STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Some other news now. Lawmakers in Ohio are considering a bill they call the Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act. What does that mean? The answer is a fitting topic for NPR reporting this week on the shifting boundaries between church and state. Sarah Donaldson of Ohio Public Radio reports.
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SARAH DONALDSON, BYLINE: Every few months, in a sunlit atrium in the Ohio state capitol, a crowd - old and young, multiracial - gathers for a Christian worship service, a mix of songs and Bible reading.
UNIDENTIFIED WORSHIPPERS: I pledge allegiance to the Bible.
DONALDSON: A handful of state lawmakers are here, and they're called forward.
RUTH EDMONDS: We are so blessed in this state to have legislators who have a personal relationship with the Lord.
DONALDSON: That's Ruth Edmonds of the Center for Christian Virtue, an Ohio-based advocacy group that leads the event. One of their allies, though not here today, is Republican state Representative Gary Click from northern Ohio. In an interview, he describes how he found comfort in the church. At the age of 12, he stood up in his congregation and...
GARY CLICK: I went down, and I just told the Lord. I said, you know, if you want me to be a pastor, I'll be a pastor.
DONALDSON: He became a pastor and then a legislator. He tells me God created three institutions - the family, the home, the government.
CLICK: As good stewards, we should be involved in all of those to one extent or the other.
DONALDSON: Click is the architect of Ohio's ban on gender-affirming surgeries and hormone treatments for minors. He's backed personhood for fetuses and requiring schools to let students out for religious study. But he says he's not legislating his religion.
CLICK: The Bible says, thou shalt not kill. Now, am I legislating the Bible if I support laws against murder? No. I'm not.
DONALDSON: Since last year, he's been working on another bill.
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CLICK: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise in support of House Bill 486, the Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act.
DONALDSON: The bill says it would permit the teaching of the positive impact of, quote, "Judeo-Christian values" in U.S. history. It lists two dozen examples, from appeals to divine power in the Declaration of Independence and the religious backgrounds of the signers to the impact of evangelical Billy Graham. Click named the bill after slain conservative Charlie Kirk, whose rhetoric offended some, but resonated with others. Here's how Click sees it.
CLICK: One of the reasons that people hated Charlie, I think, is because he was advancing Christian principles, the Christian history of our nation. And I think that's what took his life, and so I think people need a better education.
DONALDSON: Some educators say the bill is unnecessary and biased.
SARAH KAKA: And I have never heard of a single teacher in Ohio that says they're afraid to teach any of the content that's in this bill.
DONALDSON: That's Sarah Kaka, president of the Ohio Council for the Social Studies, a group of educators.
KAKA: Because it is such a skewed perspective on history, it's not balanced by any means. And in our organization as a whole, you know, we are very much proponents of historical inquiry.
DONALDSON: But Click is undeterred. He says the National Association of Christian Lawmakers asked him to share it as model legislation for other states. Going back to the moral majority of the 1980s and even before, there have been ongoing efforts to promote a specific view of Christianity in schools, law and society. Indiana University Indianapolis professor Andrew Whitehead is among those who describe the movement as Christian nationalism. Whitehead defines it as...
ANDREW WHITEHEAD: The desire to fuse together a very particular expression of Christianity with American civic life, and then having the government at all levels defend and preserve that connection and fusion.
DONALDSON: Click rejects the term.
CLICK: That is a dog whistle. That's crisis language in order to scare people and take them back to this idea of, you're forcing your religion on us.
DONALDSON: There's a tangible sign of the conservative Christian influence on politics here. The Center for Christian Virtue bought a four-story building steps from the capitol a few years ago.
AARON BAER: Every bill that gets introduced over there, we read.
DONALDSON: That's Aaron Baer, the president of the decades-old organization. Over the years, it has lobbied for school choice vouchers, restricting access to abortion and assisted suicide. Baer says the organization is not actually working on Click's Charlie Kirk bill because, he says, it's on a good track already. It moved fast through the House. Democratic state Representative Sean Brennan voted against it. The former public school teacher and observant Catholic objected on historical grounds.
SEAN BRENNAN: Just look at the history of our nation. You didn't hear George Washington invoking Jesus. We don't need to sow more seeds of division in our country and go back to those days. We've evolved. We're more inclusive, and I think that makes our state and our nation stronger.
DONALDSON: Click is running for reelection for a final two-year term. The Senate deadline to pass the Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act is in December. A couple other states have similar proposals.
For NPR News, I'm Sarah Donaldson in Columbus, Ohio.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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