The Separation of Knowledge and State

I recently had the chance to get a free copy of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress as a free adio file from Christianaudio.com. It's the first time I've listed to an audio book (Is it antiquated to use the term books on tape?), and I loved that I was able to finish the entire book in about four walks with the kids. They sit in the stroller and snack and look for the guineas; I get a little fresh air and "read" a book. It's a happy arrangement for everyone involved.

I've read The Pilgrim's Progress before, and it's a nice little read. The introduction to this particular file mentioned that it used to be a required portion of literature classes in America. But as a religious text, should it be?

I say yes, and that's unrelated to my own personal religious views. I also think that the Bible should be part of required reading in schools, but again, that's not a religious opinion. I support the notion of separation of church and state (even though this phrase appears no where in the U. S. Constitution), but I don't think that texts like these are solely religious documents; I also see an overlap into the category of great books with which educated people should be familiar.

How many biblical references exist in popular culture? If people have no familiarity with the basic stories of the Bible, does that interfere with their understanding of movies or television or music? There is an episode of House called "Finding Judas." As someone who is familiar with the story of Judas, this title makes perfect sense to me, but I wonder if there are people who watched this episode without understanding what the writers meant with the name Judas. There was also a line about thirty pieces of silver in the episode, but comments like this are lost on audience members who aren't familiar with the story.

Teaching works like the Bible, The Pilgrim's Progress, and other "religious" texts isn't always about religious indoctrination; sure, it can become more personal than academic in the wrong hands...but so can history or political lessons. A good history teacher never lets her students know what her personal political leanings are, and the same could be done with a class on religious texts. Whether or not people are of the Christian faith, the fact remains that Christian and biblical references are peppered throughout American culture, and shutting these works out of the classroom ultimately does a disservice to students who want to have a complete education. The Pilgrim's Progress is, as a historical text, a seminal work that students of literature should read in order to understand later texts that reference it, as are the Bible and the Qur'an.

It's a shame that great works of literature have been cut from classrooms in the service of separating church and state. If schools are purged of any material that includes a reference to these or other religious texts, what kind of quality literature will be left? More importantly, what will happen to a generation of students who never had the chance to read the texts that have made up the cannon of Western literature?