Two-edged swords

Special Issue | It's shaping up to be a lively fall for public-school Bible curricula as publishers and interest groups do battle | Lynn Vincent

Biblical studies professor Mark Chancey had pretty much put the finishing touches on a presentation he planned to give at University Baptist Church in Austin, Texas, on Aug 31. But at 5 p.m. on Aug. 29, he sat in his office at Southern Methodist University, busily rewriting the whole thing.

That's because the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS), under fire from Mr. Chancey and a liberal interest group called the Texas Freedom Network (TFN), this month significantly revised the 2005 edition of its public-school Bible curriculum—the same curriculum that Mr. Chancey had been set to blast in his presentation.

It's a busy month for public-school Bible curricula. While an Odessa, Texas, school district weighs offering a Bible elective, NCBCPS has scrambled to answer TFN's claims that its teacher's guide, The Bible in History and Literature—under consideration in Odessa—is really stealth evangelism.