Louisiana governor Jeff Landry signed legislation June 20 to require the posting of the Ten Commandments in the Bayou State. 

If you listened to the mainstream media, the caricature of what happened goes something like this: “shrimp po-boy yahoos from Louisiana don’t understand separation of church and state and want to force the Ten Commandments into people’s faces.  Opportunistic Republican Governor Landry wants to use this as a red-meat culture war issue to turn Louisiana even redder.”

The only thing that’s simplistic is that “explanation.”

First of all, the Ten Commandments are hardly marginal to American life.  The United States originated as a Western country, which means it drew the inspiration of its culture and laws from Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem.  Yes, Jerusalem, because the reality that we call the Judeo-Christian ethos fundamentally transformed Athens and Rome.  Pretending otherwise is just lying about where our history and culture come from.

No other religious “doctrines” played a similarly central role in creating America’s cultural and legal identity.  You can’t say the Five Pillars of Islam exercised that role.  Neither is that true for Confucius’s Analects or Hindu Upanishads.  Those, too, are historical facts.

But the Ten Commandments are hardly some sectarian “doctrine.”  The Ten Commandments are also expressions of what we call “natural law” — i.e., those basic moral principles that any normally functioning human being knows.  Don’t kill, don’t cheat, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t covet, respect your parents — these are not eccentric Jewish or Christian “doctrines.”  They are also recognized as the spine and backbone of our laws and ethics.

(That also, by the way, includes the idea that there is an Ultimate Being above and beyond me, who in justice deserves my reverence — namely, Commandments I-III).

Second, the First Amendment protects “free exercise of religion.”  Says it right there in the document (which doesn’t say anything about “walls of separation”).  The first right listed in the First Amendment is freedom of religion (not freedom from religion).  The “no establishment” clause simply means no particular denomination should be legally privileged by the government.  It does not mean the government must pretend religion does not exist, that it is a pestilence to be fumigated from public life, or that Americans need to pretend they are atheists to take part in public affairs.  Some liberals would like you to believe that, but they shouldn’t establish their secular religion using the First Amendment.

Incidentally, right after protecting freedom of religion, the First Amendment immediately protects freedom of speech.  How have we managed to allow that constitutional protection to get twisted from the right to speak freely to a justification to prohibit any mention of religion in public life or public schools?  Why do the same people likely to hyperventilate about “censorship” of graphic books about “oral sex” in school libraries or not reading Genderqueer in class the same folks who would go apoplectic if anybody read the Bible there?  Why is the Bible (the place the Ten Commandments are found — Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5) the one book that is practically banned on school premises?  As an honest question, how many school libraries actually even have a copy of the Bible on the shelves (and not just in non-circulating reference), or have they pre-emptively removed it? 

Third, the Louisiana school Commandments controversy is hardly just about protecting kids’ “religious freedom” (since most of their self-appointed “guardians” probably think religion is a baneful influence, anyway).  It’s also another aspect of the modern “parental rights” revolution, the growing demand — especially post-COVID and in the wake of woke — to determine what their children are taught.  That’s why this battle is so pitched: defenders of the public school monopoly know that what’s at stake is whether parents and their values will control schools or the elites and their social engineering.  Why is it that every ideological trend is “included” in the modern American classroom except the traditional Judeo-Christian perspective?

Fourth, one reason the Ten Commandments may be off-limits is they embody moral absolutes.  “Thou shalt not...” period.  The idea that there are some things that might always be wrong could be a novel idea to many students (and perhaps not a few teachers).  What might be even more unsettling is that those moral absolutes will collide with the de facto relativism of the “diverse” classroom, perhaps stimulating real thinking on the part of some perspicacious kid who asks, “Well, why do my mom and my pastor and my Sunday School teacher say I shouldn’t have sex before I’m married, but you and that book say it’s an ‘option’ to be ‘considered’?”  Not only might a student be challenged to consider the possibility of a moral code that is not as flexible as Jello, but it could also flush out into the open the implicit, unspoken “dictatorship of relativism” (to steal Pope Benedict XVI’s term) reigning in so many schools.  That, in turn, could get more parents involved and asking, “What exactly are you teaching my kids?”  Given the primacy of parents as a child’s first and best teachers, that wouldn’t be bad; given the professional groups and woke social engineers whose oxen might be gored, that would be terrible.  A permanent copy of the Ten Commandments in the classroom, offering its message to successive generations, will keep those questions permanently in the public eye.

Fifth, nobody (except maybe David French at the New York Times thinks the Ten Commandments are magic.  Maybe most students will ignore them.  But there are a lot of things in the school curriculum that kids ignore (sometimes attesting to their smarts).  And there are a lot of things we douse pupils with over the 11 or so years of compulsory education, many of which are forgotten.  But we do it anyway, out of conviction that some things will stick, that some things someday will be remembered and prove useful.  Wouldn’t the Ten Commandments — even as a piece of secular knowledge — fit in that category?  So why do some folks want to ban them?

Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.