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For Pastor David Fannin the Bible is as much a religious text as it is an historical document. “You cannot divorce that from who we are and what we are as a country and have any understanding of what we are supposed to be as a country.”

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But a bill to allow public schools to teach the Bible as a class—has started a debate over the blending of church and state.

Opponents warned lawmakers that teaching the Bible alone would be a state endorsement of one religion over another.

“It biases and blinds students to the broader world we are an increasingly pluralistic nation we’re not just a nation of Christians,” said Dr. Matt Tittle with the Bay Area Unitarian Universalist Church.

It’s more than just putting the Bible into public schools.

Lawmakers also want to add the words ‘under God’ to the Texas pledge.

Something school students recite every day.

The new pledge would read “Honor the Texas flag, I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, and indivisible.”

“I worry that the real goal is to forward just Christianity,” said Tittle.

It’s a book that has united and divided neighbors for centuries.

“I don’t see how you can say that teaching that kind of thing would cause calamity in our country. I would suggest to you that the failure to teach those things has caused a calamity in this country and has brought us to the place that we are,” said Fannin.