Sharia Law Panic, Zohran Mamdani, and the State That Actually Mandated Religious Scripture

Texas just became the first state in the nation to mandate Bible reading in public K-12 public schools — affecting more than 5 million students. The Republican board member who led the charge is also a pastor who declared Texas a "Christian state" on the record. We walk through exactly what was passed, who drove it, and why the Supreme Court precedent going back to 1962 makes this a clear constitutional violation.

This episode also examines the full pattern — Ten Commandments in classrooms, chaplains as school counselors, the Bluebonnet Learning curriculum, and the elimination of the sixth grade World Cultures course — and explains why what happens in Texas rarely stays in Texas.

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Transcript

Michael Smithgall 0:00

Did you hear that Zoran Mamdani, the new Muslim mayor of New York City, is making every public school kid in the city read the Quran? No, of course you didn't, because he isn't. Mamdani has done nothing of the sort. But a Republican congressman said during the campaign that Mamdani would install a caliphate in New York City. The Sharia law panic was wall to wall on right-wing media. Hey, thanks for tuning in. I am Mike, the unelected mayor of Atheistville, and this is today's Mic Drop. Now, meanwhile, I want you to consider the irony here for a moment. It is Texas that just voted to mandate religious scripture in every public school classroom in the state. Christian scripture for 5 million kids starting in kindergarten. If you want to know what government-mandated religious indoctrination actually looks like in America in 2026, it does not look like Zoran Mamdani. It looks like the Texas State Board of Education. On June 26th of this year, 2026, the Republican controlled board voted 9 to 5 to make Bible passages required reading for every one of the more than 5 million students enrolled in Texas public schools. Fifth graders will read from the book of Exodus. Seventh graders will get the Shepherd's Psalm. By middle school, students are reading passages from the Sermon on the Mount. By high school, the Bible is required supplemental material for works like Dickens and Jane Austen. Now I want to be fair here because I think intellectual honesty requires it. The Bible is one of the most consequential documents in human history. You cannot fully understand Western literature, Western law, or the arc of Western politics without some familiarity with it. This is not a religious statement. That is a historical one, and I will gladly concede that point. But here is where the argument for this curriculum falls apart completely. If the justification for putting the Bible on a required reading list is that it helps students understand the world, then that justification demands we go further, much further. Right now, the United States is in a war with Iran, a war that Congress has not formally declared, but a war nonetheless. You cannot explain that conflict without understanding Islam, what the Quran means to the people of that region, how it shapes their governance, their laws, their relationships to authority. And you cannot explain the United States' relationship to Israel or our president's inability to say no to its government without understanding Judaism and Torah. The theological and historical claims embedded in the Torah are inseparable from the existence of the modern Israeli state and from every political decision the United States has made in that region for 70 some years, full stop. Then there are 1.2 billion Hindus on this planet, roughly half a billion Buddhists. If the principle is that students should understand the world they're going to live in, then those traditions belong on the list as well. But Texas is not interested in teaching students about the world. Brandon Hall is a Republican member of the State Board of Education, and of course, he is also a pastor. He ran for his seat on the platform of getting what he calls indoctrination, CRT, and obscene materials out of public schools. At a press conference the day before the vote, he called this curriculum a generational opportunity, and then he said the quiet part out loud. I'm going to quote this. Wow. Okay. So a sitting member of the state board of education just told you exactly what this is. Christian nationalism dressed up as curriculum reform. And when a member of the state board of education says that his state is a Christian state, and then votes to require every child in that state's public school to read Christian scripture, the First Amendment does not shrug and look the other way. Now I do want to read to you something that is very important. And no, it is not from the Bible. This is from the United States Constitution. You can get one of these anywhere. Go to Amazon, go to your local library. Hell, the ACLU will mail you one for free. You do not need to be a lawyer or a legal scholar to read this. The people who wrote it intended for every citizen to be able to understand it. Amendment one. That's it. That's the whole thing. 16 words. The government cannot establish a religion and it cannot interfere with your right to practice whatever religion you choose or no religion at all. Brandon Hall went to school for theology. He knows exactly what those words mean. He just doesn't care. And he's assuming you don't care either. The establishment clause has been tested many times. In 1962, Engel versus Vital, the Supreme Court ruled that state-sponsored prayer in public schools was unconstitutional. Even when it was non-denominational and participation was technically voluntary, the government, the court said, simply does not get to sponsor religious activity. In 1963, Abington School District versus Schemp extended that ruling specifically to Bible reading schools. Mandatory Bible readings in public schools, unconstitutional. That case is 63 years old. In 1980, Stone versus Graham, the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in public school classrooms. The court said that posting a religious text on a classroom wall, even without requiring students to read it, violated the establishments clause. That's why what happens next matters, because Texas passed a law in 2025 requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom in the state. That law is currently being challenged in federal court, as you might expect. And while that legal battle is still in progress, the Texas State Board of Education just voted to make actual Bible passages required reading. This did not come out of nowhere. Texas has been building for this for years. Texas has been building towards this for years. In 2023, the state became the first in the country to allow public schools to hire religious chaplains as student counselors. That same year, state lawmakers approved the Bible-based elementary curriculum called Blue Bonnet Learning, which includes lessons drawn from the book of Genesis, the story of Queen Esther, and the Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, starting in kindergarten. The state offered school districts $60 per student as a financial incentive to adopt it. More than 300 districts signed up. So let's put the full picture on the table, right? Texas has chaplains in school. The Ten Commandments are on classroom walls. The Bible-infused elementary curriculum backed by state money. And now mandatory Bible readings from kindergarten through 12th grade. At the same time, Texas has banned The Handmaid's Tale from school libraries, a novel about theocratic government that uses religion to control women's bodies and lives. Texas is banning the Handmaid's Tale while at the same time turning itself into Gilead and requiring the instruction manual. There's also this. At the same meeting where the board voted to require Bible readings, they approved a rewrite of the state's social studies curriculum that eliminates sixth-grade world cultures course. The one that actually teaches students about the beliefs and histories of people who are not American and not Christian. Less world, more Bible. That is the Texas education agenda in four words. A Stanford education professor told ABC News that where Texas goes, other states tend to follow. So Utah has already passed legislation requiring Bible passages and public school social studies. Louisiana and Oklahoma have been moving in the same direction for years. Texas educates roughly one in ten of the nation's public school students. This is not a regional story. One Republican board member, Evelyn Brooks, the only Republican to vote against this, said she believes the curriculum is unconstitutional, and she's right. The court will likely have something to say about this. But here's what I want you to understand: the courts move slowly. Implementation of this curriculum is staggered, beginning with the elementary students in 2030. By the time a legal challenge works its way through the federal system, millions of Texas children will have already spent years in classrooms where the state has told them through curriculum and through law that one religion is the official religion of their state. When a government decides one religion deserves special treatment, every other faith loses. And so does every citizen who believes that government should belong to all of us, regardless of what they believe or whether they believe anything at all. Brandon Hall says Texas is a Christian state. The First Amendment says it isn't. The courts will decide which vision survives. Thanks for tuning in. I really hope you enjoyed that. If you have a question for me or any of our guests, make sure you drop a comment. We'd love to hear from you. Hey, and do me a favor like and subscribe. That really helps us out and it helps us bring you more conversations from beyond belief. And in the meantime, take care and remember reason and compassion go a very long way.