A Bible won’t likely be found in a stack of textbooks any given county student might have, but if one North Bryan man has his way it very well could be.

At the Bryan County Board of Education’s regular meeting Thursday, Pembroke resident Fred Covington approached the board during public comment about implementing a Bible curriculum in classrooms at the high school level.

The BoE took no action on the request, but school system staff is looking into whether other school systems have such classes.

According to Covington, the curriculum would not teach the Bible in a religious sense, but teach elements of history and literature in relation to the Old and New Testaments.

“It’s actually an elected course in high school that on school time and for school credit uses the Holy Bible as a textbook,” he said after the meeting

Covington, who has just finished reading the Bible for the second time, said he believes teaching the history and literature of the Bible would expose students to many positive things.

“If they study the history and literature as an elected course, they are going to study some beautiful language,” he said. “Our forefathers thought it was beautiful and sensible. And to me, which I’m no scholar or anything of that nature, it’s the best book you could ever have in school.

“If you threw all the rest out and couldn’t have but one (book), it would be the Bible for the lessons of life.”

Superintendent John Oliver said adding the class could be a possibility, but he noted the school system must be careful when introducing new curriculum.

“When you introduce anything new, right now financially we just have to be careful of adding any elective to the high school curriculum,” he said Monday.

Read more in the Feb. 1 edition of the News.