Did the Bible Just Became REQUIRED Reading in Schools?

[00:00:00]Let me ask you something right now. You think voting for Donald Trump makes you a Christian?

[00:00:05]You think being a conservative or MAGA makes you Christian?

[00:00:11]So, think about this.

[00:00:13]Denise Whitfield, she's been teaching third grade Sunday school in Lubbock, Texas for 19 years. She's buried a husband, raised two kids on a substitute teacher's paycheck, and she has never, not once, ever needed the state of Texas to tell her what a Bible is.

[00:00:27]The other day, she's sitting in a folding chair in Austin hearing room with her hand already halfway up into a clap because the board is about to vote yes on putting scripture into her grandkids' school. 20 years of praying. Thank you, Jesus.

[00:00:42]For this exact moment, her granddaddy's King James Bible sitting in her lap like she already won that trophy, baby.

[00:00:50]Then, some woman, two rows over, she leans over to her other church friend.

[00:00:55]They both smirk.

[00:00:56]She whispers just loud enough, "Thank God it ain't one of the Mormon versions, you know?"

[00:01:03]They laugh just like they just told the funniest joke in the room, and then Denise's hand freezes in midair.

[00:01:15]>> [music] >> See, that laugh, that laugh just asked a question that none of these cheering Christians thought to ask before they showed up.

[00:01:30]If the government's handing out Bibles now, who exactly gave them the authority to decide which one is the real one?

[00:01:39]Because now, she's thinking about something she ain't thought about in a long time. Which Bible did they pick?

[00:01:46]Who picked it? And what happens the day that somebody that she don't trust, and they get to pick it?

[00:01:53]See, here's what's true. Now, I want you to just hear me out because you're going to get you're going to get mad at me on this one, okay? Texas just did something no state has ever done. On June 26th, 2026, the Texas State Board of Education I've worked for 20 years.

[00:02:09]They voted 9 to 4 straight down party lines to approve a mandatory reading list for over 5 million public school kids.

[00:02:18]Not one option among many.

[00:02:21]Mandatory.

[00:02:22]King James version.

[00:02:24]Baked in to the same reading list as Dickens and E.B. White and lots of others, okay? And this doesn't just meet the state's own requirement.

[00:02:34]Blows right past it.

[00:02:37]The 2023 law said one literary work per grade, one.

[00:02:42]The board just handed teachers around 200 [laughter] required texts heavy with Bible passages and every one of them has to be read cover to cover.

[00:02:53]What? Are you seri- Are you seri- I'm not What?

[00:02:59]Woo! Here it comes.

[00:03:01]And ain't the first domino, either. Two years before that, the same board, on an 8 to 7 squeaker approved something called Bluebonnet Learning, a whole elementary curriculum soaked in Bible stories with the state kicking districts up to 60 bucks a kid to adopt it. Before that Texas became the largest state in America to mandate the Ten Commandments posted on every classroom wall. Y'all Oklahoma's ordering a Bible in every classroom. Louisiana's doing the same thing with the Ten Commandments.

[00:03:30]This ain't one school board having a moment, okay? This is a coordinated state-by-state playbook and my state, the great state of Texas is leading it.

[00:03:42]Now a whole lot of church folks are throwing a party about it. I get why, okay? I get it. You've watched this country scrub prayer out of everything, out of the classroom, off the football field, scrub the Ten Commandments off the wall, documented historical facts, right?

[00:03:57]Gone. Scrub anything that smells anything like Jesus. Get rid of it. Get it out of the building.

[00:04:04]Get it out of the building that Think about it. That the one that your kid spends 7 hours a day in. Get rid of it.

[00:04:10]So, when the government finally hands your kid a Bible instead of taking one away, what does it feel like?

[00:04:17]Winning.

[00:04:19]Feels like winning, baby.

[00:04:21]Now, here's where I got to be honest with you. And some of y'all ain't going to like this. I know most of you watching this voted for Donald Trump.

[00:04:29]Voted for it. Thank you.

[00:04:31]I know most of you call yourselves Christians, conservative Christians, MAGA conservative right-wing Christians.

[00:04:39]Whatever label fits, it doesn't matter.

[00:04:40]I know the polling, okay? I know the room. I know that if I stood up in most Baptist churches in this state right now and said I think this Bible mandate is a mistake.

[00:04:52]Half the room would think that I lost my salvation on the way up to the pulpit.

[00:04:57]That's a fact, okay?

[00:04:59]Look, I'm not going to stand up here and tell you, or sit here rather, and tell you that scripture in a classroom is a bad thing.

[00:05:07]It ain't.

[00:05:08]I want every kid in this country soaked in the word of God.

[00:05:15]But, I want you to ask yourself a question that's going to sting a little, okay?

[00:05:21]When the government hands your kid a Bible whose Bible did they hand them?

[00:05:30]So, here's the twist, and it's the one that woke Denise up standing right there in that room.

[00:05:35]The board that approved this list is a state board. They're elected. Republican controlled now. Nine of the 15 seats Republican.

[00:05:44]But, boards flip.

[00:05:47]Politics move. Standardized tests, well, they move, too, baby. And here's a stat that ought to bother you a lot, regardless of your politics, because these texts are now official curriculum.

[00:06:01]They could end up on the state standardized test. I taught for 21 years. I'm telling you, if anybody knows state standardized tests and how to master them, it was me. Tricks galore.

[00:06:11]But that means something, okay? That means that a district's test scores, the ones that decide funding, that decide whether school gets labeled failing, could now ride, in part, on how well a kid can answer questions about scripture that the state assigned.

[00:06:30]That ain't evangelism. That's testing compliance. The same lever that puts King James on a test today can put a different translation and different framing on a test tomorrow.

[00:06:43]Fact.

[00:06:45]And that's when the question gets really uncomfortable.

[00:06:50]Is a Jehovah's Witness Christian enough for you?

[00:06:53]Is Latter-day Saint Christian enough for you? Mike Lee out in Utah, senator, did not like the fact that Mormons got left off the Christian list. They desperately want to be Christians.

[00:07:03]United States said, "But you're not Christian."

[00:07:08]Which denomination gets to decide what counts as the Christian story that your kid reads in third grade English? The Baptists?

[00:07:17]The Catholics?

[00:07:19]The Orthodox Church?

[00:07:21]The non-deno- non-denominational Spit it out. Check it. Non-denominational church? Megachurch? That one that's 3 miles from the capital?

[00:07:30]They've got some pull, don't they?

[00:07:33]Either way, somebody's going to decide, and it ain't going to be your pastor, okay? It's going to be a school board that flips every election cycle. Y'all, four board members voted no on this thing and it split exactly down party lines. Every single Democrat voted against it. Every single Republican present voted for it. It should scare you a little, okay? Because that means that this is now a partisan football, not a spiritual conviction.

[00:07:59]We're bringing Jesus back into the classroom. That's not what this is. This isn't a spiritual conviction. This is politics, partisan politics. And a partisan football gets thrown by whoever wins the next game.

[00:08:13]This is the part that turns the applause into a question mark. The state cannot be trusted to be your kid's Sunday school teacher, even when you agree with today's lesson plan. And I don't care how many of my own side cheer this, I'm not cheering it. Most conservatives I know are for this. I am not for this.

[00:08:32]And I think in about 10 years half of you are going to wish that you'd listened to me instead of the applause line like Hercules, Happy Days, Jesus is coming.

[00:08:42]I'm telling you, this is not going to work out well.

[00:08:46]Now, let's go back actually further than Texas. Think about this. Let's go back to why some of your ancestors got on a boat in first place. Let's think about why did we just celebrate USA's 250?

[00:08:59]England had a church state.

[00:09:02]England had a church state.

[00:09:06]The crown decided who was Christian enough.

[00:09:11]What liturgy was correct. What Bible you were required to read. What happened to you if you refused. That ain't a metaphor. That's the actual reason a chunk of the folks who founded this country crossed an ocean.

[00:09:25]They didn't flee England because they hated God. They fled because a government had strapped a crown under the gospel and the gospel started answering to Caesar instead of the Christ.

[00:09:38]That's why the founders didn't write Congress shall establish the Christian religion. They wrote Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion. Not because they hated faith. It was not because they hated faith. Most of them, Jefferson and Franklin, who were not Christians, they were still soaked in it. They knew the Bible better than most Christians today. But because they read history, that's how.

[00:10:03]They knew that the second the state starts handing out an official Bible, it also gets to start handing out, now watch this, an official interpretation of said Bible.

[00:10:14]And once government owns the interpretation, government owns the conscience.

[00:10:20]And that, my friends, is the whole ballgame.

[00:10:24]Look at the pattern already stacking up in Texas.

[00:10:26]Chaplains allowed in school hallways, the Ten Commandments mandated on classroom walls, an optional elementary curriculum built by the state with cash incentives attached.

[00:10:36]And now, a mandatory reading list of roughly 200 texts with one specific translation tested on state exams.

[00:10:46]Every piece of that sounds sweet if you already believe.

[00:10:51]But every piece of that is also a lever, and levers do not care who's pulling them next.

[00:10:58]Here's the line I want you to actually feel.

[00:11:03]A faith the government can mandate is a faith the government can also unmake.

[00:11:11]You cannot legislate a new heart into a seventh grader. You cannot pass a bill that makes the Holy Spirit move.

[00:11:22]Salvation was never a curriculum.

[00:11:26]It was never going to be a curriculum.

[00:11:28]And I'll say the controversial part one more time, so it's crystal clear.

[00:11:33]I know this makes me the weird one at the conservative cookout. Most people who vote like me, pray like me, and quote the same verses as me, they're cheering this law right now.

[00:11:46]And I still think that they're wrong.

[00:11:49]2 Corinthians 3:17 says, "Now the Lord is the spirit, and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Not where the state board is liberty."

[00:11:59]Jesus himself never once used Caesar's office to build his church. He told Pilate flat out, "My kingdom is not of this world." And then he went to the cross instead of a courthouse to save you.

[00:12:11]Paul didn't lobby Rome for a mandatory scripture reading law.

[00:12:16]>> [gasps] >> He planted churches, man.

[00:12:19]He discipled real people one house at a time, one meal at a time, because faith has always spread through relationship, not through legislation. Never through legislation.

[00:12:33]That's Denisa's answer. Sitting in that folding chair with her hand frozen in the air, she doesn't need Austin to hand her grandkids a Bible. She's got a Bible.

[00:12:42]She's had one for 19 years of Sunday mornings. She's got a kitchen table.

[00:12:46]She's got a Sunday school class full of somebody else's kids who need a teacher a lot more than they need a state-approved reading list that they will absolutely forget by August. That's a fact.

[00:12:57]You want more Christianity in this country? People, stop asking Caesar to plant the seed. You do it. Go be the sower yourself. Open your Bible at your own table before you demand the state open one at a desk.

[00:13:12]Disciple the kid next door to you. Teach your own children why you believe what you believe, so when somebody else's translation, somebody else's denomination, somebody else's government hands them a book different than the one that you did, they will already know whose voice they follow.

[00:13:29]Because the gospel was never supposed to arrive with the gavel. It arrives with a cross.

[00:13:36]It arrives with an empty tomb.

[00:13:38]And somebody who absolutely loves you enough to tell you the truth even when the truth ain't popular with your own side.

[00:13:50]If you've never given your life to Jesus, I'm asking you right now not to school board, not the government, just you and your maker to pray this with me.

[00:14:00]Jesus, I believe that you died for me and rose again. I'm done trying to make my own way. I'm giving you my life, my heart, my future right now. Come be my Lord and come be my savior.

[00:14:15]Amen.

[00:14:17]If you prayed that and meant it, welcome to the family.

[00:14:22]That decision didn't come from a reading list. It wasn't mandated by the state.

[00:14:26]It came from you saying yes to a savior who's been chasing you a lot longer than the state of Texas ever will.

[00:14:36]Think about that.

[00:14:38]Guys, if this message hits you, like the video, drop a comment, be sure to subscribe to the channel, and please share this with anybody who needs to hear more about Jesus Christ or what it means to be a Christian. As always, you can find me at xmikemag.com for everything right there in one place. And please don't forget to check out either one of these two videos. They're so good. So good. Think of it.

[00:14:58]Right there. And remember, guys, when the world pushes back, and it's going to, make sure that the very least you do say something.

[00:15:12]Love you guys. See you soon.

[00:15:18]>> [music]