TO REQUIRE INFORMATION CONCERNING HOW THE RELIGIOUS AND MORAL BELIEFS OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS INFLUENCED THE FOUNDING OF THE UNITED STATES TO BE EMBEDDED INTO EXISTING SOCIAL STUDIES STANDARDS.

Arkansas students study Founders’ religious beliefs

Beginning with the 2026–2027 school year, Arkansas’s State Board of Education must add material to existing social studies standards and courses. This applies to grades 6–12. The material must cover how the Founding Fathers’ religious and moral beliefs shaped the nation and its founding documents. Required topics include the Declaration of Independence’s passage about equality, a Creator, and rights to life, liberty, and pursuing happiness. Lessons must cover liberty under law, equality, natural rights, self-defense and defense of community and nation, speech, press, and religious freedom. They must address the Founders’ views of the Creator, human nature, and rights that cannot be taken away. Government topics include a republic, separation of powers, shared federal and state power, and what the law calls democracy’s “fatal tendency.” Lessons must also cover definitions of religion in Virginia’s Declaration of Rights and demands for a Bill of Rights. They must examine the influence of the Ten Commandments, Mosaic Law, New Testament, and ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Roman experiences. English common law, the Magna Carta, and the English Bill of Rights are also required topics. Lessons must connect the Declaration’s rights framework to ending slavery and examine how today’s freedoms trace to the Founders’ beliefs. The law specifies no separate funding or direct household payment.