By Paul Jeffrey 

Tegucigalpa, Honduras, -- 1 November 2000 (ENI)--With church leaders putting pressure on him from two directions, the president of Honduras is trying to decide whether to sign a law requiring all schools to begin every day with a 10-minute reading from the Bible. 

Approved by the country's Congress on 26 September, the proposal has unleashed a vehement discussion within this Central American country, with Christian leaders taking up positions on both sides of the debate. 

Some church leaders are jubilant over the new measure and are putting pressure on President Carlos Flores to sign the bill into law. Others, who are either opposed in principle to the measure–believing it violates separation of church and state–or upset that they were not consulted about it, are calling on President Flores to veto the bill. If signed by Flores, the 
bill will take effect next year. 

The main backers of the bill are conservative evangelicals, whose political influence has grown in recent years. Opponents of the measure include Catholic and mainstream Protestant leaders. 

Supporters of the measure believe that growing urban violence and family decay show the need for scripture reading. They believe reading the Bible will help cure a panoply of social ills from youth gangs to HIV/Aids. 

The bill was introduced in Congress in early September as the political campaign heated up in preparation for a presidential primary election in December. The president of Congress, Rafael Pineda Ponce, soon gave the measure his personal support. Pineda is also the leading Liberal Party candidate for president, and many see his enthusiastic support for the measure as a shameless attempt to grab the votes of evangelicals. 

"This is classic political manipulation," Osmundo Ponce, rector of the Honduran Theological Community, a Protestant seminary in the country's capital, Tegucigalpa, told ENI. "In elections politicians need the votes that evangelicals offer. They've seen the rising importance of evangelical votes elsewhere in Latin America, so they're making an unabashed play for their support." 

While in public evangelical leaders have generally argued for the bill, claiming it will improve the morals and values of Honduran youth, in private the battle over the Bible takes on other connotations. ENI had access to a secretly taped recording of a private meeting on 2 October at which the country's top evangelical leaders discussed the proposal. The recording was made available to ENI by a credible source who insisted on anonymity. 

The evangelical leaders are heard on the tape talking about supporting public demonstrations if Flores vetoes the law. One leader lamented that evangelicals had not been "aggressive enough" in fighting against a Catholic-sponsored project to build a giant Christ statue above the Tegucigalpa in 1997, and urged his colleagues to "not back down in this fight". The statue was dedicated in 1998. 

Another claimed that Catholics "are not Christians, they are idolaters ... and they are never going to be our friends".  He said the Catholic opposition to reading the Bible in Honduran schools was part of a larger campaign against evangelicals that included the Vatican's recent Dominus Iesus, a declaration published in September in which the Vatican firmly restated its belief that Protestant denominations are "ecclesial communities" rather than churches. 

Another church leader is heard on the tape urging pastors to pressure school teachers in their congregations to overthrow the leaders of the teachers unions who have opposed the measure. Another churchman labels those who oppose the measure as "atheists, leftists, and sceptics” who support homosexuals and other values which are just too liberal". 

Osmundo Ponce, who along with other Protestants opposed to the measure has requested a meeting with President Flores to discuss the issue, told ENI that the Bible was being treated by the law's supporters as a "magic wand.” 

“The big risk here is that after several years of obligatory Bible reading, the social and 
economic problems of the country are only going to be worse,” Ponce said. “So what happens then? They'll blame the Bible. No one will believe in it anymore. No one believes in politicians now, but with this political manipulation of the Bible, in a few years no one is going to believe in the word of God, either." 

Manuel Torres, the editorial page co-ordinator for the daily El Heraldo newspaper, said the new measure violated the Honduran constitution, which stipulates that Honduras is a secular state. He questioned the motives of Congress members who supported the law. 

"The legislators who want to use the Bible to try to morally correct Honduran society are the very people who are incapable of understanding that this crisis of values in Honduras is a product of their own making, of their own indecency as legislators," Torres told ENI. "They want to rescue conservative values from the Bible while ignoring the progressive values of the Bible. 

"It worries me to hear one legislator in favour of obligatory Bible reading cite as justification that the Bible will tell kids that they have to respect authority. It's true that we should respect authority. But it's also true that we need to call the legislators to account for their actions." 

Several Catholic leaders have publicly opposed the bill. The dioceses of San Pedro Sula and Choluteca each issued public statements opposing the measure. 

The archbishop of  Tegucigalpa, Oscar Andres Rodriguez, was in Rome while Hondurans debated the bill. He was cited in Congress as favouring the measure, but Hector Zelaya, the archbishop's officer for ecumenical affairs, said that was based on a passing remark the archbishop made in the airport while leaving the country. 

Since returning to Honduras on 14 October, Rodriguez  has met President Flores and reportedly urged him to send the bill back to Congress so that it can be more widely debated. 

Many observers believe that President Flores will ultimately sign the bill, because failure to do so would anger evangelicals who have threatened to withdraw their votes from Flores' colleague Pineda and other candidates if the measure is not approved.