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Oklahoma's education department seemingly wants to buy 55,000 Trump Bibles
The state's Republican superintendent wants 55,000 new Bibles — for 43,000 classrooms — to tick some specific boxes





By 
Griffin Eckstein






 Published October 5, 2024 2:09PM (EDT) 








							US President Donald Trump holds up a Bible outside of St John's Episcopal church across Lafayette Park in Washington, DC on June 1, 2020.															(Getty Images)







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Oklahoma public school officials are taking bids for 55,000 new Bibles, and the specifications are eye-catchingly specific. 
Republican Superintendent Ryan Walters is searching for King James Bibles containing both the Old and New Testaments, with the U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights, Pledge of Allegiance, and Declaration of Independence inserted, “bound in leather or leather-like material for durability.”
 Oklahoma Watch asked Christian education material supplier Mardel to check its 2,900 Bible options against the specs. They found no matches. However, the publication found two: the $60 Donald Trump-endorsed “God Bless the U.S.A. Bible” from Lee Greenwood, and the $90 Donald Trump Jr.-backed “We The People Bible.”
Those Bibles made headlines in March as the ex-president's latest branded venture, succeeding a sneaker launch and a series of NFTs. Trump gets a cut of each Lee Greenwood Bible sale.


Related
“He’s never prayed in his life”: Mary Trump torches Trump for hawking $60 Bibles as bills pile up


“There are very few Bibles on the market that would meet these criteria, and all of them have been endorsed by former President Donald Trump,” Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice Executive Director Colleen McCarty told Oklahoma Watch.
A former state Attorney General told the paper the bid request seemed “​​anything but competitive” and worried it might violate state law. 
The Bibles are part of Walters’ mission to make religious education a mainstay in the Sooner State. In June, Walters ordered the Bible be used in lessons for students in fifth grade and up, warning that his office expected “immediate and strict compliance.”
A rep for Walters defended the Bible-scouting process and shrugged off the connection to Trump.
“There are hundreds of Bible publishers and we expect a robust competition for this proposal,” Dan Isett, a spokesperson for the Oklahoma Department of Education, told the Guardian.


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Who is paying for the bibles? And before you say "tax payers", yes, duh. But is the state buying them with state funds? Or are individual districts being made to buy them? Because a lot of districts just don't have the money for that. They can't find the money so that students don't have to supply the school with printer paper. how are they going to find the money for overpriced grifter bibles? there's only so much you can squeeze out of the art and theatre budgets, because we know they're not going to touch the football budget.

it's so gross that any public institution is being required to buy any religious text en masse and not being required to buy any others. they haven't prohibited the mass purchase of copies of the Bhagavad Gita, but they're also not requiring it, only requiring bibles, a text that is antithetical to the principles outlined in the declaration of independence, constitution, federalist papers, and the myriad writings, personal papers and correspondences of the individuals that worked on the former.