Teaching the Bible in Public Schools?

Every year, Columbia Sends out a list of awards and prizes that you can apply for. Most of the awards are endowed by Columbia alumni in areas like preaching, theology, worship, and biblical studies. There were several awards that caught my attention this year, one of which was a paper or project about "teaching the Bible in public schools." This is clearly from an era gone by in Columbia's history, as I cannot imagine a single person at Columbia today who would focus on this as a priority.

However, I was interested in the topic, not as a way to sneak scripture into schools as a means of evangelism, but to help kids think critically about religious texts and what it means for a text to be "authoritative" for a community. 

After a great brainstorming session with a professor, I came up with a curriculum for high school students, studying narratives from 6 different religious and cultural texts. It took a lot of work to find the right composition of "myths" and scriptures, spanning everything from an Islamic Hadith to a Korean Myth. I'm actually quite proud of the end result and in September 2018 I found out that I won the award!

In case you were wondering what kind of person I am, I just did an entire 25-page project for fun,  so I guess there's your answer! 🤷🏼‍♀️