The bill’s sponsors claim teachers need extra permission to discuss religion’s positive role in history. However, Ohio’s current learning standards already require comprehensive instruction on religious influences throughout American history, from the “Pilgrims” in Grade 5 to the “Impact of Religion in Society” in high school. As Lucas George, Ohio’s 2022 History Teacher of the Year, confirmed: “We teach these topics because Ohio’s Learning Standards already require it.”
So why introduce legislation solving a nonexistent problem? The answer lies in what the bill actually does: It provides political cover for teaching a whitewashed, factually incorrect version of American religious history.
Beyond the Franklin impossibility, it claims that his prayer motion at the Constitutional Convention led to the hiring of chaplains. In reality, the convention rejected prayer. As Franklin himself wrote, “Everyone except for three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.” No chaplains were hired. The convention proceeded without prayer.
The bill references the “Black Robe Regiment,” which Ryan Jayne of the Freedom From Religion Foundation has pointed out is “a myth propagated by disgraced pseudo-historian David Barton.” No Revolutionary-era source uses this term. It’s modern fiction presented as historical fact.
These fabrications matter because they’re part of a larger pattern of distortion. The bill encourages teaching about the Puritans’ religious faith while ignoring the fact that they banished Roger Williams for promoting religious tolerance and fined anyone celebrating Christmas. As Lutheran Deacon Nick Bates testified in criticism of the bill, “presenting the Pilgrims as champions of religious freedom when they imposed a 5 shilling fine on people who celebrated Christmas” is historically dishonest.
The bill celebrates religious influences on civil rights without acknowledging what Bates revealed: “The majority of the church lined up against the Civil Rights Movement.” It’s particularly troubling that legislation named after someone who called the Civil Rights Act “a mistake” and an “anti-white weapon” claims to honor Martin Luther King’s legacy.
It has long been documented that key figures among the Founders, besides Paine, such as Thomas Jefferson, Franklin and James Madison, were deists who rejected revealed religions. The Declaration’s few references to “Nature’s God” were deliberately non-Christian, while our Constitution (the actual governing document) contains zero references to deities or Christianity.
Even John Leland, the Baptist minister the bill cites as influencing the First Amendment, explicitly wrote that He demanded equal treatment for “Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians,” the opposite of the Christian primacy this bill promotes.
An accurate, complete history, including uncomfortable truths, is what is needed. As Gary Daniels of the ACLU testified, the Ohio bill ignores “biblical and Christian religious justifications that were repeatedly offered for enslaving others, denying racial minorities and gays and lesbians full participation in society, denying women and others the right to vote.”
University of Toledo Professor Colleen Fitzpatrick notes the bill “circumvents the curriculum development process” that involves actual educators and historians. Instead, politicians with no educational expertise are inserting their preferred narrative into classrooms, complete with historical impossibilities and fictional regiments.
Students need critical thinking skills to understand how religion has both inspired and oppressed, how our secular Constitution protects everyone’s freedom of conscience, and how historical truth is often more complex than politically convenient narratives. When students are taught fairy tales instead of facts, they are robbed of the tools they need to navigate an increasingly complex world. Ohio lawmakers should reject House Bill 486 and let teachers continue teaching actual history, not politically motivated fiction.
Mickey Dollens is the regional government affairs manager at the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
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