Kudos to Mark Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer tells New York Times readers about Mark Chancey’s study of Bible-reading in Texas public schools.  For ILYBYGTH readers, there’s not much news there.

As we noted here weeks ago, Professor Chancey found lots of Bible evangelism going on in public-school Bible classes in Texas.  At the time, we opined that we shouldn’t be too surprised at those findings.

But Oppenheimer explored a little deeper, and spoke with Gay Hart, a 77-year-old Bible teacher from Eastland, Texas.  Hart offered the best Bible-teacher stereotype-busting quotation I’ve seen:

‘“I go to First Baptist,” she said. “I wear a Pentecostal hairdo. I play the organ at the Episcopal church. When I could sing, I was the alto at Church of Christ. I have taught in a Catholic school. I am 77, and I am not a little old lady with a 15-year-old car that has 3,000 miles on it. I sky-dived last summer. I have a life, and I love this class.”’

I don’t know about you, but I had to look up “pentecostal hairdo” to see if that was a real thing.  As usual, turns out I’m the last to know.  Thanks to Erika, I now know how to do it myself!