“With a new Texas law in effect allowing time for prayer and reading religious texts in public schools, Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday encouraged students to practice the Lord’s Prayer as relayed in the King James Version of the Bible.”

Texas Tribune

“After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

Matthew 9:6

The Texas House of Representatives impeached Ken Paxton for showing favoritism to a donor who bribed him, misusing public resources, making false claims against whistleblowers, and interfering with his ongoing securities fraud trial.

This paragon of virtue, alleged adulterer and Texas senatorial candidate urges students to recite the Lord’s Prayer in school, cynically pandering to the evangelical electorate.

This law is an affront to the separation of church of state. I have a problem with the first verse: “Our Father which art in heaven.”

The Bible was written by men in a patriarchal society, reflecting male authority and female subordination. In the biblical narrative women don’t rise to the status of second-class citizens, they are chattel, the property of men.

According to John 4:24, “God is a Spirit,” and the pronouns for the deity should be they/them.

Teaching our female students that the ultimate authority figure is a father figure, sends the wrong message. It indoctrinates them into thinking that authority figures are male.

Any version of the Bible that translates the first verse of the Lord’s Prayer as “Our Father” should be obsolete and this sexist translation should not be read in a public school.