only Christian children, not only conservative Christian children, not only children whose families accept the state’s preferred theological worldview.

This decision also comes in the shadow of a broader restructuring of public education in Texas. We have seen attacks on books, on Ethnic and Gender Studies, on LGBTQIA+ students, on honest teaching about racism, on teachers’ professional autonomy, and on local democratic governance. 

We have seen vouchers pushed as “choice” while public schools remain underfunded. We have seen the Ten Commandments elevated in classrooms, chaplains invited into schools, and now Bible stories mandated as required reading. These are not isolated developments. They are pieces of a larger project.

That project is legible through the Seven Mountains Mandate (Boedy, 2025), a Christian dominionist framework that calls on believers to exercise influence—or dominion—over seven spheres of society: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government.

 Education is one of the mountains.

Government is another.

Business is another. 

Texas is now witnessing the convergence of all three: billionaire money, state power, and public school curriculum being aligned to serve a Christian nationalist vision.

Katherine Stewart’s work helps us understand what is happening. In The Power Worshippers 2020) and Money, Lies, and God (2025), Stewart shows that Christian nationalism is not primarily about private faith, prayer, or religious devotion. 

It is about power. 

It is about networks. It is about donor money, legal infrastructure, media ecosystems, political candidates, think tanks, and policy shops working together to transform democratic institutions from within. The movement does not merely want a seat at the table. It wants to own the table, write the rules, choose the curriculum, discipline dissent, and call the result “freedom.”

This is why today’s SBOE decision must be understood alongside the political influence of West Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks. As I wrote previously in “Texas: Two Billionaires Want to Destroy Public Education and Replace It With Christian Schools,” the attack on public education is not incidental to their politics. It is central to it. 

As you can view and see for yourselves, CNN’s reporting made plain that former associates and critics view Dunn and Wilks as especially focused on education, with the long-term goal of replacing much of public education with private Christian schooling. Former Republican state senator Bob Deuell put it bluntly: they “want to destroy the public school system as we know it and, in its place, see more home-schooling and more private Christian schools.”

That is the context for today’s vote. This is not simply about whether a first grader hears “David and Goliath” or a high school student reads Job. It is about who controls the moral and intellectual formation of more than five million Texas public school students. It is about whether the state will honor the religious diversity of Texas families or treat non-Christian children as guests in someone else’s public school system. It is about whether teachers will be trusted as professionals or reduced to instruments of ideological compliance.

As I recently blogged (Valenzuela, 2026), supporters will say this is about “Judeo-Christian values.” That phrase, however, often functions as a political shield. It collapses Jewish traditions into a Christian nationalist story, erases the profound diversity within Christianity itself, and excludes Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Indigenous spiritual traditions, atheists, agnostics, and many others, including Jews themselves—who are also part of Texas. It also misrepresents Christianity. 

That is not what Texas has chosen.

Many of us grew up in Christian traditions rooted in social justice, humility, hospitality, care for the poor, and love of neighbor. The Christianity being smuggled into public policy today is not that faith. It is a politicized, exclusionary Christianity aligned with hierarchy, conquest, privatization, and punishment.

This is why the phrase “religious freedom” is being turned upside down. True religious freedom protects families from state-imposed religion. It protects Christian families, Jewish families, Muslim families, Hindu families, Buddhist families, Indigenous families, nonreligious families, and interfaith families alike. It means the government does not get to decide whose sacred stories become mandatory and whose traditions disappear. It means public schools do not become Sunday schools by legislative design.

The irony is painful. Texas leaders claim to be defending parents while overruling millions of parents whose religious and moral commitments do not align with the state’s preferred theology. Many, if not most, among them believe in the separation of church and state.

Let’s unmask this nefarious, anti-democratic agenda for what it is: a coordinated effort to capture public education, weaponize faith, and shrink the democratic imagination of Texas children.

They claim to support local control while imposing sweeping curriculum mandates from Austin. 

They claim to respect teachers while stripping them of professional judgment. 

They claim to strengthen history while narrowing it. 

They claim to teach freedom while modeling domination.

The damage will not fall evenly. Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian American, Muslim, Jewish, immigrant, LGBTQIA+, and nonreligious students will feel most sharply what it means to be written to the margins of the curriculum. So will Christian students whose faith teaches them that coercion is not discipleship and that the Gospel should never be reduced to a state lesson plan. 

Public schools should be places where children learn to think critically, encounter complexity, and develop civic respect across difference. 

They should not be laboratories for Christian nationalist social engineering.

Texas is a pluralistic state. It is young, multilingual, multiracial, multi-faith, and globally connected. Our curriculum should prepare children for that reality. Instead, the SBOE has chosen retreat: less world history, less diversity, less intellectual honesty, and more state-sponsored religious favoritism. This is not educational excellence. It is ideological containment.

We should refuse the false choice between faith and public education. Many people of faith support strong public schools precisely because public education is one of the few institutions where children from different backgrounds can learn together. A democracy—at least in theory—public school does not require children to abandon their faith. It protects their right to have one. It also protects their right not to have one. That is the genius of public education at its best.

The SBOE's decision moves Texas in the opposite direction. It brings us closer to the world envisioned by the Seven Mountains Mandate, where education is not a public good but a terrain to be conquered. It advances the agenda Katherine Stewart has warned about: a donor-funded, anti-democratic movement that uses the language of faith to seize institutions and the language of freedom to justify domination.

Texans should see this for what it is. The SBOE has not merely approved a reading list. It has opened the door wider to the religious capture of public education. It has placed the state’s power behind a narrow theological and political worldview. And it has done so in a state whose children deserve so much better.

This orchestrated, well-heeled “culture war” reveals what has been true all along: the struggle is not only over curriculum. It is over democracy itself. Public schools are among the last remaining civic spaces where we can still imagine and build a common good. That is precisely why they are under attack. They hold the promise of an animated, well-informed, and educated citizenry—one capable of questioning power, resisting domination, and participating fully in democratic life. 

And that is why we must defend them—with clarity, courage, and an unwavering commitment to religious freedom, educational justice, teachers’ freedom to teach, and students’ freedom to learn.

Reference

Boedy, M. (2025). The seven mountains mandate: Exposing the dangerous plan to Christianize America and destroy democracy. Westminster John Knox Press.

Dans, P., & Groves, S. (Eds.). (2023). Mandate for leadership: The conservative promise. The Heritage Foundation [pdf]. 

Stewart, K. (2012). The good news club: The Christian Right’s stealth assault on America’s children. PublicAffairs. 

Stewart, K. (2020). The power worshippers: Inside the dangerous rise of religious nationalism. Bloomsbury.

Stewart, K. (2025). Money, lies, and God: Inside the movement to destroy American democracy. Bloomsbury.

Tackett, C. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B3PTuADIHQ

Valenzuela, A. (2026, June 26). When ‘Judeo-Christian’ Means Christian: The Texas State Board of Education and the Politics of Curriculum [Blog], Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas. https://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2026/06/when-judeo-christian-means-christian.html

Yu, I. (2026, June 26). Texas becomes first state to require students read the Bible with required literary list, Austin American-Statesman. https://www.statesman.com/politics/texas/article/social-studies-overhaul-bible-christianity-22320559.php 

Friends:

Attorney General Paxton’s claim distorts both history and constitutional principle. While the Ten Commandments in the Bible are part of the religious heritage of many, America’s legal and civic foundation rests not on a single faith tradition but on Enlightenment ideas, English common law, and a deliberate commitment to religious liberty.

Many of the framers themselves descended from those who fled religious persecution in Europe. From this history, they understood that a republic could only survive if it safeguarded freedom of conscience against state-imposed faith—an understanding that was ultimately enshrined in the First Amendment’s guarantee that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

In drafting the Constitution, the framers explicitly rejected the establishment of any religion as the basis for government, ensuring that all faiths—and those with none—could belong equally. To insist, as Paxton does, that the Ten Commandments are the cornerstone of American law is to erase the pluralism that has defined this country from the start and to undermine the very protections of the First Amendment. It is, in effect, a rewriting of history that asks the public to ignore the evidence before their very eyes.

This is why the third lawsuit filed against the Ten Commandments classroom display law is so significant. As Austin American-Statesman education reporter Keri Heath documents, fifteen families representing a variety of faith backgrounds—including Christian, Jewish, Lutheran, and nonreligious—have joined together to challenge Senate Bill 10 in federal court. Their action underscores that Paxton’s directive is not only constitutionally dubious but also deeply out of step with the diverse religious and civic traditions that make up Texas and the nation.

-Angela Valenzuela

Third lawsuit filed against display of Ten Commandments in schools

By Keri Heath, Staff Writer

A third lawsuit has been filed against school districts over a new state law requiring the placement of the Ten Commandments in school classrooms. / Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman

A group of families on Monday filed a third lawsuit against a batch of school districts over a law requiring the placement of the Ten Commandments in Texas classrooms. The 14 school districts, which include Georgetown and Comal, are among several dozen that have been sued over the law since Gov. Greg Abbott signed it in June.

The lawsuit also comes about a month after Attorney General Ken Paxton sent a memo to superintendents reinforcing that districts should display posters depicting the 10 Commandments, despite a federal judge temporarily blocking the law for a handful of districts.

The lawsuit also includes the Conroe, Flour Bluff, Fort Worth, Arlington, McKinney, Frisco, Northwest, Azle, Rockwall, Lovejoy, Mansfield and McAllen school districts. All of the districts listed in the lawsuit either received or already posted donated posters depicting the Ten Commandments, according to the lawsuit. 

The new lawsuit was filed in the U.S. Western District Court of Texas by 15 families of students in the named districts. The families are of a variety of faith backgrounds, including Christian, Jewish, Lutheran and nonreligious, according to the lawsuit.

“I address questions about God and faith with great care, and I emphatically reject the notion that the state would do this for me,” said Rev. Kristin Klade, a Lutheran pastor who lives in Fort Worth.

Authored by Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, Senate Bill 10 requires that school districts post any donated copies of a specific version of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms.

The lawsuit filed Monday is the third sparked by SB 10. In June, parents brought a lawsuit against three districts and the Texas Education Agency. In July, additional families brought a lawsuit against 11 other districts. 

A federal judge temporarily blocked the law for the 11 districts last month, prompting Paxton to issue instructions directing every other district in the state to abide by SB 10.

“From the beginning, the Ten Commandments have been irrevocably intertwined with America’s legal, moral, and historical heritage,” Paxton said in a statement when he issued the directive.

That July lawsuit included the Lake Travis and Dripping Springs districts. The Austin school district was eventually dismissed from the case as long as it adhered to any injunction the court placed.

Sep 22, 2025

Keri Heath

K-12 EDUCATION REPORTER

"Let Their Works Be Seen—At the City Gate and the Political Sphere," by Angela Valenzuela

Please read my tribute to this day, based on a nuanced re-reading of Proverbs 31 and the writings of Episcopal priest, attorney, and theologian, and graduate of Union Theological Seminary in New York, the Reverend Dr. Patrick Cheng, author of Radical love: Introduction to queer theology.

Wishing all a Happy Mother's Day! -AV

AI Generated by A. Valenzuela

Let Their Works Be Seen—At the City Gate and the Political Sphere

By Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Proverbs 31 has too often been interpreted—and even weaponized—to confine women to narrow roles, uphold rigid gender norms, and sanctify domestic labor while ignoring the text’s deeper call to justice. 

But when I revisited it last night, I didn’t just re-read it with a progressive lens—I reimagined it through the lens of queer theology, as Patrick Cheng invites us to do. What emerged was not a checklist for gendered virtue, but a bold and expansive vision of radical love in action.

The text begins with a mother’s warning to her son, a king: don’t waste your strength. Don’t lose yourself in privilege while the poor are denied justice. True leadership is rooted in moral clarity. It speaks up for those who cannot speak for themselves. It defends the vulnerable. It remembers the humanity of those our systems forget.

Then we are given a portrait—not of submissive womanhood—but of embodied wisdom: a person who leads with strength, builds economic independence, feeds others, uplifts workers, makes decisions, and extends hands to the poor. Their dignity is not performative. Their power is not inherited. It is created daily, through work, courage, and love.

Patrick Cheng writes that queer theology resists binaries—it makes visible the divine in flesh and community, especially in the lives of those who defy the boxes they’ve been forced into. In that spirit, the “noble character” of Proverbs 31 is not confined to straight cisgender womanhood. It belongs to anyone who labors in love and justice—queer parents, nonbinary caregivers, trans organizers, radical kin-builders.

Let their works be praised at the city gate—and the Texas State Capitol, for our purposes, I might add.

Let us honor those who refuse invisibility. Who resist erasure. Who carry the weight of communities and still rise with wisdom on their tongues and fire in their hearts.

This is the vision we need now: Not one of narrow gender norms, but of liberatory embodiment. Not a gatekeeping morality, but a gospel of radical presence.

Because when we let the excluded lead, when we see divinity in every human being—then, and only then, will justice roll down like waters (Amos 5:24).

Reference

Cheng, P. S. (2011). Radical love: Introduction to queer theology. Church Publishing, Inc.

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Alberta, Tim (2023). The kingdom, the power, and the glory: American evangelicals in an age of extremism

Friends,

I highly recommend this book. It was authored by former Politico Magazine chief political correspondent Tim Alberta who now writes for The Atlantic. He grew up in a white protestant church where his father served as a preacher for many years. It documents in great detail how the white Evangelical church in our country has gotten politicized to the point of deeply divided and wounding internal politics with one side opposing Trumpism and the other, often quiet, timid, or numb, in the crosshairs of partisan politics playing out in the church. Alberta maintains that this mixing of partisan, defensive politics with religion—acting as if the church were "under siege," a claim he handily dismisses, or as if the Kingdom of God needed these self-proclaimed warriors' help—cheapens the Gospel.

It's hard to encapsulate all the drama, fractiousness and hurt that Alberta vividly captures in his visits to around 30 churches throughout the U.S. over three years, from 2020 to 2023. His text is punctuated throughout with soulful reflection on the meaning, purpose, and role of the church in today's world anchored in Christ's teachings that speak, even now, to the redemptive possibilities of a church rooted in compassion and justice.

One can get to the heart of Alberta's treatise from his conversation with former megachurch Pastor Brian Zahnd, pastor of the Word of Life Church who has a Youtube channel to which one can subscribe. In St. Joseph, Missouri, his church experienced great tumult during the last Trump presidency as white evangelical Christians took sides on the Trump agenda. At the end of Chapter 15, Alberta and Zahnd are in conversation about whether the church is optimally positioned to take a stand.  Here is his response.

"Taking a stand," Zhand scoffed. "There is this soft assumption of action we're called to take. The task of the church is simply to be the Church. All of this high-blown rhetoric about changing the world—we don't need to change the world. We're not called to change the world. We are called to be the world already changed by Christ; that's how we're salt; that's how we're light. (p.293)

This is just one of the many gems that grace the pages of Alberta's book, which he masterfully narrates in its audiobook version. Treat yourself to the wisdom and healing power of this timely and exceptional text that is among the best books I've read this year.

-Angela Valenzuela 

References

Alberta, T. (2023). The kingdom, the power, and the glory: American evangelicals in an age of extremism. Harper.

So outrageous. Does this mean we should ban the Bible because it mentions breasts multiple times? Geez, as a result of this piece, I now also know of multiple mentions in the Bible of men's genitals. See, this is what book bans and correlated teacher firings do. They make the "forbidden fruit" even more interesting, if not enticing. 

It shouldn't be this way at all where books like Anne Frank and the Bible get weird attention that just shouldn't be. And what's wrong with youth knowing about sexuality? It's all around them. And how normal for a young girl wonder about such things? This doesn't make it pornography. She's even more human and thusly, accessible now.

So why is this happening? The deeper, troubling issue is clearly that it's not important for children to know the truths of Nazi Germany, empathetically, through the eyes of this incredible young girl experiencing the horrors of this moment upon the occupation of the Netherlands where she lived.

I hope young people, students,  and families show up at their school board meetings and defend teachers like these while protesting this insane, fascist agenda behind book bans.

-Angela Valenzuela

Texas teacher fired for showing Anne Frank graphic novel to eighth-graders

Move comes as education laws restricting teaching of race, sexuality and other topics are being implemented across the US

Gloria Oladipo | Wed., Sept. 20, 2023 | The Guardian

Anne Frank's Diary, the Graphic Adaptation. Photograph: The Guardian