Ohio History Journal

  • 1
  •  
  • 2
  •  
  • 3
  •  
  • 4
  •  
  • 5
  •  
  • 6
  •  
  • 7
  •  
  • 8
  •  
  • 9
  •  
  • 10
  •  
  • 11
  •  
  • 12
  •  
  • 13
  •  
  • 14
  •  
  • 15
  •  
  • 16
  •  
  • 17
  •  
  • 18
  •  

THE CINCINNATI "BIBLE WAR," 1869-1870

THE CINCINNATI "BIBLE WAR," 1869-1870

 

by HAROLD M. HELFMAN

Instructor in History, Ohio State University

 

James M. O'Neill, in his able exposition of Religion and Educa-

tion Under the Constitution, has hurled a challenge to the historian:

"The ending of the use of the public schools as substantially Trini-

tarian Protestant schools at public expense ... is a story in which

there are doubtless many chapters yet to be written."1 The present

study of a decision by the Cincinnati Board of Education in 1869

to exclude the Bible from its public schools is such a chapter,

analyzing the move's impact upon the course of public opinion,

secular and religious.

All America watched the course of events in the Cincinnati "Bible

War."2 Its ultimate outcome would be not only of significance in

Ohio, but would influence a discernible trend nationally toward

secularization in the spirit and content of the American school

system. Indeed, a similar deadlock between the opponents and

adherents of the reading of the Bible in the public schools had

cropped up in New York and San Francisco as well. When the

question of whether or not there was a place for the Bible in public

education was openly debated in a Cincinnati courtroom by some

of Ohio's most competent legal minds, the nation awaited the verdict.

The bitter clash between those maintaining pro-Bible and anti-

Bible viewpoints was to drive both groups into positions of no

surrender; their mutually hostile attitudes were to be seized upon

by societies, editors, lecturers, ministers, and politicians bent on

stirring up latent anti-Popery passions. The board of education's

action was destined to be the focus of a public opinion which

plunged Cincinnati into a boiling caldron of fear and bigotry.

The practice of daily readings of portions of the King James

version of the Bible during opening classroom sessions had begun

1 (New York, 1949), 27.

2 Nation, IX (November 18, 1869), 430.

369