Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general running for US Senate, has long believed in school prayer. Now, he’s prescribing precisely what type of prayer he wants the state’s 6 million public school students to recite.
“In Texas classrooms, we want the Word of God opened, the Ten Commandments displayed, and prayers lifted up,” Paxton said in a statement on Tuesday, encouraging students to say “the Lord’s Prayer, as taught by Jesus Christ”.
The press release included the full text of the Lord’s Prayer as it is written in the King James version of the Bible, the latest example of Paxton and other Texas officials seeming to endorse Christianity over other faiths.
“Twisted, radical liberals want to erase Truth, dismantle the solid foundation that America’s success and strength were built upon, and erode the moral fabric of our society,” Paxton said. “Our nation was founded on the rock of Biblical Truth, and I will not stand by while the far-left attempts to push our country into the sinking sand.”
Paxton’s statement was released as Senate Bill 11 went into effect across Texas; it’s a piece of Republican legislation allowing schools to set aside time for “prayer and reading of the Bible or other religious texts” during the school day. Critics have condemned the bill as an attempt to imbue a secular public education in the state with the practice of Christianity, in violation of the US constitution’s separation of church and state.
“They’re blowing right through separation of church and state,” said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.
Hellbound and Down 