There is a new law in the benighted state of Louisiana requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in all public school classrooms, including colleges. It is an arrant violation of the First Amendment—indeed, it was intended to test whether it comports with the First Amendment—and it is motivated by religion. The fact that the law is admittedly religious in origin and nature is pathetically masked by saying that the Commandments are really an important part of American history, and that three other secular documents like the Declaration of Independence may also be displayed alongside Moses’s Laws.
Click below to read, or find it archived here:
The NYT article above has a brief summary of the law and the motivations of its promoters, which I’ve excerpted below.
Gov. Jeff Landry signed legislation on Wednesday requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in every public classroom in Louisiana, making the state the only one with such a mandate and reigniting the debate over how porous the boundary between church and state should be.
Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, vowed a legal fight against the law they deemed “blatantly unconstitutional.” But it is a battle that proponents are prepared, and in many ways, eager, to take on.
“I can’t wait to be sued,” Mr. Landry said on Saturday at a Republican fund-raiser in Nashville, according to The Tennessean. And on Wednesday, as he signed the measure, he argued that the Ten Commandments contained valuable lessons for students.
“If you want to respect the rule of law,” he said, “you’ve got to start from the original law giver, which was Moses.”
The legislation is part of a broader campaign by conservative Christian groups to amplify public expressions of faith, and provoke lawsuits that could reach the Supreme Court, where they expect a friendlier reception than in years past. That presumption is rooted in recent rulings, particularly one in 2022 in which the court sided with a high school football coach who argued that he had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games.
. . .The measure in Louisiana requires that the commandments be displayed in each classroom of every public elementary, middle and high school, as well as public college classrooms. The posters must be no smaller than 11 by 14 inches and the commandments must be “the central focus of the poster” and “in a large, easily readable font.”
It will also include a three-paragraph statement asserting that the Ten Commandments were a “prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries.”
That reflects the contention by supporters that the Ten Commandments are not purely a religious text but also a historical document, arguing that the instructions handed down by God to Moses in the Book of Exodus are a major influence on United States law.
I’ve put the bill that became law below, and there’s a lot to unpack in it. But read for yourself; I’ll simply single out the highlights.
Click to read:
The bill begins with a long rationale trying to show that the Ten Commandments are an important part of American history, and therefore should be displayed because it’s not really promoting religion, but recounting our history. After all, some of the Founders mentioned God! But doesn’t explain why, say, the Constitution or Declaration of Independence are NOT required to be displayed. No, the Ten Commandments is the only historical document required to be displayed; other documents are optional. Here’s some of the rationale for making that display mandatory—the “historical context” argument that Christians use to push religion into schools (and put “In God We Trust” on our money):
Recognizing the historical role of the Ten Commandments accords with our nation’s history and faithfully reflects the understanding of the founders of our 9 nation with respect to the necessity of civic morality to a functional self-government. History records that James Madison, the fourth President of the United States ofAmerica, stated that “(w)e have staked the whole future of our new nation . . . upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.”
. . . The text of the Ten Commandments set forth in Subsection B of this 17 Section is identical to the text of the Ten Commandments monument that was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in Van Orden v. Perry, 545 U.S. 677, 688 19 (2005). Including the Ten Commandments in the education of our children is part of our state and national history, culture, and tradition.
The Mayflower Compact of 1620 was America’s first written constitution and made a Covenant with Almighty God to “form a civil body politic”. This was the first purely American document of self-government and affirmed the link between civil society and God.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 provided a method of admitting new states to the Union from the territory as the country expanded to the Pacific. The Ordinance “extended the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty” to the territories and stated that “(r)eligion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
. . . .The Supreme Court of the United States acknowledged that the Ten Commandments may be displayed on local government property when a private donation is made for the purchase of the historical monument. Pleasant Grove City, Utah v. Summan, 555 U.S. 460 (2006).
The bill cites other religious statements by the founders, but of course the word “God,” while appearing in the Declaration of Independence, does not appear at all in the Constitution. The Founders barely believed in God, were not very religious at all, and it’s misleading to suggest that this nation was founded on the rules adumbrated in the Ten Commandments. (Or were there Eleven Commandments? See below.)
Note too that the Supreme Court ruled—and this too seems a First Amendment violation—that one could display the Ten Commandments on government property if the money for the display did not come from the public. This, I suppose, is a lame attempt to avoid excessive entanglement of the government and religion vis-à-vis the Lemon Test, and, indeed, this bill requires that the money for the many classroom copies of the Ten Commandments must come from “donations”. That tells you right away that something fishy is going on.
Display of other documents is optional:
A public school may also display the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and the Northwest Ordinance, as provided in R.S. 26 25:1282, along with the Ten Commandments.
The Northwest Ordinance? What about the fricking Constitution?
There is another requirement: the Ten Commandments must be displayed along with a “context” statement, to wit:
The History of the Ten Commandments in American Public Education
The Ten Commandments were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries. Around the year 1688, The New England Primer became the first published American textbook and was the equivalent of a first grade reader. The New England Primer was used in public schools throughout the United States for more than one hundred fifty years to teach Americans to read and contained more than forty questions about the Ten Commandments
The Ten Commandments were also included in public school textbooks published by educator William McGuffey, a noted university president and professor. A version of his famous McGuffey Readers was written in the early 1800s and became one of the most popular textbooks in the history of American education, selling more than one hundred million copies. Copies of the McGuffey Readers are still available today.
The Ten Commandments also appeared in textbooks published by Noah Webster in which were widely used in American public schools along with America’s first comprehensive dictionary that Webster also published. His textbook, The American Spelling Book, contained the Ten Commandments and sold more than one hundred million copies for use by public school children all across the nation and was still available for use in American public schools in the year 1975.
This is all more striving by the sweating lawmakers to show that, because the Ten Commandments were mentioned in early textbooks, they have become an integral part of American education and thus should remain so today. But since then the courts have tried erect and maintain a “wall of separation between church and state”, a metaphor used by Jefferson, who drew on earlier ideas of Roger Williams.
The enforcement of the Establishment Clause hasn’t been perfect: as I said, we have “In God We Trust” on our money; the Pledge of Allegiance includes the phrase “0ne nation, under God”; and the Supreme court has allowed various First Amendment violations to slip through, including, as the NYT mentions, affirming a “Constitutional right” of a football coach to kneel on school property and publicly say a Christian prayer after football games. Christians, it seems, cannot seem to keep their religion out of public schools. (That is, of course, why we have to eternally battle against creationism, which comes from the fictional narrative of Genesis 1 and 2.
Will this law stand? It’s certainly going to be challenged by the ACLU and FFRF, and I’ve no doubt that these and other groups will take the law all the way to the Supreme Court. What happens then? The answer is murky. The court has allowed public prayer after public-school games, and a display of the Ten Commandments on public property if it’s funded privately. The latter ruling may provide a precedent to uphold this law as well.
And we all know that the court is largely religious: 7 of the 9 justices are Catholic (I’m counting Gorsuch, who is “Anglican Catholic”), Jackson is a Protestant, and Kagan is the lone Jew. It’s not hard to imagine that most of the Supremes will be sympathetic to this law. And then. . . I’m worried about the resurgence of creationism.
By the way, as Steve Orzack pointed out, somehow the bill lists not ten but eleven commandments, to wit:
I count ELEVEN, right? The authors of the bill have some revision to do!
Isn’t this an equal and opposite reaction – or over-reaction – to the spread of critical pedagogy in schools? The really rather good 11th commandment came with the New Testament “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you.”
I suspect that this is less about religious belief and practice than it is about using religion to assert identity. I wonder whether we would have seen this if it weren’t for the aggressive push for pride flags and all-things-trans in public spaces—to include government facilities and schools—throughout America.
Russia has done something similar in reclaiming Orthodox Christianity as part of its national identity; actual belief and practice, not so much. There, too, it is, in part, a response to an aggressive form of Western secular proselytizing.
Exactly – reactionary.
The extremist crazies on both sides amplify each other. There is something deeply flawed in social and political processes if it’s the people with the loudest and most extreme identity signalling shouting who get to make the rules, or make major decisions.
…just occurred to add to my reply above :
Your target’s reaction is your real action
— guiding principle coined by Saul Alinsky and that of Beautiful Trouble
Regarding there being eleven and not ten: I hope they leave out the one about the neighbour’s wife.
I read the text of the legislation. They included the wife part, but left out the part about coveting thy neighbour’s slaves (and also they misspelled it as “neighbor” duh).
There is a canonical version of the ten commandments?
There is a wikipedia page laying out the eight major versions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments
(although they are variations on a theme) …if the Supremes are Catholic, per Jerry, perhaps they’d favor a version not in line with he expectations in Baton Rouge.
I think if they were told to post the Catholic version in Louisiana there would be an uproar.
Southern Louisiana is quite Catholic (French and Spanish history). The current governor seems to be Catholic– he has a French-derived surname.
GCM
It’s clearly religious in intent, and will probably make it to the Supreme Court where… we’re not sure what will happen. That’s why the law passed now. Proponents calculate that the law might actually succeed, at least until a more liberal Supreme Court arrives on the scene.
Of course, it’s all really just a Jewish conspiracy anyway, as the Ten Commandments come from the Hebrew Bible. 🙂
Haha, those tricky Jews! 😉
To be most even-handed in espousing JUDEO-Christian values, perhaps public schools should be required to post all 613 commandments that are in the Torah. 😉
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/613_commandments
And maybe include the 80+ behaviors that are punishable by death.
And the rules governing ownership of slaves.
If we are talking historical documents, Maybe they should display Plessy v. Ferguson, which allowed for a continued history of racially segregated schools?
Certainly it is the case that much of public education in the U.S. is rooted in religion. The first public schooling laws, in Massachusetts (1642 & 1647) were aimed at making sure children could read their bibles, the 1647 law even was called the “Old Deluder Satan Act”! There is a nice one-pager on this at https://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/masslaws.html
Both of the nation’s 17th century colleges, Harvard and William and Mary had a religious basis. My reading of Jefferson, a William and Mary graduate, was that after years of unsuccessful efforts to install a more secular faculty in place of the traditional churchmen at William and Mary, he gave up and created his own school, the University of Virginia!
But we grew and got better over the centuries. Massachusetts children learn from more than bibles; both Harvard and William & mary are secular universities; and all public schools in the U.S. are desegregated by law.
I fear how this current incarnation of a supreme court will rule in this matter, but we will live with it as we continue our broadly secular curriculum regardless of what idols are erected on the school walls.
I DO really miss our Ken K when matters like this arise.
+1
There are historical documents even more appropriate than Plessy v. Ferguson for display on Louisiana school walls. For example, there are the Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850, and their confirmation by the Supreme Court in the celebrated 1857 decision of Dred Scott v. Sandford.
Sure. I just picked the one that local school boards relied on to keep public schools de jure segregated until it was blasted out of the water by Brown…which of course would be a great historical document for display at the entrance to all public schools in the U.S.
At least according to John Adams, one of the drafters of the Declaration of Independence (and later President), it doesn’t appear that the Judeo-Christian religions played any role in the founding of our country. Adams made this clear in his book, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America: “It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [the formation of the U.S. Government] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven . . . ; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.”
I recommend two books that support JohnE on this:
The late religion Professor David Holmes of William and Mary’s “The Faiths of the Founding Fathers”, a nice and easy read; and the thicker and more complex
Matthew Stewart’s “Nature’s God – The Heretical Origins of the American Republic”
I think that was in Holmes’ book that we are told that, in his later years, George Washington and his wife Martha would take their carriage from Mt. Vernon to the Episcopalian church in Alexandria on Sundays. While George would attend most of the service with Martha, apparently he drew the line at communion and would go sit out in the carriage and have a smoke while Martha finished up her service with communion before she joined him for the ride home to Mt Vernon.
“Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
-John Adams
Letter from John Adams to Massachusetts Militia
11 October 1798
I’m not arguing here, just noting this famous quote.
How about this gem, contained within the Treaty Of Tripoli, passed unanimously by the Senate in 1796, and signed by President John Adams: “”the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”
Yep
Adams seems to be speaking to different audiences … the militia, then Tripoli, …
… and making the distinction between the government, and the people it governs…
Excellent point: Adams expected that the people would continue to be moral and religious, but he helped design the government of those people to be non-religious.
I wonder how he thought this would work out in the long term? Religious citizens elect religious representatives and senators and presidents. Then those religious politicians are expected to act out their constitutional roles (including appointing other religious people as judges or justices to sit on the courts) without regard for their religious beliefs.
Not criticizing the US Constitution, just wondering how Adams and others reconciled their knowledge of their fellow citizens with their aspirations for a separation of church and state.
How on Earth this can pass in Louisiana while the Republican nominee for President is an adulterer is beyond me. I guess “It’s O.K. If You’re A Republican” is the ultimate commandment.
If it wasn’t posted because the nominee (or anyone else for that matter) was a sinner, then they’d never be posted. If you consider them as aspirational, and that all people are sinners, then one can accept that we all have failings as humans but we should keep trying for the perfection that we’ll never achieve without forgiveness of sin.
Then there’s also the aspect of whataboutism – sure he did that, but the other guy is a lot worse! Basic normal hypocrisy.
I think the seventh commandment should be highlighted on all copies in every classroom!
Let’s set aside for the moment that dubious bit about Moses being “the original law giver” and just consider what Landry is claiming here about morality.
If you want A, you must B. No B; therefore, no A. Modus tollens. If you don’t recognize the truth value of the 10 Commandments, then you shouldn’t consider yourself bound by any laws. This is the lesson we ought to teach our children, and follow ourselves.
This isn’t inculcating a moral sense — it undermines it. Even on their own terms this law is a failure.
Beautiful, Sastra. You can’t get more clear and precise as what you say sums up perfectly the inherent cotradictions of all ”organized” religions. Chritopher Hitchens would have a field day with this poisonous law.
“They say it’s the way to happiness. Why doesn’t it make them happy? Don’t you think it’s a perfectly decent question? Why doesn’t it? Because they won’t be happy until you believe it too. And why is that? Because that’s what their holy books tell them. Now, I’m sorry, it’s enough with saying in the name of religion.”
-Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens v Tony Blair: ‘Is religion a force for good in the world?’, Munk Debate – 2010
26 November 2010, Munk Debate, Toronto, Canada
Moses wasn’t the original law-giver. Hammurabi of Babylon beat him to it by 200 years.
Plus Hammurabi has the advantage of actually existing, while Moses was did not. He was clearly mythology.
I always found it strange that they want to post the 10 Commandments but never the penalties for breaking them (in the Scriptures almost always death).
It would be like passing a law against littering but failing to tell people that the penalty is death for an infraction.
This is very depressing.
Since it appears the country is back to square one, I give an excerpt and reference (I added bolding):
“[R]eligion can be defined as a comprehensive belief system that addresses the fundamental questions of human existence, such as the meaning of life and death, man’s role in the universe, and the nature of good and evil, and that gives rise to duties of conscience.”
Ben Clements
Defining Religion in the First Amendment: A Functional Approach
Cornell Law Review
Volume 74
Issue 3 March 1989
P.553
^^^copy readily available online.
I think there’s a lot more to develop on those lines.
On a quick scout of the ruling on Pleasant Grove City vs Summum, it seems that the court did not rule that the 10 commandments monument was ok, and allowed because it had been privately funded, indeed in that case it wasn’t asked to rule on that monument at all. The court held only that, by accepting that monument among 15 or so others, the city had not thereby created a public forum, and thus was not obliged to accept any further monuments that anyone wanted to donate. That is rather different.
Thou shalt not covet” includes “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female slaves, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor”. Wikipedia.
That should go over well with students who are descendants of slaves.
The “Madison quote” which is cited by the Louisiana state legislature is just a pure fabrication. Interestingly enough, I did a quick web search just to see if I could find a good article talking about the history of this entirely spurious “James Madison” quote, and came up with this page at the top of the search results:
https://americanvision.org/1418/they-never-said/
The guy who wrote that page, Gary DeMar, is a hard core Christian dominionist–a Christian Reconstructionist–and needless to say I don’t at all endorse other things DeMar has said, or even some of the beliefs he espouses in that article. Still, even a full-on Christian theocrat is able to recognize the truth, at least on this specific point. Shame on the Louisiana legislature!
Thanks for mentioning this point (and to DHS below). Shouldn’t the inclusion of “evidence” that is entirely wrong simply invalidate this law?
I liked the provision that the commandments be displayed in a “large, readable font.” May I suggest Comic Sans?
A real Madison quote from his Detached Memorandum
“Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt. in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precidents [sic] already furnished in their short history. ”
James Madison
James Madison saw first hand when he was young how religious majorities could abuse their power. From this grew his belief in separation of church and state.
“… Madison argued that state support for religion would wound religion because real faith must flow from a free mind, without even an ounce of coercion.” (in the book Founding Faith by Steven Waldman)
Madison felt Government meddling in religious practices would be actually harmful to religious liberty. He felt that “restrictions on religious freedom–including in Madison’s mind government aid for religion–drain faith of it’s spiritual force” There are quotes from Madison himself in the book that support the author. The book was published in 2008 by Random House.
For a thorough look into the arguments of Christian nationalists see Chris Rodda. She has written several books in the subject:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Rodda
I also would like someone to ask one of the advocates to go through each of the commandments and explain how they were essential to the history of the US. I suspect they don’t have anything of substance to say on it as a historical issue.
Why do the Christian Nationalist want the ten commandments in classrooms?
Because Jesus commanded we follow these commandments. Mark 10, Luke 12, 14, 18 and Matthew 19. But they leave off the punchline to the commands of Jesus.
Sell all you have and give to the poor. Christian Nationalists: “Jesus didn’t mean ME!” John 14;15 If you love me, follow my commandments.
Rather than sue to have them removed, they should go the 43alley route, and argue that those are NOT the Ten Commandments.
Argue that the Ten Commandments were:
1. Laws given to Moses by Yahweh
2. Written on stone tablets
3. Referred to as “The Ten Commandments”
In the Bible, the commandments (there are several versions) that satisfies all three criteria, are not those listed. They include: 3. Keep the feast of unleavened bread, 7. Thrice a year all men shall appear before Yahweh, and 10. Thou shalt not boil a baby goat in it’s mother’s milk.
I don’t think those would be in the schools for long.
It’s savvy that the Louisiana lawmakers are using private money to fund this project, but that doesn’t cut muster with me. The state is still compelling all public schools to display the 10 Commandments in all classrooms. So the state is coercing religious beliefs upon all public school students.
I’m intrigued how proponents of such ideas declare that the notion of separating church and state came from Thomas Jefferson and ignore (as Jerry Coyne noted) that this concept originated with Roger Williams. And all the founders were very aware of and comfortable with it. Jefferson may not have had a hand in writing the Bill of Rights, but James Madison did. And he also used the “separation of church and state” language.
Sadly, I’m not very hopeful that the U.S. Supreme Court with its current composition will reject this flagrantly unconstitutional law. But we’ll see.
Ten Commandments?
Ha ha ha. Thanks for that.
Malgorzata,
How’s the weather there ? I saw that Poland is getting very heavy rain now.
Hope you are safe.
I’m eager to see how elementary school teachers explain what adultery is.
Louisiana is the second poorest state in the nation, perhaps because its lawmakers waste their time with useless legislation like this 10 Commandments malarkey, rather than doing much to improve the lives of their constituents. They might even prefer it that way. As usual, religion walks hand in hand with poverty, ignorance, and bad government.
So reading this list will change people’s behavior? Brains are so simple.
I do respect that coaches right to do something briefly on his own initiative at the line. So long as it’s just him doing his own business, I respect that.
Hell, here in New Zealand we’re being compelled to do Karakia (prayers) both at school, government and even the workplace. I brought up concern, not so much from myself being an atheist but from those who may be seriously religious in their own way being compelled to basically commit blasphemy.
There was the reply of saying one could not take part or even leave the room with “no shame” but that implies a sense of shunning or sectarianism, and the notion of peer pressure is there.
My concern and the one brought up in an article I read elsewhere on this is that it instead of embracing diversity and inclusion which at a fundamental level I support it is in theory elevating one form of religion or at the very least spirituality above others at an official over others.
I believe in respectful impartiality and secularism, not replacing one toxic thing for another. I work with people of all faiths and have often talked about it with intellectual curiosity, but never elevated above another.
The irony is this come from a belief in freedom of religion and spirituality and the moment one gets elevated above others is unethical.
covet “cattle”??? what happened to “ass”? The best part of the silly bit of fluff.
You can never start too early when it comes to teaching five year olds that committing adultery is a no-no.
The last two on the list (coveting thy neighbour’s wife and coveting thy neighbour’s property) are really one commandment. I guess they split it because of the implication that your wife, if you have one, is your property.
At last Louisiana school-age children will stop killing, committing adultery, stealing, lying, and wanting what other children have.
Will they now be cancelling the lewd, the nude and the crude Mardi Gras? That is the most critical question.