The Texas State Board of Education voted Friday to mandate Bible passages as part of a new required reading list for the state's more than five million public school students, a first-of-its-kind move that places Scripture alongside classic secular authors in the K-12 curriculum.
The board approved the list on a 9-5-1 vote, with discussions Friday morning covering implementation timelines and teacher autonomy. The Republican-controlled board framed the decision as a way to ground students in the texts that shaped Western civilization. Opponents called it unconstitutional.
Under the new list, fifth graders will read sections of the Book of Exodus. Seventh graders will study The Shepherd's Psalm. The broader list includes works by E.B. White, Shel Silverstein, Aesop, Kurt Vonnegut, and Elie Wiesel, among others. But the Bible is the only religious text on the mandate, a point that drew sharp criticism from at least one board member and outside observers.
Republican board member Julie Pickren, who spoke to The Texas Tribune ahead of the vote, laid out the rationale in plain terms. As ABC News reported, Pickren said the readings would give students:
"Important insight into the moral and philosophical traditions that have shaped Western civilization."
Pickren went further, arguing that direct engagement with foundational texts, "original writings, speeches, sermons, and foundational texts", would help students "evaluate ideas and develop a deeper understanding of the principles that have shaped the USA and Texas."
Board member Evelyn Brooks was the most outspoken voice against the list during the hearing. Brooks argued that teachers have been selecting their own classroom books for years and that the mandate stripped them of professional judgment.
"We are simply giving them a mandated list, which I believe is unconstitutional, but regardless of what I believe, let's not take their autonomy away."
Brooks did not specify which constitutional provision she believed the list violated. No legal challenge has been filed or publicly announced as of the vote.
The reading list does not exist in a vacuum. Texas previously passed a 2025 law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom, a measure that, as Just The News reported, was held up in federal court. The new reading mandate represents a second front in the state's effort to reintroduce religious content into public education.
The required reading list contains roughly 200 texts in total, the New York Post reported, making it what is believed to be the first mandatory state reading list in the nation to include religious texts. The rollout will be staggered: elementary students begin in 2030, with higher grades following. Bible passages would appear as early as fourth grade.
Among the specific assignments described in supporting coverage are an illustrated David and Goliath adaptation for elementary students and Adam and Eve passages from Genesis for junior high and high school students. The Sermon on the Mount also appears on the list.
The 15-member board holds a 10-5 Republican majority. The 9-5-1 vote suggests at least one member who might have been expected to vote with the majority chose to abstain. The identities of the five dissenting members and the single abstention have not been publicly detailed.
Texas is not a small laboratory. The state enrolls roughly 5.4 million public school students, about 11 percent of the nation's total, Newsmax noted in earlier reporting on the proposal. What Texas mandates in its classrooms has a long history of influencing textbook publishers and curriculum decisions in other states.
Antero Garcia, a Stanford University education professor and former high school English teacher, told ABC News the decision amounted to "a substantive reshaping of... what kids are supposed to learn throughout the state of Texas over their 13 years of compulsory public education." Garcia acknowledged the Bible's literary value but raised concerns about the absence of any other religious text on the list.
"You are going to get substantial exposure to a singular text across your public schooling experience in ways where you aren't going to get an other kind of religious text anywhere else in that mandated list."
Garcia also predicted a ripple effect: "Oftentimes, where Texas goes, other states will follow, right? So, this is a pretty substantial move that I could imagine other states picking up and moving forward with as a possibility."
The legal backdrop is significant. The Washington Examiner reported that this marks the first time since 1963 that the Bible has returned to Texas classrooms in a mandated capacity, following a landmark 8-1 Supreme Court ruling that declared state-mandated Bible readings unconstitutional. Whether the new reading list, framed as a literature and history curriculum rather than devotional instruction, can survive a similar challenge remains an open question.
Public reaction split along familiar lines. Brooke Mazel, a retiree from Lubbock, told the New York Post that "America should celebrate our 250 years that started as a nation of unwavering Christian values." Elva Mendoza of the Texas Freedom Network countered: "Kids of all faith backgrounds and no faith are served by Texas schools and they should all feel welcome in Texas schools."
Conservative education advocates have long argued that biblical literacy is inseparable from understanding American history and law. Mandy Drogin of the Texas Public Policy Foundation put it this way in earlier comments to Newsmax: "To not know the story of the good Samaritan, for example, you're really going to miss on not just important lessons, but rich cultural and historical significance as an American."
That argument carries weight. The Declaration of Independence invokes a Creator. Lincoln's Second Inaugural quotes Scripture at length. Martin Luther King Jr. built his public rhetoric on the prophetic tradition. Stripping the Bible from public education doesn't create neutrality, it creates ignorance of the texts that shaped the country's founding documents and moral debates.
The Trump administration has reinforced this direction at the federal level, directing more than $150 million toward history and civics programs ahead of the nation's 250th anniversary. The Texas vote fits within that broader effort to restore what conservatives view as an honest accounting of America's cultural foundations.
Republican-led governance continues to produce concrete policy outcomes in states where the party holds clear majorities, a pattern visible not only in education but in recent Supreme Court action on redistricting and in state-level debates over election integrity.
Several important questions remain. The full reading list beyond the named titles and authors has not been publicly released in detail. The specific implementation timeline, beyond the 2030 start date for elementary students, is unclear. And the constitutional question looms: will opponents file suit, and if so, on what grounds?
Brooks's claim that the list is "unconstitutional" went unexplained during the hearing. The 1963 Supreme Court ruling addressed devotional Bible readings, not the study of biblical texts as literature or history. Whether courts will draw the same distinction Texas's board appears to be drawing is a question that may take years to resolve.
ABC News reached out to the Texas State Board of Education for comment after the vote. No response has been reported. The accountability standards that apply to elected officials caught on camera ought to apply just as firmly to education boards making decisions that affect millions of children, transparency should not be optional.
Garcia, the Stanford professor, offered perhaps the most candid admission from the opposition side: "There is literary value in reading the Bible, and I don't want to diminish that kind of obvious point." He then added that he could "imagine this orienting young people towards particular kinds of dispositions that are rooted in Christianity as a result."
That concern deserves a fair hearing. But the alternative, a public education system that treats the most influential text in Western history as too dangerous for students to encounter, has its own consequences. A generation of Americans who can't identify the source of "love thy neighbor" or "let my people go" is not a generation equipped to understand its own civilization.
Efficient governance means making decisions and following through, whether the subject is counting votes on time or building a curriculum that tells the truth about where American ideas came from. Texas made its choice. The courts and the culture will decide what comes next.
For decades, public schools have been free to assign texts from every tradition except the one that actually built the civilization students are living in. Texas just called that bluff.
