US teacher dismissed for urging pupils not to take Bible literally

The thought police are alive and well and living in Iowa.

Steve Bitterman, a teacher at Southwestern Community College, Red Oak, Iowa, was fired yesterday after he urged his pupils not to take the story of Adam and Eve too literally.

Bitterman was teaching a western civilisation course and often used extracts from the Old Testament as part of his lessons, but urged students to look beyond a literal interpretation of what he views as an "extremely meaningful story", believing such a reading would miss much of the poetic, metaphoric and symbolic content.

After class, he also made the mistake of referring to the story as a "fairy tale" during a conversation with a student.

The class was being broadcast to a second college in Osceola, Iowa, and it was a group of students from this class that reported Bitterman for "denigrating their religion".

Bitterman's college has refused to comment on his dismissal, which it described as a "personnel matter".

Speaking to Iowa newspaper the Des Moines Register, Bitterman said: "I'm just a little bit shocked that a college in good standing would back up students who insist that people have to teach that there were such things as talking snakes or lose their job."

Clearly endorsing the good work of his former employers, he concluded: ""From my point of view, what they're doing is essentially teaching their students to function in the eighth century."

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God at www.God-101.com and the blog "Perspective" at http://God-101.blogspot.com