Posting Ten Commandments Fails the History Argument
Most founders were people religious. They also understood religion should be practiced freely
Colonial Virginians were required to belong to the Church of England (later, the Episcopal Church), attend worship services and contribute to its work and operations. According to Monticello’s Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia, “dissenters from that Church (primarily Presbyterians and Baptists) were discriminated against and seriously persecuted,” a reality that “deeply disturbed Jefferson.”
Jefferson strongly believed that religious freedom for “the Jew, the Gentile, the Christian, the Mahometan, the Hindoo, and [the] infidel of every denomination” was essential to the success of the new country. In 1786, Virginia approved Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom, assuring that residents would not be coerced into a particular religion or even required to hold any religious belief.
Jefferson’s Virginia colleague, James Madison, used the Statute for Religious Freedom as the basis for the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1791. Madison, often called the Father of the Constitution, agreed with Jefferson that religious freedom was a foundational right for all citizens of the new United States.
It’s worth recalling that most of the country’s founders were men of religious conviction. They also believed that the practice of one’s faith was personal. “The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate," said Madison. Echoing the language of the Declaration of Independence, Madison called freedom of religion an “unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men.”
Louisiana is relying on its own interpretation of history to justify government-sanctioned promotion of one religious ideology. The state passed a law that will require every public school to display the Ten Commandments. According to Gov. Jeff Landry, “Most of our laws in this country are founded on the Ten Commandments. What's the big problem? That's the part that I don't understand."
The “big problem” is this: The Ten Commandments have historical value and, for many, provide important spiritual guidance. But they are only one of many foundational sources of U.S. common law.
“Common law” is derived from precedent and tradition rather than statutes. The first four commandments (using the Protestant version of the document; more about that in a bit) have some history in the colonies, but are unconstitutional and have been from the first days of our country.
Two others are worthwhile life principles - avoiding adultery and lying - but ignoring them is as much a tradition as is compliance. In fact, while adultery remains a statutory crime in some states, it rarely is punished. Lying is a criminal act only if it does harm (for example, fraud and perjury).
That leaves us with four commandments. Two, honoring one’s parents and not coveting another’s property, have strong religious tradition behind them, but aren’t part of U.S. statutory or common law. The prohibitions against stealing and murder have long histories - including in cultures that pre-date Moses and the Ten Commandments - and integrated into U.S. statutes. But even the latter has loopholes. In Louisiana, for example, so-called castle laws put property above the sanctity of the life of a person thought to be stealing one’s car, for example. The state’s stand your ground laws impose no requirement on a person to retreat from a threat and instead authorizes the use of deadly force.
Posting the Ten Commandments poses another problem: what version is the “right” one? The Protestant, Catholic and Jewish versions differ. The variations mostly are minor, but sometimes significant. Catholics, for example, eliminated the Protestant second commandment prohibiting graven images and idols, arguing that it was implicit in the first commandment to honor only the one, true God. Protestants objected, claiming the Catholics were just protecting their churches filled with statues and pictures, some of them great artistic masterpieces. Perhaps the debate transcends theology.
To fill out the list of the required Ten Commandments, Catholics took the high road on the matter of what constitutes property. Protestants say the prohibition against coveting what belongs to your neighbor includes your neighbor’s wife. Wait, say Catholics, a wife isn’t property. Coveting your neighbor’s wife should be its own wrong. Catholics made it commandment nine.
Both Protestants and Catholic are silent on coveting your neighbor’s husband.
Then there is the issue of the Jewish version - something of an awkward question considering that the source of the Ten Commandments is Deuteronomy, part of the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible. Louisiana probably won’t spend much time there, a state in which three-quarters of the residents are Christian. But among those Christians, the largest group are Roman Catholics. Is choosing one version of the Ten Commandments over others a case of government endorsing a specific church?
Certainly, in all their forms, the Ten Commandments are important principles in the Judeo -Christian traditions. They have a valuable place in instructing appropriate behavior and fidelity to God.
As a history lesson, though, they stand in partnership with many other ancient codes. The five core precepts of Buddhism, for example, begin with prohibitions against killing and stealing. The Babylonian Code of Hammurabi established the principle of innocent until proven guilty. And so it goes.
Public education throughout the country, and especially in states like Louisiana, is struggling. Too many children are being poorly-served, sometimes as a result of racism, inadequate funding and political ideologies.
Gov. Landry argues that the Ten Commandments are part of our national life. "When the Supreme Court meets, the doors of the Supreme Court on the backside have the Ten Commandments," he said, among other examples he cited.
That’s true enough, but those posts are not without controversy. More to the point, they are intended for audiences of presumably well-educated adults who (at least in the best version of our public institutions) have the critical thinking ability to discern when, how or if the Ten Commandments or other religious precepts and traditions have standing.
If Louisiana - and, for that matter, all states - made sure that today’s elementary and high school students were taught that same ability to think critically, the Ten Commandments would be a far more valuable education tool.
As it is, Louisiana may couch its statute in historical terms, but it is imposing religion on students, many of whom have little ability to make reasonable judgments about the state’s intentions. To say otherwise violates the ninth commandment (unless you’re Catholic, in which case you have run afoul of number eight).
(Tom Horner has more than 40 years experience in public policy and politics at the federal, state and local levels. These occasional articles offer a perspective not tied to the Democratic or Republican parties. Subscriptions are free and emails will not be shared. Please feel free to forward these articles.)
I am surely in the running for the least religious subscriber - I wasn't raised in a religious tradition and have never felt the pull - so I have a purely theoretical relationship to the content. In general, most of them seem pretty reasonable, a few of them seem self-interested (or brand-building perhaps) and I've broken several. Not any of the biggies but enough of them that if it turns out that I'm wrong and I'm called to account by an entity who wants to pass judgment on some of my stupidest moments (of which there are many), let's hope there's an unwritten 11th along the lines of "Thou shall have a sense of humor and not take this stuff too seriously."
As an aside, my (mostly) youthful transgressions also represent my strongest personal evidence that there's a higher power in the universe: nothing better explains how I made it through the ten years of my life between ages 15 and 25 than divine intervention.
Similarly, I don't have much to add to Tom's excellent analysis tying the Ten Commandments into our civic and legal traditions. Instead, I offer a modest proposal along the lines of Jonathan Swift. If we're going to post these ten pieties to help educate the youth of Louisiana, why stop there? Even someone with as tenuous a connection to Christianity and its user manual as me knows the book is chock full of instructions on how to live.
Why not, for example, post the Beatitudes? They seem worth passing along to students and are cast into a more positive perspective than the "Thou shall nots..." Isn't exalting the peacemakers and the merciful and the pure of heart worth calling out next to the reminder not to lie about your neighbor? Shouldn't we remember the poor and the meek and those fighting for righteousness even as we're reminding one another not to covet our neighbor's stuff?
Or, if you believe that the Ten Commandments are necessary because humanity is inherently sinful and needs to be told what not to do (not my experience but YMMV), why stop there? I mean, once you get down to not cussing, haven't we opened the door to a whole bunch of other "Thou-shall-notting" that the impressionable youth of the Sugar State ought to be made aware of?
Again, knowing next to nothing about the source material, I didn't go through it page-by-page but instead turned to two of the most trustworthy, accurate sources of information on the planet - the internet and ChatGPT - for answers. This level of scholarship (partially) explains why it took me three colleges and seven years to earn one undergraduate degree.
Not surprisingly, it turns out there are lots of other things you shouldn't do in the Bible.
A lot of them involve the kinds of sex you shouldn't be having. For example, (and I'm not saying the young folks of Louisiana need to know this uniquely among the nation's young) as long as we're reminding them not to commit adultery - which, let's be honest, isn't directly applicable to most of them - shouldn't we also remind that bestiality is a no-no as well? Or that marrying a mother and her daughter is frowned upon?
But there's also a bunch of other stuff lacking in the public school curriculum that could be addressed by posting more Biblical passages. I didn't do a comprehensive survey of what's out there - it looks like lots of other people have, though - but among the "don'ts" that jumped out to me:
- No clothing made from two kinds of cloth is worn.
- Not taking a shower before going to church is bad.
- Kidnapping a man seems like it's okay unless you sell him so that seems like an important line to draw.
- No tattoos, but also no cutting your hair on the side of your head, so let's call that a push.
- There's apparently a prohibition against living in a city that hasn't surrendered to the Israelites so I guess everyone's city council could issue a proclamation of some sort that might eliminate the need to move to Tel Aviv.
- And wouldn't students want to know that any sort of work is banned on Sundays? It seems like that could cut down on homework.
I could go on and on...and on (one site I looked at had a list of 59 prohibited acts) but I think you get my point. But as long as we're on a roll, why stop there? Maybe Louisiana's law should be amended so that each classroom's easternmost wall could be reserved solely for the posting of "Thou shall nots." Then, every morning, we could require the students to face the wall and contemplate the writings thereupon. Hell, why not do it a couple of times a day to really drive the messages home?
Excellent,thoughtful and very interesting. Tom makes important points without "casting stones." Also sort of explains why my Baptist ancestors thought Catholics "worshipped idols." ( My grandfather wouldn't even allow Sallman's picture of Christ to be hung on his walls).