In Caddo, Okla., a two-block stretch of the small town contains churches of at least four denominations, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist and nondenominational. More than four in five voters in the neighboring counties went Republican in the last national election.
This rural region near the border with Texas might seem an ideal testing ground for an emerging but highly contested campaign by conservative officials to expand the role of religion in children’s education and mandate that history, literature and even math classes teach the Bible to students in grades five to 12.
Yet even here, the plans are not being embraced. Rather, they are finding unexpected opposition.
“It’s one thing that has shocked me,” said Lee Northcutt, the superintendent of Caddo Public Schools. “How many truly have said, ‘That’s why we have eight, nine, 10 churches in town. They can do that.’”
Parents have told him, “That’s my job,” he added. And one teacher who serves as a preacher told him “flat out, ‘No. We shouldn’t do that,’” Mr. Northcutt recalled.
Over the last several years, some conservative Christian politicians and organizations have sought to accelerate a national movement to bring prayer and religious texts into classrooms. Many evangelicals and Catholics oppose what they view as liberal orthodoxy in school curriculums. They would like the country’s democracy to be explicitly grounded in Christian values.
The movement has often cast divisions over their goals as partisan. Ryan Walters, the Republican schools chief in Oklahoma who directed public schools to teach the Bible, said: “The left does not like it, but it will be taught.”
But the resistance — or at times, indifference — in places like Mr. Northcutt’s school district challenges the idea that incorporating the Bible in the classroom is an issue that breaks cleanly along party or religious lines. It also reveals a surprising obstacle to the viability of these efforts.
In other parts of rural Oklahoma, some longtime school leaders say they have never received complaints from families that religion is not taught enough in the classroom, and that they see no reason to shift course.
In Texas, members of the public were invited to express their opinions about a proposed elementary curriculum infused with stories from the Bible that education officials will vote on later this fall. Some superintendents in the northeast and western sections of the state — where many parents and educators are reverent Christians and traditionally support Republican policies — publicly criticized the religious content in the proposed lessons.
The pushback is in part a reflection of the diversity of views among everyday Christians. It also underscores the contrasting priorities of ambitious state officials with national profiles and local district leaders who tend to be more focused on the issues close to home.
In interviews, several superintendents in Republican counties said they were more concerned with ensuring that children can read, write and do math than teaching them the Bible. Others said the endeavors conflict with their mandate as public school administrators to serve all students — even when their own worldview may be shaped by a conservative and Christian lens.
Chuck McCauley, the superintendent of Bartlesville Public Schools, a district of some 6,000 students in northeast Oklahoma that is home to a private religious university, said that his personal political and religious leanings “should have zero impact on my job.”
“We educate everybody that shows up,” Mr. McCauley said, adding that in-depth religious instruction should be “up to the family, up to the parents and up to the church, whatever that looks like for them. That’s none of our business.”
National polling on expanding religious instruction in public schools is limited. But one survey conducted last year by The Associated Press and a nonpartisan research institution showed a divide over the intersection of religion and public education.
Among the U.S. adults who responded, 37 percent said religion has too little influence over what children are taught, 31 percent said it has too much, and 31 percent said it has the right amount.
The push to bolster teaching on the Bible has certainly won favor among many parents and congregations. While few administrators across Oklahoma publicly announced that they will change their curriculums, for example, local superintendents said they have heard of several districts that are welcoming Mr. Walters’s mandate.
Officials in these states argue that the Bible is not only a religious text but also a historical document with centuries of influence on American society. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican and practicing Catholic, has said the new state-developed curriculum will help students “better understand the connection of history, art, community, literature and religion on pivotal events” like the civil rights movement and American Revolution.
Still, clashes over the role of religion in public schools have long divided Christians, even when the Bible was a centerpiece of American education.
In the 19th century, Catholics in Philadelphia fought against students reading the King James Version of the Bible, after Protestants helped bring it into schools as a common textbook. Believers across the ideological spectrum later battled over whether science classes would teach the theory of evolution or the creation story from the Book of Genesis.
Mark A. Chancey, a professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said continued disagreements across the faith help explain “why we do see pushback against these initiatives from people at different points on the theological spectrum.”
“Not just liberal Christians,” he said. “But also often more conservative Christians who recognize that once you introduce this type of teaching about the Bible, there is the opportunity for people to promote their own religious beliefs over others.”
Mr. Chancey added: “That’s a well-founded fear.”
In some school districts, anxieties over giving teachers broad license to analyze Scripture — potentially drawing the ire of parents with different beliefs — are adding to the unease.
Rob Miller, the superintendent of Bixby Public Schools, in a suburb of Tulsa, said at a public event last week on the Oklahoma mandate that he struggled with the myriad ways that educators might explain the same biblical lesson or rituals.
“I, as a Christian myself who raised my children as a Christian, would be pretty skeptical of how that might look in various classrooms,” he said.
One of Mr. Miller’s sons attended vacation Bible school at a Baptist church in the summer, the superintendent said. At 10, the child was told by an adult there that “he would not be able to enter the kingdom of God” because he was baptized only as an infant.
Lutherans like Mr. Miller believe that newborns can be baptized as a means of grace, while the Baptist tradition says the ritual should be reserved for believers making a conscious decision.
“There are different interpretations of the word of God even within the Christian faith,” Mr. Miller said. “So we have to be really careful. Who’s going to dictate what the appropriate interpretation is?”
The push to teach a Christian historical perspective in public schools also comes as some religious conservatives have joined with free-market advocates to expand opportunities for parents to use public money to attend private religious schools through voucher programs.
That movement also does not sit well with some Christian educators.
Brandon Dennard, the superintendent of the Red Lick Independent School District in northeast Texas, told The Texas Tribune that the calls for more religious instruction in the state were “just one more idea that is clouding the line between private schools and public schools.”
“I’m a conservative Christian man,” said Mr. Dennard, who did not respond to requests for comment. “But I’m in public education because I want to serve all kids.”
