Is religious study necessary for a classical education?

[JenJenQ]

In our household, there is no religious practice or belief. I have spoken to my kids about religions briefly when the topic comes up but nothing in depth.

I read The Latin Centered Curriculum and TWTM and and decided to do a classical education with my kids who are 3, 6, and 8. 

 

Is religious study really necessary for a classical education?

And is it only Christianity that matters?

How can it be done secularly and at what age should it be included?

Should it last throughout the whole homeschool experience from K-12 like it is scheduled in LCC?

 

I am just trying to understand why its necessary (if indeed it is) and if I should include it in my children's education. I feel like I would be more comfortable including it if other religions where included. But then the question would then be how much time to dedicate to each religion. 

So sorry for all the questions. This is my first year homeschooling and I want try to do this right. Thank you!

[Sarah0000]

Well the ancient Greeks weren't Christian.

We are atheists. We study all the major world religions, their role in society from an anthropological perspective, and observe those traditions that we connect with (mainly the less dogmatic ones).

I don't see any reason not to study religion.

[Tiberia]

I think you would want a basic familiarity with Judeo-Christian holy texts (OT and NT Bible) to fully understand some of the great literature and philosophies of the Western tradition. It would also be helpful to have a basic understanding of Greek, Roman, and Norse gods and myths, Eastern religions, and other major world religions to appreciate perspectives and cultural foundations of different regions and historical events. Much of history is a response or counter-response to religious thinking, whether good or bad. 

You wouldn't need to make religion a huge part of your studies, but cover some basics as they come up (and they will come up a lot in history and literature). As for values and spirituality, you will pass those down by your daily lives. For school, you want to encourage the love of learning, the joy of reading and discussing great ideas and events, and the ability to gather and articulate ideas. This doesn't happen overnight. Remember, there's no right or wrong way to homeschool, only wide guidelines and suggestions. I wish you a great and joyous journey of exploration. 

[EKS]

Having some familiarity with the world's major religions as well as (in the United States) more in depth knowledge of the Judeo-Christian tradition is necessary for cultural literacy, which, I assume, is a key element of a classical education.

[JenJenQ]

2 hours ago, Sarah0000 said:

We study all the major world religions, their role in society from an anthropological perspective, and observe those traditions that we connect with (mainly the less dogmatic ones).

How do you include it? Is there a certain type of curriculum you use? 

 

1 hour ago, Tiberia said:

You wouldn't need to make religion a huge part of your studies, but cover some basics as they come up (and they will come up a lot in history and literature). 

This is where I have the most trouble. I don't have any prior knowledge regarding religions and their bibles and their links to literature. My public school education was severely lacking as you can tell. I'm basically learning alongside my kids and so I don't really know HOW to include it in their education. 

[lulalu]

There are big stories from different religions or people that are very helpful to know. 

Greek myths

Stories of the Israelites found in Genesis (use a children's story Bible for this) 

You don't have to start right away, but sometime in late elementary and middle school knowing and hearing these stories will help in cultural understanding. There are many songs, movies, books that have references to biblical stories or greek myths. I find these two to be the most often referenced. 

 

[caffeineandbooks]

Religion does not need to be a separate subject, IMHO, but it would be artificial to cut it out of history as though it didn't exist.

It always amuses me that many Christians won't use Story of the World because they feel it is too secular, while many secular folks won't use it because for them it's too religious 🙂  In our family, it has been a great introduction to history including world religions and the influence of religion on historical events, with no agenda to Christianise or secularise your kids.  It covers history more or less chronologically over 4 years, and is respectful of diverse religious traditions.  In book 1 (ancients) you will read about the beginnings of Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity with some myths and folktales from each.  I think there's even one traditional North American tale.  In book 2 (middle ages) you read about Islam as well, and there's a chapter on Australian/New Zealand traditional peoples, and the Crusades, Protestant Reformation and Pilgrims.  If you have elementary age kids, I highly recommend it. 

Each week you read a chapter, go to the library to borrow out picture books and read alouds (there are great suggestions in the activity guide, and plenty of blogs online offering ideas) and perhaps do a practical activity - again, the activity guide provides ideas for crafts, cooking, games, dramas depending on the topic.  The kids make a narration page at their own level of what they learned - youngers might draw a picture and dictate a sentence long caption for you to transcribe, olders might write a summary paragraph.

There's no need to start when the eldest is in grade 1 though - we're doing a second loop through book 1 at the moment, and I think my fourth and second graders are the perfect age.  If I were starting out in homeschooling again, I would wait until my second child was in first or second grade - the eldest would not have been hurt at all by waiting a bit longer, and by the time you get to book 4 you really do need to be at least in 4th grade.  Believe the descriptions in the book - book 1 suits kids in grades 1-5, book 2 suits grades 2-6, etc.  If you are new to home schooling and have kids below 4th grade, and especially if you plan to homeschool after the pandemic, consider getting your feet under you with math and language arts first and then adding history, science, etc once you've found your rhythm.  There is time, and your goals and priorities will probably change a bit as you work out what's best for your particular unique family.  Best of luck - it's an amazing treasure to have these years with your kids and to dive into such rich experiences together!

[JenJenQ]

Thank you caffeineandbooks! I am actually using SotW and never thought about it in that light. 

 

Would a more in-depth look into religions be be needed later on like in middle/high school? Or would it suffice to continue to learn religious study alongside history like it does in SotW? I've read that some understanding of the Bible is needed to study some of the books included in a classical education. 

 

Thank you so much for the help! 

[Lawyer&Mom]

I would highly recommend a children’s story Bible. I would read it aloud just like D'Aulaire’s Greek Myths.  Call it Hebrew Myths if you like.  It’s just so important to know the basic stories.  I grew up without them, and it really hindered my later understanding of art and literature.    

[caffeineandbooks]

1 hour ago, JenJenQ said:

Would a more in-depth look into religions be be needed later on like in middle/high school? Or would it suffice to continue to learn religious study alongside history like it does in SotW? I've read that some understanding of the Bible is needed to study some of the books included in a classical education. 

I hope this doesn't sound like I'm blowing you off, but I think you can decide that when you get there.  Work through SOTW for now.  See what your family loves and possibly hates about it.  As you're reading to them, read widely.  Throw in some Aesop/D'Aulaires/Bible stories/Jataka tales (ancient Indian myths) and the odd book about beliefs or festivals or daily life in other cultures.  When you find a thread that appeals to you all, dive in and follow it! - You might read an entire children's Bible one semester, or you might find after two stories that everyone wants to move on.  That's fine.  Post Covid, you might even take a field trip to a church/mosque/temple/synagogue, or invite friends with particular beliefs to share a meal and talk about why their faith is important to them. 

The shape of your middle and high school years will depend on your kids' interests and prior exposure and you'll know when you get there whether they need more and what it should look like.  In the mean time, you can certainly read more on this subject for yourself and you'll probably find that helps shape your priorities too.  You could simply buy a Bible and read it for yourself (choose a modern version like NIV to make it easy to understand), or you could find out if a church in your area offers a "what we believe" or "Bible overview" type course - many are doing this on Zoom due to the pandemic.  You could also try reading about topics like early American settlement and notice whether you understand the religious milieu of the time and how it impacted people's decisions to leave England.  You have time; if you just keep learning with them and reading what you can to stretch yourself each year, you'll be way ahead of the game.

[JenJenQ]

1 hour ago, caffeineandbooks said:

I hope this doesn't sound like I'm blowing you off, but I think you can decide that when you get there

Oh no, don't worry. I know I shouldn't worry about it considering my oldest is in 3rd grade but my anxiety makes me worry about high school. I just had to ask to ease some of my nervousness. I never expected to homeschool. I just made the decision at the very end of November! So my mind is all worried if I'm doing this right, what I am missing, how this will affect their high school education, and on and on. 

 

 

Thank you so much for your help and your patience with my nonstop questioning! 

[Terabith]

Honestly, I have an masters of divinity, but for your purposes, I'm not sure that reading the Bible straight is the way to go.  There's a LOT of boring and irrelevant parts in the Bible that it would be easy to get bogged down.  I'd get a story Bible like Egermiers for your own benefit.  It has all the stories you need to know but it's told in a way more readable way and without all the million begats and digressions into laws.  

But yeah, I think going through SOTW and then doing deeper dives as you come to things is useful.  Or read Egermiers to your kids; they're the right age for it, too.  Or focus on reading Greek myths this year and do Hebrew myths another year.  

[wendyroo]

We are atheists, but I think it is very important for my kids to learn about world religions (past and present).

I think it is important for cultural literacy, literary studies, historical understanding, etc.

I think it is also very important for cultural sensitivity. We live in a global society, interacting with people of all different faiths. I certainly don't expect my kids to memorize all the nuances of the various religions, but I think it is crucial that they respect the role religion can play in people's lives. I want them to get a taste for different rituals, ceremonies, laws and customs, etc.

We have always had a couple Bible picture books around. Also Greek, Norse, Chinese, Celtic, Egyptian, etc. myths. We've read all the Story of the World books. We have books like What Do You Believe?: Big Questions About Religion and The Usborne Encyclopedia of World Religions. I also search for picture books that naturally introduce the kids to characters of different religions, like Time to Pray and Yaffa and Fatima: Shalom, Salaam.

Lastly, I look for opportunities for my kids to interact with various religions. We've taken the kids to a couple UU services to experience that...and because I think learning and practicing how to behave in a church setting is a life skill, and not one I want to be teaching from scratch if we have to attend a wedding or funeral. My aunt is a minister, so she has taken us "behind the scenes" at her church. Our local Mosque held an open house and invited the community to tour the building and ask questions, so we took the kids to broaden their horizons.

Ironically, my highest priority in teaching about different religions is showing my kids that the differences between various groups - the different foods, holidays, clothing, rituals, etc. - really pale in comparison to the similarities. I want them to have encountered hijabs and prayer rugs and menorahs so that they don't seem foreign and "other". When my kids meet people of different faiths, I want them to be able to focus on the people, not get scared away by the unfamiliarity.

[Sarah0000]

9 hours ago, JenJenQ said:

How do you include it? Is there a certain type of curriculum you use? 

 

This is where I have the most trouble. I don't have any prior knowledge regarding religions and their bibles and their links to literature. My public school education was severely lacking as you can tell. I'm basically learning alongside my kids and so I don't really know HOW to include it in their education. 

I use living picture books and discussion.

[cbollin]

This is important to say since you're early in your homeschool journey.  There is no "right" or "wrong" way to approach this topic/subject or any other topic/subject.  You'll mess up on something just like all of us have had trial and error along the way even when following a structured program.

I'm in the camp that says religious study is part of cultural literacy and is necessary. It's just too tied into studying history and people.  Many ways.  here's what I tried to do.

Many people will follow a general idea of younger years to teach it concretely as part of your life, then add some info as you see need (oh, your friend from school can't meet up today, the family is celebrating such and such). Holidays are a natural time to explore the topics.  Some people may take a simple approach to grab some library books from children's section about any holiday (religious or national).   In my homeschooling style, we had books to read from to glean info.   Got lessons done and read on things of interest.   Then in high school, a different approach was taken with other faiths and religious beliefs as an academic course.  

Then, in college years, the university had a religious course requirement as part of General Education diversity.  Oh my oldest.  LOL. She was an engineering major who took World Religions for that requirement.  And when the scheduled field trip to the local reform Jewish synagogue was canceled for reasons, she asked professor if she could text her Orthodox friend and see if his rabbi could let them tour the Orthodox one instead.  We are Christian faith so it wasn't just going to our own place on field trip. She had friends who were not the same as she.  Or, back in the days pre Covid, when the Islamic Center in town had open house days to tour and learn, we did that. Lots of fun. One of the moms in our homeschool PE class invited us. Had food table. took our shoes off to go in the prayer hall. It was great to learn basics from those who are in that faith.   and long ago... in another city in a previous life, we visited the Tibetan Buddhist monastery in town. It was run by the brother or nephew of the Dalai Lama. kinda of a tourist thing.  but I digress. The point of that part of my rambling was to consider field trips when those are able to be done again when pandemic issues are not a factor.  And when friends say hey, want to come to my religious thing, you might consider saying "sounds neat".  I know I wouldn't have gone to the Islamic open house if she hadn't just asked and invited me.    foods. holidays and field trips. 

If a company called Sophia LLC is still area when yours are in older high school age, there's a nice little course they have called approaches to studying religion.  But it's not stage of learning appropriate for now. I say that mostly to let you know stuff is there now and new things will be there when you are ready. I started homeschooling long ago and technically finished K through 12 journey a few months ago when youngest finished high school.  I had no idea what I would use for high school for her until I got there. Long story short, but what was good fit for other two was not good fit for youngest. Again, that's to encourage you for long trip with homeschooling. Not really about saying to use that course. Just saying stuff will be there.

and Bible as literature can wait until another stage of learning if you want to do that.

agreeing that if you're using Story of the World, you'll have a good start to learning some study of religious views in a built in to the program kind of way.  I should have started my rambling with that.

thanks for listening to old person ramble this morning.

[Momto6inIN]

On 12/21/2020 at 6:55 PM, JenJenQ said:

Thank you caffeineandbooks! I am actually using SotW and never thought about it in that light. 

 

Would a more in-depth look into religions be be needed later on like in middle/high school? Or would it suffice to continue to learn religious study alongside history like it does in SotW? I've read that some understanding of the Bible is needed to study some of the books included in a classical education. 

 

Thank you so much for the help! 

SotW is a great introduction for elementary, as are myths from around the world. We are Christian, but we have enjoyed reading Celtic, Norse, and Greek myths as well as Jakata Tales, African folk tales, Chinese Monkey King Tales, and Native American stories.

Agreeing that there's no reason to worry about middle school and high school just yet 😊

But to ease your mind, the Human Odyssey textbooks from K12 are middle school level and include information on all the major world religions and how they started and their effect on history.

[wathe]

On 12/21/2020 at 5:19 PM, JenJenQ said:

How do you include it? Is there a certain type of curriculum you use? 

 

This is where I have the most trouble. I don't have any prior knowledge regarding religions and their bibles and their links to literature. My public school education was severely lacking as you can tell. I'm basically learning alongside my kids and so I don't really know HOW to include it in their education. 

We did a year of world religion for social studies last year (grades 5 and 6).  Our goal was cultural literacy, rather than religious instruction per se.  It was very worthwhile.

We are a non-religious family.  I grew up attending Anglican and Presbyterian churches sporadically - enough to have some familiarity, but not really deep knowledge.

I had to self educate. I used the great course "Cultural Literacy for Religion: Everything the Well-Educated Person Should Know" (from Audible, as audio in the car).  It's very good.  I also read "The Bible and its Influence".

I then checked out every religion book our library had in the children's section (and there were quite a lot).  We used a world religions survey texts as a spines (both DK "Kids' Book of World Religions" and Mary Pope Osborne's "One World, Many Religions".

We let the kids choose where in the world to start, and they chose eastern religions, "because they are the ones we know the least about".  Fair enough.  For each religion, we read our spines, then read kids' books - mostly picture books.  For Hinduism, that meant a picture book about Diwali, one about Holi, some tales about the gods (I remember a particularly lovely one about Ganesh), a kids' version of the Ramayana etc. We tried to make a Hindu god family tree (that got complicated fast!).  And then did some narration on our reading.  They also co-listened to my great-course in the car, and got a surprising amount out of it.

For Christianity, we read through a children's bible (among many other books).  For Islam, we read through a kid's book of stories from the Quran (among many other books).  Made connections - many are the same stories, with differences in names and points of view.  We had some great discussions!

We visited a mosque and two churches.  We had a synagogue visit scheduled, but we were foiled by the pandemic.

It helped that we had finished all four volumes of Story of the World before starting.  They'd already had some exposure to major world religions and decent historical context.

It was such a good year.  The learning was both deep and broad.

[wathe]

23 hours ago, wendyroo said:

We are atheists, but I think it is very important for my kids to learn about world religions (past and present).

I think it is important for cultural literacy, literary studies, historical understanding, etc.

I think it is also very important for cultural sensitivity. We live in a global society, interacting with people of all different faiths. I certainly don't expect my kids to memorize all the nuances of the various religions, but I think it is crucial that they respect the role religion can play in people's lives. I want them to get a taste for different rituals, ceremonies, laws and customs, etc.

We have always had a couple Bible picture books around. Also Greek, Norse, Chinese, Celtic, Egyptian, etc. myths. We've read all the Story of the World books. We have books like What Do You Believe?: Big Questions About Religion and The Usborne Encyclopedia of World Religions. I also search for picture books that naturally introduce the kids to characters of different religions, like Time to Pray and Yaffa and Fatima: Shalom, Salaam.

Lastly, I look for opportunities for my kids to interact with various religions. We've taken the kids to a couple UU services to experience that...and because I think learning and practicing how to behave in a church setting is a life skill, and not one I want to be teaching from scratch if we have to attend a wedding or funeral. My aunt is a minister, so she has taken us "behind the scenes" at her church. Our local Mosque held an open house and invited the community to tour the building and ask questions, so we took the kids to broaden their horizons.

Ironically, my highest priority in teaching about different religions is showing my kids that the differences between various groups - the different foods, holidays, clothing, rituals, etc. - really pale in comparison to the similarities. I want them to have encountered hijabs and prayer rugs and menorahs so that they don't seem foreign and "other". When my kids meet people of different faiths, I want them to be able to focus on the people, not get scared away by the unfamiliarity.

ITA.  You said it all better than I could.

[Patty G]

Like other commenters have already suggested, I also strongly recommend getting a nice children's Bible and reading one or two chapters a night as a bedtime story for your children. As someone else already suggested, you can describe it to them as Jewish-Christian myths.  I also recommend an adult book for yourself called Biblical Literacy by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. Though it only covers the "Old Testament," it will give you an excellent grounding in that area, and it is a fascinating read with very short chapters so you won't get overwhelmed. Above all, DON'T attempt to read the Bible straight through!  The language can be hard to understand depending upon the version, and long stretches of it are deadly boring. There are also things one needs to understand even in order to understand the Bible, so don't begin with the original text, with the exception of the books of Proverbs and Psalms. These are lovely books that are easy to understand and that can be read verse by verse, or Psalm by Psalm. 

It is imperative to have familiarity with biblical lore in order to study and understand music, art, literature, and history.  Just as an example, I had a boyfriend in college who had been raised Catholic, but only lightly at that, and he had virtually NO knowledge of the Bible at all. I don't know if this is still true today, but, it was generally understood that Catholics had less familiarity with the Bible than Protestants, and Protestants had less familiarity than fundamentalists. He was a brilliant student (later went on to get a grad degree in literature) but he was severely hobbled by his lack of knowledge because he didn't automatically understand the multiple references to religion or religious characters that come up in literature all the time. I was nowhere near the student that he was, but I used to have to explain things to him that I had learned as a small child in a fundamentalist sect. I was actually astonished that someone so smart could be so ignorant of Bible stories!  As an adult, I converted to Judaism and was introduced to an additional set of religious literature, as well as a deeper, historical analysis of the already familiar Bible. 

Don't feel that you can't make up for lost time just because you were not raised with these concepts. Just do a little research into children's Bibles and then select one. And do look into the Biblical Literacy book for yourself. The famous writing professor, John Gardner, (who, incidentally, was a devout Catholic) once said, "God is an uneven writer, but when He's good, nobody beats Him."  Good luck! 

Edited January 1, 2021 by Patty G

[serendipitous journey]

One quick suggestion for Bible stories in elementary/middle school: The Action Bible. 

I care about Bible, and this version gets some tricky things astonishingly right (like the book of Job, which is really hard to make sense of).  It is my agnostic children's favorite version.  There are some others I'll try to post later.  I haven't found resources yet that I really love for studying Islam or Buddhism, though we've touched on these; or for studying native religions. 

Mainly, though, I want to encourage you to engage with the process of understanding people of faith.  For better or worse, people of faith are no improvement on (and no degradation of) the average person.  So you will finds lots of foolishness, stupidity, and even cruelty in their writings and their lives. 

But there is something to the religious worldview that is worth understanding, and in its better incarnations something that can lift up the spirit. 

It would be a mistake, for example, to teach one's children that the ancient Greeks believed the stuff in D'Aulaire's "Greek Myths" and the modern Christians believe the stuff in "The Action Bible".  Though most secular parents do this. 

To round out this example, let us consider Socrates: he is an ancient Greek who appears to have taken the concept of the divine quite seriously.  And yet is rather hard to imagine him worshiping D'Aulaire's gods.  I can't begin to understand what Socrates believed or thought, but I do know that the ancient Greeks tended to have a very deep sense of the immortality of some things that clearly transcended the human scale.  Love, for example; or war; or a spring and the stream it fed.  There was some particular quality to such things.  They had existed long before Socrates was born and would endure long after him: there was immortality, something that lasted beyond the mortal timespan.  There was power.  And even the modern person can feel something of this, today. 

With this perspective we can also begin to relate to claims like this one: Alexander the Great was a god.  He is one of the relatively few figures whom his own associates suspected of really being "divine".  Some were convinced of it.  And (from a modern perspective) why?  Not because they were ignorant; but because to those who knew him well, Alexander was quite literally a force of Nature and it was obvious that his legacy would transcend the "mortal" by orders of magnitude.   He was not just more than most humans; he seemed of an utterly different kind. 

The Greeks also had some of the, well, I'd say the "overhead" of religion.  The administrative & cultural baggage.  For instance: the root of the social order was supposed to be divine, and this was rather important for getting people to be decent citizens.  So Greek city-states had origin stories firmly based on divine grace -- like Athens and Athena.  We now have evidence that when Greeks started new settlements, they deliberately crafted origin myths and then everyone treated those stories as if they were, essentially, historical.  Though obviously the folks who designed them had at least some inkling of the mundane reality. 

Relating administrative and cultural baggage to our example of Alexander: while there were people who knew him well and were convinced of his divinity, this was not always the case of leaders hailed as "divine".  By the time we get to Nero I'm pretty sure nobody thought they were dealing with an extraordinary individual who transcended the usual limits of humanity. 

But also by that time the functioning of the Roman state required that the emperor be divine.  And there was a probably a sense that Nero was somewhat divine simply by virtue of being emperor of the Roman Emperor, itself an entity beyond the mortal. 

I expect the ancients developed ceremonies to imbue the origin stories of their cities -- and I know they had ceremonies to imbue the divinity of emperors -- with a sense of dignity and to encourage the people designing them to do so from an appropriate frame of mind. 

That's all pretty analytical.  The average Greek may well have had a sense of the gods that was close to the D'Aulaire's version, if more earthy.  😉

One can do this with Christianity, too.  There are strong elements of my faith that my academic friends can relate to, others that they don't.  There are Christians who attempt to take their holy books as literally as possible and those who bring a historical and literary context to the table.  There are impulses within Christianity that nearly anyone of good will and decent imagination finds sympathetic; there are impulses that are nothing but administrative baggage, or ways to keep people's behavior in line. 

But in general, when you run into something religious in your studies, it is worthwhile to just take note of what seems alien or offensive to you.  State it clearly, label it, sit with it.  Then take the time to find something sympathetic, something worthwhile.  Check the claims being made against your own sense of what works and is true. 

Occasionally, read a bit more or dip further into something that catches your imagination.  Or that offends you mightily.  Or that enchants you.

Remember that no religious institution is utterly corrupt: there are always individuals within who believe that their religion enhances human wellness and who are dedicated to service. 

No religious institution is utterly benign: there are always individuals within who are hungry for power, for authority, and some who take their deepest joy in demeaning other persons. 

And, finally, work to make clear your own basis for morality, for ethics, and for civic behaviors.  How do you decide what is right?  What concessions to you make to practical necessities, how do you smooth the edges of your beliefs so that you can live comfortably with others? 

Hope something here was helpful.  🙂 

Edited January 1, 2021 by serendipitous journey

[Hillcottagemom]

Whether you're intentional about it at first or not, religion and its place in the human experience will naturally pop up all over the place when you're reading and discussing great books, science, history, art, music...We dont generally have a specific time designated to learn about religion for that very reason. When we run into a reference/myth/story that we're not familiar with, it's easy to look it up or find a couple of other books that give us more context. I'm often learning alongside my kids. It's astonishing to me (and a lot of fun) when a topic we just learned about pops up again a short time later and we all get that much more out of the reference. 

One of my favorite books for younger kids is Classic Myths to Read Aloud: The Great Stories of Greek and Roman Mythology by William F Russell. The first selection of stories are suitable as read alouds for ages 5 and up, the second for 8 and up. 

 

[Carol in Cal.]

I think you have gotten good advice.

But I think waiting until high school is going to mess with the children's ability to understand a lot of reading earlier than that.  English literature that is written before about 1965 or maybe even a little later assumes knowledge of the Bible, and alludes to it a lot, usually without attribution because the familiarity is so widely assumed.  Also, it's the King James Version that was in widespread use before that, so the language is older, more formal, and quite specific.  

I grew up going to Lutheran schools where Bible verse memorization was constant, and to Lutheran churches where the same texts were read on Sundays annually--so, for instance, the story of the Good Samaritan would be read once a year on the Sunday of the church year where it sequenced in.  I would not say that I knew the Bible readings from church by heart, but they became familiar enough that if a word was read wrong it was noticeable.  And most liturgical churches followed that same pattern of annual readings, so in many Christian denominations my experience was replicated by regular church goers.

This gave me a HUGE advantage in middle school and high school English classes over those who did not have that extended experience.  I caught MANY allusions that others did not, and it made English literature study so much deeper as well as easier for me.

Not trying to talk you into adopting Christianity.  (Unless you want to and are called into it.)  But I would say that if you want to give your kids a good grounding in what will help them understand English literature, a good way to go about it would be to get that list of Bible readings and read the two lessons per week aloud, in both King James Version and some modern English version (NIV is simple.  ESV is increasingly common and is considered a more accurate translation).  Also do as others have said and read aloud the children's Bible story books.  Start early so you can do this annually.  That way the kids get that deep familiarity without a ton of time investment.  I would take a break every so often and read a few Psalms aloud instead daily for a few days.  That way your kids will be comfortable with all of the major texts that they are likely to run across in literature, and you might also be surprised at how often you see an allusion yourself that you didn't even know was there.  

[madteaparty]

I don’t know because I don’t classically educate but DS has taken a couple classes at our public 4 year and the Bible has figured prominently in 2 out of 2 English classes. One had a ridiculously detailed study of the book of Job and the other one selections from the gospels and genesis. I will say DS was prepared for most books (Dante, Paradise Lost etc) just not those. The Bible was totally completely foreign to him and quite difficult to read. So I wish I had introduced the myths.