The Bible and Lit

A few weeks ago Jonathan and I were talking about teaching high school lit, and we agreed that more and more middle and high school students don;t seem to have even a cursory knowledge of the Bible-- and it is affecting how they read and understand literature.  I make no secret of my own Christian faith, but I want to write the following as a teacher of literature, apart from my own beliefs.

In 1963, through the efforts of a woman named Madeline Murray O'Hare, prayer and Bible reading as opening exercises in public schools were deemed unconstitutional. In the school system I grew up in, almost all the students I knew (and it was a small town) were either Jewish, Catholic or Protestant, and the reading that was done each day was Psalm 23 (The Lord is My Shepherd) so, given the population, it is likely that no one was offended. However, as the 60s rolled on into the 70s there were growing numbers of families who would probably identify themselves as uncommitted or agnostic, as church and synagogue attendance dropped off radically. By the time I got to high school, the 'separation of church and state' that ceased prayer and Bible reading as part of the curriculum, had become an outright ban on anything that looked Christian. The Christmas tree in the lobby in December disappeared, but oddly enough the menorah display stayed). The morning readings over the PA system each morning could be from any book (including the Koran) but not the Bible (this was written policy). While there was a transcendental meditation club, voluntary Bible study after school or at lunch was forbidden. That was 1973-1976. Fast forward to now.

My friends who are public school teachers in Frederick and Montgomery Counties have told me that with all the allusions, concrete symbols and motifs, and themes that are based on the Bible in classic literature, students nowadays are missing what students in previous generations understood quite easily.Let me give you some examples:

• Charles Darnay's substitutionary death in A Tale of Two Cites.
• Santiago's (the old man) carrying a cross-like mast on his back after three days and nights at sea
• The title East of Eden
• Anything by Flannary O'Connor
• The Scarlet Letter
• Claudius's murder of his brother, old King Hamlet (Volumes have been written on biblical allusions in Shakespeare)
• Most of Dante
• Much of Chaucer (as we have seen)

etc., etc., and so much more (triple redundancy on purpose!)

When I was a college sophomore and taking Survey of Am Lit and Survey of Brit Lit, I was frustrated at my lack of a solid foundational knowledge of the ancient classics. It was hard to understand Poe's poetry, for example, with his references to Pallas, Lethe, Psyche, etc.  I was constantly looking at the notes on the bottom of the page. So I asked the department head (cheeky, yes?) if he would consider a class in mythology as a prerequisite for English majors.  He listened; Lebanon Valley now has that.

In the same way, I think that public schools, without endorsing any religion, should teach the Bible as literature, in order to help students fully get and appreciate the literature they are reading.

And, of course, this relates to Chaucer. A foundational knowledge of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, will alleviate some of the back and forth with the glossary and deepen the readers' experience with Chaucer.