OK Legislative Turndown Sparks Fundraising Campaign for School Bibles

State Superintendent fundraising to buy 55K ‘God Bless The USA’ Bibles

March 11 Update: The Oklahoma Supreme Court today temporarily blocked Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters and the Oklahoma State Department of Education from spending taxpayer dollars for Bibles or “bible infused materials.”

Oklahoma’s State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters is asking Americans to donate money to send leather-bound Bibles into Sooner State public school classrooms, now that the state legislature nixed a funding request.

Announcing the BiblesforOklahoma.com website, where $59.99 “God Bless The USA” Bibles can be purchased for schools, Walters told MinistryWatch in a phone interview, “The Bible is a crucial historical document. It’s a foundational historical document in American history. So we’re putting the Bible, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution back in the classroom.”

The controversial volume pairs the King James Version of the Bible with the texts of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Pledge of Allegiance. It also reproduces handwritten lyrics to Greenwood’s song “God Bless the USA.”

Last year, then-former President Donald J. Trump endorsed  the “God Bless The USA” Bible. Although Trump didn’t sell the book, some media outlets and political opponents dubbed it the “Trump Bible.”

Walters’s fundraising move launched less than 24 hours after Oklahoma’s Senate Appropriations Committee failed to recommend his budgetary request for $3 million to purchase Bibles for classrooms — and an additional $5 million to pay for potential litigation over the move.

State Sen. Mary Boren (D-Norman) told MinistryWatch she objects not only to the dollar amount requested but also to combining the Scriptures and America’s founding documents in a single volume.

“I don’t think that’s a Bible,” Boren said. “I’m sorry, but when you put the 66 books of the Bible with three political documents and call it a Bible, that’s a big deal.”

The state senator, a Church of Christ member, also said Gov. Kevin Stitt reminded people there’s a free smartphone app — YouBible — that’s created in Oklahoma. Boren also said other people were willing to donate “like, the real Bible, not the ‘Trump Bible,’ for free, and  [Walters] didn’t want that.”

In response, the superintendent said placing the “God Bless The USA” Bible in schools “is an incredible opportunity to put a Bible that will actually have not only the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, with the Bible, it’ll make sure that our kids have access to the foundational documents.”

He slammed Boren as “a radical left wing extremist that is trying to drive the Bible and any kind of reference to the Bible out of school.”

The Bible-for-schools campaign is an outgrowth of Walters’s 2024 directive calling on the state’s public schools to teach “the Bible, which includes the Ten Commandments.” That move — plus the announcement of plans to spend $3 million on 55,000 copies of the Bible — drew a lawsuit from 34 Oklahomans, led by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law & Justice.

The suit, Walke v. Walters, contends the Bible instruction mandate was unlawful and violates religious freedom protections in the state constitution, and spends public money without legislative authority.

“Oklahoma families should not have to contend with religious promotion in their children’s public school classrooms,” said Annie Laurie Gaulor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, in a statement. “And Oklahomans should not have to watch their tax dollars be used by their state to promote Ryan Walters’ preferred holy book.”

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Americans United President and CEO Rachel Laser claimed Walters “continues to abuse the power of his office to advance a Christian Nationalist agenda and impose his personal religious beliefs on other people’s children.”

For his part, Walters is unbowed by the controversy surrounding the initiative.

“Our kids have to understand the role that those foundational documents play in American history,” he said. “And we’ve got to continue to make sure that America stays that incredibly exceptional nation, the greatest country in the history of the world, and the only way that’s going to happen is if our kids understand how we got there in the first place. We’re proud to be the first state in the country to bring the Bible back to the classroom, and I am hopeful that other states will be following us soon.”

C​ORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the first name of Oklahoma State Sen. Mary Boren and misidentified her as an Abilene Christian University graduate.

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