The Freedom From Religion Foundation is urging the Quilcene School Board not to adopt a proposed “Bible-based curriculum.” 

A concerned parent reported that the Quilcene School Board is considering adopting a “Bible-based curriculum,” but has not yet voted on or adopted the proposed materials. FFRF’s complainant stated that the board claimed that a bible-based curriculum “will raise the test scores of our students.” 

The complainant explained that their family “does not resonate with Christianity in the form of organized religion” and that if people wished to participate in bible study, they can do so at church, religious schools and in their own homes and private clubs. FFRF learned that the proposal to bring a bible-based curriculum to the district is “causing division amongst community members,” and the complainant believes that “education should unite, not divide” because the school “is the heart” of the community.

FFRF is urging the district to refrain from adopting a religious curriculum for the district’s schools.

“Students are a vulnerable and captive audience,” FFRF Staff Attorney Sammi Lawrence writes to the legal counsel for the school district. “The school environment is ripe for coercion, particularly for younger students.”

Public schools may not provide religious instruction, FFRF emphasizes. Here, the board is reportedly seriously considering implementing a curriculum based on the Christian bible. This would unconstitutionally indoctrinate students, coercing them to learn about Christianity and the bible in a religious, devotional manner.

This school-sponsored Christian indoctrination would also needlessly marginalize students and families who do not subscribe to Christianity. A full 38 percent of adult Washingtonians are religiously unaffiliated, and 10 percent belong to a non-Christian faith. At least a third of Generation Z (those born after 1996) has no religion, with a recent survey revealing almost half of Gen Z qualifies as religiously unaffiliated “Nones.” 

In order to respect the rights of all students, as well as adhering to constitutional dictates, FFRF is asserting that the district must not approve an explicitly Christian curriculum.

“Any religious instruction must be left to the family, not our public schools,,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor says. “Shaping the curriculum to include bible study is a blatant abuse of power.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national educational nonprofit with more than 42,000 members and several chapters across the country, including over 1,800 members and a chapter in Washington. FFRF protects the constitutional separation between state and church and educates about nontheism.

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