Lawrence Hall, HSG
Teaching a Bible in Public Schools
For Miz Grundy and Reverend Gantry
Surely a teacher could choose his own Bible
This shouldn’t be as difficult as it seems
It couldn’t possibly be forbidden or liable
To teach the children from the Douay-Rheims
2 August 2024
I confess to you and to almighty God that I long earned my daily bread as an English teacher in high school and as a part-time adjunct faculty instructor of no status whatsoever in several nice little community colleges and universities.
English literature obtains in a Christian milieu even from Anglo-Saxon / Old English times. From the earliest known pieces until 1535 the culture is exclusively Catholic; from then on the culture tends to be within the Reformation usages. This is a reality to be understood, not a point of propaganda.
Dr. David Hadas, of happy memory, was my professor at an NEH program at Bread Loaf years ago. He was brilliant, generous, open, challenging, joyful, and indulgent to a lot of high school teachers in a summer class sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Several of us figured out that Dr. Hadas was Jewish, and I was chosen (no pun) to ask him why he always carried a King James Bible to his lectures. We noted that he almost never referred to it because he knew it deeply. His response was, and this remembered quote is probably almost exact, "I teach English literature, and if you don't know the King James Bible you don't know English literature."
His intellectual openness and honesty are quite at variance with the unhappy Elmer Gantrys demanding that the Bible (presumably not the Hebrew Bible or the Vulgate) be force-fitted in inappropriate contexts in public schools. He well knew the difference between teaching and "preaching at."
Beloved professor passes away after long illness - Student Life Archives (studlife.com)
