the boring bible, bettered

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Mar 20, 2005

The Telegraph reports that RE teachers in Britain are pruning the Bible of annoying irrelevancies. Like God.

God is being edited out of religious education lessons in schools for fear that His presence might bore children.

A study at Exeter University found that biblical accounts of the Good Samaritan, David and Goliath and Joseph were taught as ethical stories, with no reference to God, in increasingly secular classes on religion.

Teachers said that they were reluctant to introduce theology because they did not believe in God or feared that constant references to Him would put off children or be seen as indoctrination. …

Prof Terence Copley, who led the study, said that observations of RE lessons showed that stories such as Joseph were told without any of the 50 references to God that appear in the Hebrew Bible narrative.

OK, we’ve all heard homilies that seemed to shoulder God out of the picture as well, but in dealing with, say, the David and Goliath story, I have to wonder what kind of substitute the RE teachers inserted into the text …

Then spake David unto the Philistine: Thou comest unto me with a sword and with a spear and with a shield, but I come unto thee in the name of Nissan, and of Playtex Stay-Free Maxipads, and of Gatorade, the official thirst-relief beverage of the emerging Israelite confederacy. (1 Samuel 17:45, corrected).