National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools

The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS) is a nonprofit, fundamentalist religious organization that promotes the use of its 300-page Bible curriculum, The Bible in History and Literature, in schools throughout the United States. It has been criticized as being inaccurate, and presenting biased promotion of a particular religious interpretation of the Bible as well as an unbalanced view of American history which promotes specific religious beliefs. The use of the curriculum has been challenged in lawsuits in two school districts, which have withdrawn the course as contravening the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

NCBCPS was founded on April 8, 1993, by Elizabeth Ridenhour, a Greensboro, NC, paralegal. The organization's annual 990 tax forms, available on Guidestar.org, list Ridenhour as an ordained minister.

According to the organization's Web site, "312 U.S. school districts in 37 states have educated 175,000 of their students using the Bible curriculum as a public high school elective."

A 2006 report, "Reading, Writing and Religion: Teaching the Bible in Texas Public Schools," by Bible scholar Dr. Mark Chancey of Southern Methodist University found that in Texas, "the number of Texas school districts using the NCBCPS curriculum, 11, is less than a fourth of the 52 claimed by the NCBCPS itself. Adding the very few school districts known to have used the course in the past... does not significantly change the total number. The NCBCPS markets its course by strongly emphasizing the large number of school districts that supposedly teach it; as of late July 2006, its Web site claimed that its curriculum is currently offered in 362 districts nationwide. Such oft-repeated claims now appear to be quite inaccurate. If the situation in Texas is representative, the curriculum is probably actually taught in only a few dozen districts."

The NCBCPS web site states that the organization's curriculum "has never been legally challenged", and features an opinion from four lawyers claiming the course to be constitutional. Whilst the NCBCPS itself has not been sued, two school boards have been for adopting the NCBCPS materials in their district:

A federal lawsuit on behalf of eight parents in Odessa, Texas, was filed on May 16, 2007 against the Ector County school board. The suit was brought by the ACLU of Texas, the People For the American Way Foundation and the law firm of Jenner & Block. The suit alleged that the course promotes certain religious beliefs to the exclusion of others. The Ector County School Board was represented by Liberty Legal Foundation. In a May 17, 2007 article in the Odessa American, ECISD trustee L.V. "Butch" Foreman III said he did not understand how the parents could sue the school board since they do not have children taking the course. "If they don't have children in the class, they can kiss my butt," Foreman said.

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