Governor Jeff Landry’s signing of the law requiring Louisiana public school classrooms to display the text of the Ten Commandments once again brings together a volatile combination: religion and schools. It’s already generating a collective meltdown on the Left.
Contrary to the simplistic way the mainstream press will likely feature the problem (“Is there ‘separation of church and state’ or not?”) a critical observer will find multiple layers of issues among the questions the new law poses.
They can be grouped into three big clusters: law and religion, the nature of public schools, and assumptions about morality.
Law and religion
To start by invoking the First Amendment—especially caricatures of the First Amendment as protecting Americans from religion—might already be jumping the gun. Before we get to 1791 and the Bill of Rights, we need to go back—much further back—to, say, about 1200 B.C. and the Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments are laws. They originate in and have a religious context—they are part of the expectations God had towards Israel as expressed in his Covenant with Israel, where “you will be my people and I will be your God” (Ex 6:7). So, no doubt, the Commandments consciously intend to express God’s expectations of his people.
At the same time, they are not just religious conditions for Israel. When, in his letter to the Romans, St. Paul wants to make the argument that all men do evil and all are sinners (a proposition empirical experience seems to demonstrate quite well, even without the corroboration of revelation) he faces a problem. One could say Israel did evil because it was the explicit recipient of those Commandments. It could, therefore, be accused of knowing them, but violating them. But how could one make a similar claim of, say, Rufus the Roman, who never heard of Moses or his tablets?
Paul is undeterred, arguing that what Israel received in divine revelation, everyman receives in “the law written on men’s hearts” (Rom 2:15). It is a law every man is aware he has at one time violated. He is aware because every man has the experience of obligation (“I ought to do X,” “I ought not to do Y”) yet he also experiences his betrayal of obligation (“I did what I ought not to have done,” “I did not do what I should have”). As these experiences are the lot of everyman (i.e., every man experiences guilt), one can only explain it as man is accountable to a law of which he is not the author. As the young Karol Wojtyła argued in his analysis of the human experience of obligation, man is not the author of that law because, if he was, he could dispense himself. He could waive the duty. But he finds he cannot. The persistence of that sense of guilt indicates that what he violated was more than just his own, self-imposed expectations.
That law “written on the heart” is natural law, the universal human awareness that “I ought to do good and avoid evil.” But that awareness is not limited to just that very abstract principle. It does not take a refined moral genius to conclude that “evil” acts include things like killing, lying, being unfaithful (or wanting to if I could get away with it), and stealing (or wanting to, if I could pull it off). The natural awareness of the status, role, and work of parents leads without too much mental strain to the conclusion that mothers and fathers should be honored. You’ve basically got the second tablet of the Ten Commandments—Commandments IV-X—right there.
But what about that first tablet, the one about man’s relationship to God? Is that an optional extra, limited only to those recipients who respond in faith to God’s revelation? No. Years ago, philosopher J. Budziszewski wrote a book, titled What We Can’t Not Know: A Guide, in which, among other things, he makes the point that the first tablet is not discretionary. Man has a natural knowledge of God. The God who causes, designs, orders, grades, and moves the spheres may not clearly be the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but he’s not non-existent—He who Isn’t–either. Man’s natural knowledge of God prompts him to an awareness of something beyond himself. An honest man must admit he is not—even if he wants to be—his own Alpha and Omega.
Likewise, man’s own life prioritizations point to an awareness of a supreme being or value. As philosopher Zbigniew Stawrowski argues, every man has someone or something that is his absolute, that stands in first place and to which all else in his life is ordered. It may be the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. It may be other “gods” besides Yahweh. It may even be one’s self. It may even be one’s absolute commitment to relativism. However you slice it, though, there is one principle around which a man orders everything else. That is his god. It may be the True God or it may be an idol, but the “god” principle is unavoidable. There’s really no such thing as an atheist.
If man’s natural knowledge, however inchoate, points him to something or someone beyond himself, and his actions and experience show he cannot avoid having an Ultimate, the first tablet of the Ten Commandments cannot be broken off without doing damage to man’s own reality as a creature, as Budziszewski notes. Man can only try to flee the Ultimate question at the cost of denying some of his most primordial knowledge and experience, i.e., at the price of warping himself.
So, Commandments I-III also form a part of natural human knowledge.
What the Ten Commandments write naturally into everyman’s heart are not esoteric doctrines. They are the most fundamental principles of truth and justice that undergird every positive human law, that provide the spine to every human legal system. That’s why we cannot simply write off the Ten Commandments as a set of sectarian moral rules and jump immediately to the First Amendment to dispatch them. The Commandments came in but do not presuppose particular revelation: “thou shalt not kill” does not entail a specific and sectarian revelation like “thou shalt make a pilgrimage to Mecca once in one’s lifetime, if possible.”
I make that comparison not to depreciate Islam but to insist that the Ten Commandments, though they originated in a Jewish cradle and are part of the Judaeo-Christian heritage, are not particular revelations limited to one religion in the same way as, say, the Five Pillars of Islam. In that sense, although the Ten Commandments originate in a particular religious context, they are arguably a universal revelation to everyone.
And that fact is why, contrary to the “all religions are the same” crowd, that we cannot simply thrust the Ten Commandments and select Analects and a sampling of Upanishads and say, “take your pick in the comparative religion buffet.” Neither do they have the same total universality nor the same foundational role in making American culture what it is. To lump it all together is as dishonest as the caricatures of Christmas Nativity scenes featuring, in the name of “inclusion,” the Baby Jesus being adored by Santa Claus while the Three Kings try to park their camels next to the reindeers by the light of a crescent moon and Star of David. The only place that mishmash makes any sense is on some liberals’ cars’ bumper stickers.
Given the foundational nature of the Commandments, it’s always why postmodern attempts to amputate Western legal traditions from their Judaeo-Christian roots—e.g., the attempts of the EU Treaties to claim beings heirs of Athens and Rome while pretending Jerusalem never happened—are likewise false. It is also why attempts to torture the First Amendment—historically demonstrable to have been written to protect religion in its public “free exercise,” not a guarantee of freedom from and public banishment of religion—are wrongheaded. Happily, the Supreme Court seems to be in the process of retreating from such an understanding, though the pullback clearly stokes some elites’ anxieties.
Now we can get to the First Amendment. Aware that the Ten Commandments were not just “some” set of religious rules the Founders intended to measure against the Constitution as much as the values axis on which they saw their world and constructed the Constitution, we come to see how risible is the idea that the Constitution should be invoked to stifle their public presentation and discussion. It’s particularly ludicrous that attempts to suppress the Ten Commandments invoke the First Amendment in which—as Richard John Neuhaus never failed to point out—the first right listed in the First Amendment is freedom of religion.
The paradox is compounded when the Amendment that both protects freedom of religion and guarantees freedom of speech is then invoked to gag public talk about the Ten Commandments. The irony is finally multiplied when we remember, as has just been pointed out, that the principles of the Ten Commandments are accessible to everyman independently of particular revelation. If those basic principles of natural law are naturally knowable, why should their public discussion be suppressed because of some imagined guilt-by-religious-association?
The nature of public schools
Louisiana’s law does not just implicate religion. It questions the nature of the public school classroom at a moment its identity is under great pressure, to the fear of certain of its partisans. The post-COVID ascendance of the “parent’s revolution,” asking why if education is for all children that educational funding is monopolized by some schools, has questioned the privileged status the public school has enjoyed. That pressure is compounded by parents intent on wresting back—even if Merrick Garland thinks they’re “domestic terrorists”—the right to set their children’s moral and values perspectives, no matter what woke social engineers using the public school system want.
Contrary to the bill of goods publicly sold by its partisans, various scholars have argued that the American public school has never been the neutral public space its proponents claimed. Sure, they said public schools promoted a “common American vision and identity,” but that Weltanschauung was hardly alien to what the American elite of the moment prized. For a long time, it was the guarantor of that peculiar Protestant mishmash called “American civil religion.” With the arrival of John Dewey, it became the experimental lab for all kinds of pedagogical fashions (that usually resulted in more educationally stunted students).
Today, the public school has become ground zero for “Dear Colleague” instructions that advance the latest of the woke agenda in all its transmutations.
But while all those philosophies and visions were welcome in the American public school classroom, the traditionally orthodox Judaeo-Christian vision—the animating principle of many if not most Americans—is the one worldview guardians of the public schools keep hermetically out with the resoluteness of an East German border guard. The “parent revolution” is calling that shell game, which is why the contemporary fight over who determines the educational agenda is so joined. Those who have used the American public school as their cultural tool do not want to lose that power. And that’s why the deplorables of Louisiana, clinging to their Bibles, guns, shrimp po-boys, and Ten Commandments, are seen as such a danger.
It’s not just a question of whether the Ten Commandments can hang in a classroom. It’s a question of who will set what worldview that guides what happens in that classroom.
Reintroducing the Ten Commandments poses a further question: why must we pretend that the Bible, an arguably equally formative force in American culture, should be the only book banned in schools? Why can a teacher read All Boys Aren’t Blue and Gender Queer but wouldn’t dare quote Proverbs or Genesis?
Assumptions about morality
One reason the teacher wouldn’t dare quote the Bible, and why the presence of the Ten Commandments represents so mortal a threat, is their head-on challenge to the assumptions about the nature of morality held by the elite and typically propagated in the public school. The Ten Commandments does not offer relativism. “Thou shalt not …” period, is probably a novel ethical concept to many students and perhaps not a few teachers.
It is also an ethical concept that collides with the “non-judgmental,” “inclusive,” “it depends” morality often promoted in today’s public schools, including by the pornographic literature not banned in those schools (although they can’t be read verbatim at school board meetings). Kids being bright, exposure to the morally absolute vision of the Ten Commandments likely will elicit the dread kid question: “Why?” “Why do the Ten Commandments say you can’t but Gender Queer says you can?” “Why do I hear at home or in Sunday School that I can’t do X but you’re saying I should ‘explore’ my options?” “Who am I supposed to follow or believe?” “Why shouldn’t I tell my parents about this?”
It’s not just that the Ten Commandments are tainted because of their historical religious origins. They’re even more dangerous because they question the dictatorship of relativism that has increasingly dominated American education, a trend arguably advancing in tandem with the replacement of hard education by child warehouse social engineering. That can only further expose and intensify parental opposition to what they have been seeing and don’t like in today’s schools.
And if the Ten Commandments become “institutionalized furniture” in the classroom, they run the risk of getting at least some students to keep those ethical questions on the permanent agenda. That could be very dangerous.
***
Set against these perspectives, it’s apparent why the kinetic potential of the Ten Commandments in the public school classroom are seen as such threats. There’s just so much at stake—on all sides—in what they represent and what they could engender.
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I do not agree that the Ten Commandments be part of a public school classroom. All schools have behavior rules, no need for rules based on religion.
So…you didn’t read the essay, did you?
Does she know how?
Also needful is a little matter of thinking, then
expressing that in a notch above flatline.
meiron, that was a very Christian response—-not.
Gerald. My response was to Mr. Olson, from one Catholic to another. If the appellation doesn’t apply to you, I offer my heartfelt sorrow.
All schools DO have behavior rules, that’s true. But since schools are supposed to be about educating children for life, I suggest that limiting that education to school behavioral rules is a bit myopic. After all, you’ll only get so far in life with “stop chewing gum!”
one of those is don’t discipline a pupil the wrong way or you’ll get in trouble! it doesn’t matter if the kid continuously is disrupting the remainder of the class
Really curious to know which Commandment you object to in your personal life. Is stealing okay? Lying? Coveting? Adultery? Do tell
Yes, I wonder which Commandments the ACLU think are optional? I suppose the first 3 maybe, but after that?
It’s not about the merits of the individual commandments (except of course the purely religious ones). It’s about presenting them in the framework of one specific religion. This violates the rights of people who aren’t in that religion. Or would you not see any problem if the school posted the laws of Buddhism instead, for example?
“This violates the rights of people who aren’t in that religion.”
Uh, no. Seriously. Not a good understanding of constitutional rights or basic civics.
Considering the chaos that seems to be raging in the public school system, posting Buddhist religious/philosophical tenets might be an improvement.
One thing, by no means the ONLY thing, you all are forgotten is that the Ten Commandments is part of our cultural story. The Ark story, the Moses story, Christmas, Easter: these are part of who we are. This is our history.
Maureen, you don’t think school behavior rules are based upon the 10 Commandments?
I think they are based upon the same underlying requirements for humans to get along with each other, which were understood long before the 10 Commandments were ever written down.
Dear ‘Joe Comment’: “were understood long before the 10 Commandments were ever written down.” Think: the commandments for a seriously Catholic Christian contain all that Moses gave PLUS their fuller & far more powerful formulation, ordained by Jesus Christ. For example:
As our creator & saviour, Christ understands all of humanity’s need for lawfulness; & the power of God’s commandments, understood as universal gift.
More than 70 years ago, I was catechised by wonderfully Christ-loving Marist sisters, who also explained humanity’s need to know of God’s Commandments.
Later, as an adult, lecturing & researching in Africa, Asia, Europe & the USA, I found it effective to link the main Commandments to our 5 plus 5 fingers.
It also makes a fun way to embody and memorize the love of God in giving us such an infallible prescription for our happiness; written in our own bodies.
HAND ONE
Thumb: “With all my heart, mind, body and soul I will worship the one God who is LOVE, revealed by Jesus Christ.”
Index Finger: “I will have no other god nor any idol; I will not swear oaths, for my ‘yes’ is my yes and my ‘no’ is my no.”
Middle Finger: “I will not use God’s name profanely.”
Ring Finger: “I will keep the Sabbath Day holy, in the way Jesus taught us.”
Little Finger: “I will honour my mum and dad.”
HAND TWO
Thumb: “I will love every person and not hurt or kill anyone, nor think evil of them, nor hate or take revenge.”
Index Finger: “I will maintain sexual purity and faithfulness in thought, word and deed.”
Middle Finger: “I will not steal; I will not rob others of their reputation.”
Ring Finger: “I will not tell lies, deceive, nor cheat.”
Little finger: “I will not covet for God in Christ is providing all I need”.
———————————————————
Notes
In Exodus 20:1-17 and in Deuteronomy 5:6-21 the Semitic Ten Commandments reflected Jewish cultural belief in the cleanness of the right hand (the first five commands) and the uncleanness of the left hand (the second five commands). Tough, in those days, if you were born left-handed!
Remaining true to Moses’ original, today’s Catholics can present these Commandments with a positive, personal, ecumenical, and egalitarian hermeneutics, extended by Christ’s New Testament teaching of love; easily memorized for today’s visually-oriented young people.
A common resolve among Church leaders at all levels to get every Catholic parish, every Diocese, and all the Roman Curia back to honouring & obeying these divine treasures graciously given us by God would surely transform our worldly society, instead of the world’s selfish spirit polluting the Church, as we see so often these days.
Is there anything more eternally basic than the Divine:
“If you love Me, obey My commands to love God and love others as yourself.”
How can the commandments be obeyed if they have not been taught & memorized?
Please don’t protest that this is a limited Christian perspective. It is given for the sake of Catholic believers, YET you can’t deny that the whole of our society would benefit enormously if every Catholic & Christain (there’s a lot of us) lived up to this brilliant, Christ-anointed way of behaving.
Take care, dear JC, and keep persuing the truth; ever in the love of Jesus; blessings from marty
You ask me not to point out that your perspective is limited to Christians, citing the large number of them. Then do you think public schools should pick the most popular religion and teach it to our kids, so for example public schools in Utah should teach the laws of Mormonism to everyone? Frankly, I was saddened by your willingness to use your religion’s brute political power to spread its teachings, and I wonder whether Jesus himself would approve of this idea. I ask you to pray for the gift of religious tolerance.
That’s apart from issues of pedagogy around making ethics a subject for rote memorization and blind obedience instead of in-depth discussion, understanding and persuasion.
I have Mormon friends. They have no issues with the 10 Commandments.
Doesn’t our own Supreme Court building have a depiction of Moses holding 2 tablets with the 10 Commandments?
But did you vote in your most recent local school board election?
Just about a perfect presentation of the inherent nature of law, assent, rejection followed by guilt, the relativist opposition in public schools to the commandments, the framework for a curricula that could be taught on the public school level and to adults.
Who are “the elite” that you reference?
NEA, UFT, maybe parts of the NCEA, the graduates of “teacher’s” colleges, the Ed.D’s in education, and the federal and state Departments of Education that set policy independently of your local school board. For starters.
Many people in the groups you mention have an elite education, but are not owners of major wealth and power. In this context, labeling them as “the elite” seems like mere anti-intellectualism.
Elite education & intellectualism aren’t always the same thing. What qualifies as an “elite” education can be in the eye of the beholder also.
The author has been a college dean himself, so I question labeling these other people who are also working in the education field as “elites” as if to suggest they are somehow less in touch with the experience of the mythic “average American.”
One’s assets are not limited to money. In our society, intellectual position often confers power, irrespective of the money of the holder. That is an elite position. I am not against intellectuals or elites, only certain–often self-styled–kinds….
I assume they are posting the Protestant version in Louisiana, but the version doesn’t affect the law. If a Catholic version is posted, it violates the establishment clause by elevating Catholicism over Protestantism. Same for the Protestant version but in reverse.
The Protestants have the first 4 as explicitly religious laws commanding and prohibiting religious behavior. These violate the free exercise clause by establishing religion into law. First 3 for Catholics.
Commandments 5 & 10 (Protestant) or 4, 9, &10 (Catholic) are thought crimes, unenforceable by law and just silly considering American economics runs on envy and coveting. Keeping up with the Joneses is quintessentially American. About honoring your parents, mine didn’t deserve it so no.
That leaves 6-9 (Protestant) or 5-8 (Catholic). None of these are unique to the Abrahamic faiths. Indeed, every group of people has had these rules as long as we’ve had groups of people. 2M years at least. Maybe post a history of these laws, including Egyptian, Sumerian, Chinese, Viking, Native American, Abrahamic faiths, etc.
Governor Landry is Catholic and the law only applies to public schools.
But not every member of the public is Catholic, or even Christian. Are we prepared to grant equal space in school to doctrines from every other religion? If not, this just means the government telling us one religion is above another religion, and it goes against everything this country stands for.
Even Richard Dawkins has come out in favor of living in a Christian society as opposed to an Islamic one.
https://www.breakpoint.org/richard-dawkins-a-cultural-christian/
This discussion isn’t about which religion we prefer, it’s about what role, if any, the government should have in our relationship with our religion.
Yes, I read about that. Thank you.
My response is twofold, as I noted in the essay:
1. Historically, the Judaeo-Christian ethic formed this society. The Confucian did not. The Taoist did not. The Islamic did not. Those are not value judgments, they are historical facts. So knowing the Ten Commandments is to know YOUR culture.
2. More deeply, what the Ten Commandments express as positive laws (i.e., promulgated, published laws given by a Lawgiver, in this case, a divine one) are also part of the natural law, i.e., naturally knowable by and binding on ALL men, whether or not they adhere to the Judaeo-Christian ethic. So, yes, I want you to “find yourself” and, no, you are not a tabula rasa.
1) “Historically the Judeo Christian…” The USA gets at least as much from Ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, Babylon, Phoenicians, and others as from Abrahamic faiths. Our government is specifically based on pagan Greece and Rome, not any monotheist culture. Your use of “Judeo-Christian” is pure late 20th Century Christian Nationalist revisionism. While the majority of Americans have always been Christian, we are not a Christian nation in any other sense. We were specifically founded on ideas that rejected Christian laws and theology as a reaction to the horrors the “Judeo Christian ethic” had brought to Europe.
2)”…naturally knowable by and binding on ALL men, whether or not they adhere to the Judaeo-Christian ethic.” You are explicitly advocating theocracy here, as is your right under the Free Expression clause but is forbidden to the law and government under the Establishment clause. You are welcome to believe that and attend a church that teaches that, but you are not free to insist the law says that. Not in the USA. Who gets to decide how to keep the Sabbath holy? Who decides what day the Sabbath even is, or when it starts/stops? Is believing in a different religion or god now illegal? Are abusive parents given a pass, automatically earning honor they didn’t earn?
3) Only 40% of the Ten Commandments are applicable to US law: murder, theft, false witness, and adultery. These 4 are not unique or new to the Ten Commandments.
Brother Horn:
1) Correct. The European and American Heritage is both Judeo-Christian and Classical. The EU Charter fails, as do you, by recognizing only the Classical.
2) Reread what you criticize: “whether OR NOT…”
3) Actually, maybe 60% (count the final Six Commandments). Also the First, given that the Declaration of Independence was signed by folks who weren’t atheists. So, maybe 70%. And, about personal rights, Jefferson had actually written “sacred and undeniable,” wording edited by Franklin into “self-evident.” And, the thingy about swearing falsely (the Second) probably still means something to some of those sworn into office. So, 80%. And the thingy about parents and family (the Fourth), too, probably is not a throwaway, although the hand-out Uncle Sam would tend in such a direction. Up to 90%? Close enough for government work!
You write: “These four [sic] are not unique to the Ten Commandments.” True, and of all ten St. Irenaeus would agree: “From the beginning, God had implanted in the heart of man the precepts of the natural law. Then he was content to remind him of them. This was the Decalogue.”
And? Most of the State and the legislature are Protestant. Pretty sure they didn’t vote for the Catholic version. The extremely Protestant Speaker Johnson backed this effort as well.
The good news is that to avoid any Establishment problems, they will have to allow other religious tracts. A Hindu temple already filed suit for the right to post.
So it’s okay to be jealous that Jack sitting next to you is smarter, and steal his answers or homework?
Who?
The final section regarding assumptions about morality is quite astute. I would posit that it is impossible for any educational institution do divorce itself from morality. Otherwise it would be difficult to enforce a coherent system of order. This, I believe, is why that in such institutions where this sort of relativism is promoted, that hyper-individualistic ideas in which consent is the only moral consideration has developed and now, is being widely enforced.
The idea of disciplining a student for something like misgendering itself is a moral value based not on reason but rather the teaching of an authoritative figure. This makes it, and other moral values enforced in supposed “liberal” schools, not dissimilar from explicit religious teaching. The only difference, in essence, is the acknowledgement of a deity. So if we are going to chose a moral system to promote, I see no reason why a Christian moral framework would be any less valid to promote than others, if morality is indeed relative like classical liberals sometimes claim. The state by its very nature exists as a result of decisions based upon societal morality. Without being too verbose, I would say that this obliges the state to promote a unifying moral framework in order to hold society together and keep it stabilized and maintain high trust. Indeed, the increasing moral relativism and tolerance of newcomers with significant moral differences has no doubt contributed to the near-all-time high levels of social division among Americans today.
However, I would venture to go a step further. The ten commandments in particular go beyond mere religious teaching. Rather, even in a nonreligious framework, they can be reasoned out as an objective, basic moral principles based upon the idea of universally preferable behavior, in my view. Even the first two commandments have meaning beyond the spiritual. It should not be that controversial for at least those to be included in schools.
If we want to teach our children ethical principles founded in reason, why would we present them in the context of one specific religious tradition? Wouldn’t it be better to discuss why we are against killing, stealing, and telling lies than to present these as commands dictated to us from a above from a spiritual being who has meaning only for members of the religious community of believers?
If our nation was founded on Judeo Christian principles it seems fair enough. Which spiritual being do you think “In God We Trust ” refers to?
But that’s a big if. We specifically decided to have freedom of religion at the time of the founding. I agree the people who decided to put “In God We Trust” as the motto on the coins, almost a century after the founding, were thinking of the Christian God. But it’s a stretch to take that as a reason for us to give up our freedom of religion.
I’m pretty sure that outside of a very few, folks at the time of the founding of the US were Judeo Christian in culture even if not strictly adhering to a traditional Christian denomination.
“In God We Trust” doesn’t refer to a “Christian God” but the Creator & doesn’t exclude Jews, Muslims, or any who believe in God.
It’s freedom of religion, not freedom from. But I guess if we felt that strongly about it we could give up using US currency out of conscience.
🙂
the Almighty dollar, unfortunately
I absolutely agree with you: it’s not a question of WHETHER there will be a morality but, rather, WHOSE.
This should not be an enormous decision. I would add the consideration of costs. If this is an large expenditure, I. a practicing Catholic, would be against it. I am in favor of an American flag in every class room, but not the entire UN inventory. This is a matter of symbols, the purpose of which is to make the student ponder and ask, “Why?’. The basic response lies in the family, the bedrock of education, not the school. The purpose of primary school is the education of the basics, reading, writing and arithmetic all to the tune of a hickory stick. Some of the issues raised here are dialogues which should be reserved for college or beyond.
We err by imposing the duties of parents onto schools, which are incapable of performing this duty. I suggest another article.
I’m pretty sure that outside of a very few, folks at the time of the founding of the US were Judeo Christian in culture even if not strictly adhering to a traditional Christian denomination.
“In God We Trust” doesn’t refer to a “Christian God” but the Creator & doesn’t exclude Jews, Muslims, or any who believe in God.
It’s freedom of religion, not freedom from. But I guess if we felt that strongly about it we could give up using US currency out of conscience.
🙂
Many of the founding fathers were Deists. Would you be happy with the public schools teaching our kids from Paine’s “Age of Reason” or the Jefferson Bible? Or if one really wants to live in an environment of old time religion, one can always move to the Vatican.😛
Some founders were more Deists than orthodox Christians but so what? They believed in a Creator also.
Some of the Founding Fathers were deists but all of them adhered (or at least paid lip service to) what we have come to call “American civil religion,” a generic blend of moral and religious principles roughly coterminous with mainstream Protestantism and, more broadly, a Judaeo-Christian ethic. What is absolutely misrepresenting is the idea, advanced by today’s critics of “Christian nationalism,” that the Founders intended a country in which nobody ever talked publicly about religion or its postulates and all pretended that they had no faith except at private, in their homes, or their churches. THAT is an historically unfounded caricature.
The one thing that I’ve raised more than once above but nobody has yet answered is: how would we feel if the schools similarly elevated the content from someone else’s religion or philosophy? I mentioned the Mormon Laws based on their popularity in Utah, the “Age of Reason” based on its importance in our founding, and I could easily come up with more examples if needed.
It’s one thing to justify the government favoring content from one’s own religion. The true test, the thing that will show how it would feel for others who aren’t in our religion, is to imagine the government choosing to elevate content from a religion or philosophy that we don’t believe in ourselves.
And this is not just a theoretical exercise. If we held referenda across the US to let political bodies decide which religio-philosophical principals to post in the public schools, I’m sure many places will pick something you don’t like. Are you prepared to accept that?
“In God We Trust” doesn’t refer to a “Christian God”
God, with the capital G, is The Judeo Christian God, The Ordered Communion Of Perfect Life-affirming and Life-sustaining Love , Most Holy And Undivided Blessed Trinity, Serves for all persons, even those who do not recognize The True God, The Author Of Love, Of Life, And Of Marriage, and thus The Author of our inherent Unalienable Rights, and refuse to serve God.
This social experimentation is one reason why we sent our five children to Catholic elementary schools and high schools. At least it gave them a foundation to bear the relativism they ran into in the various colleges they attended. Sometimes they were successful, sometimes they failed. We all fail sometimes. We pray that they will grow out of the bad habits they acquired from others in college.
As for voting in school board elections, no, I did not. It never had any bearing on my children, since they did not attend public schools. Looking back, I probably should have looked at the long term effects on everyone else’s children. As I said, we all fail sometimes.
Personally I don’t think that displaying the Ten Commandments in a US classroom is a problem. After all, this country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. I can see nothing in it which would offend anyone. Those who choose to come here from other countries and other faiths should know about the US, its laws, and its founding principles. Immigrants should adjust to the US; the US should not change its principles to accommodate them. As Americans, we welcome everyone. We should welcome them into out culture, not change ours to fit theirs.
Always vote in every election because no matter how lowly the position they’re spending your tax dollars or they can burden future gens with debt or other long term burdens
locals decide on things like letting the CCP in to build EV batteries and what kind of health education is appropriate at the high school level – this stuff affects everyone in one way or another
YEs, we all fail. “To err is human.” But there is a difference between trying and failing versus (what the opponents of Louisiana want) NOT trying, not exposing kids to the Ten Commandments, not mentioning they exist. That is in direct contrast with what you, as a loving parent, tried to do for your children.
Are the Ten Commandments about “religion,” or are they prior to any particular religion—instead, part of the universal baked-in natural law? The early Church Fathers held that the only reason for Sinai was that we had forgotten what we already knew interiorly.
The RELEVANCE today: “Indeed, there is no ‘compelling argument’ not to slit anybody’s throat [or gunning down a classroom] except for the Commandments given on Mount Sinai” (Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddhin, “Liberty or Equality,” 1952, p. 85). A similar insight is found in Dostoevsky.
AND, the aggressive and non-Christian religion, Islam, while it refers to the Law of Moses, the Qur’an does not actually include the last six prohibitive commandments—the moral absolutes of “Thou shalt not…”. Today this omission is a recurring Christian oversight as well…as exposed by the encyclical Veritatis Splendor in open-range “pastoral” theology. Such continued moral relativism and public censorship of the reasonable natural law/Ten Commandments…
HOW will this invertebrate and post-Christian “culture” ever stand up to fatalistic and really dictatorial Islam?
SOME DETAILS: Notable scholar of Islam, Margoliouth, affirms that Islam is consistent on the biblical first commandment (“Thou shalt have none other gods but Me”), but the meaning of the remaining commandments is obscure and only scattered throughout the Qur’an (Remnants of a code are suggested in Q 6:152, 17:24, 25:65, 31:12 and 16:92). At least in the formative years of the Qur’an the second commandment is the simple “kindness to parents” (Q 31:14), but later is reduced for those parents who are Unbelievers (Q 29:7). Following the first historical vindication of Islam at the successful Battle of Badr, Moslems are told that there is perpetual enmity with Unbelievers, whatever their relationship (Q 9 and Q 50). Oaths are to be kept (Q 16:93), but if it is later judged opportune, perjury can be avoided by paying compensation (Q 5:91 and Q 56). (Source: D. S. Margoliouth, “The Early Development of Mohammedanism,” The Hibbert Lectures of 1913, New York: Charles Scribners’ Sons, 1914, pp. 47-8).
When the priest lifts the host and testifies to the Christian,”The body of Christ given for you.” When he lifts the Cup and testifies to the recipient,”This cup is the New Covenant in My blood shed for you, FOR THE REMISSION OF SINS,” how do you suppose we know what sin is? Why the priest testifies to Christians the testimony of the Eucharist?
Sin is any violation of or want of conformity to the Law of God.
And if your sins not be remitted, hell will surely be your lot when you exhale for the last time in this life … so knowing the Law is instrumental to access to eternal life itself.
On the last Day, Jesus said He will say to many “Depart from Me you workers of LAWLESSNESS, I never knew you.”
Obeying the 10 commandments, as completed by the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, is the way to attract the Presence of God into your life.
As well as obedience, you need to extol the The Gospel of God’s Love to everyone we know. Faith in that Gospel supplies what is lacking in our obedience.
Sad that so many have failed to understand GOD’s gracious provision for our salvation – yes the commandments but always accompanied by saving witness to The Way of faith in the compensatory sacrifice of The Beloved, Jesus Christ.
It’s terribly dry trying to do it by the commands alone; presumptuous to try to do it by exclusive faith in the efficacy of Jesus’ Cross.
The two need to resonate together in our lives to achieve GOD’s purpose for us.
Brother Rice,
Always enjoy your comments. If you need your boots polished, i would be happy to do so.
As you recognized, I’m one of those “Faith Alone” Christians – who understands what Jesus is testifying to him in Communion- because my faith is in the truth of His Word.
Thanks for your kind encouragement, Brother Lahman, especially valued from one who speaks The Truth mercifully given us by The LORD Jesus & His Apostles. Am ready to clean your boots, too. Then, in our spotless boots, to sing in unison the high praises of The Lamb. e.g.
Matt Redman – The Praise Is Yours (Live From The Mission) – Bing video
“Discussion(reasoned discussion) is the beginning of every work, and counsel precedes every undertaking. The mind is the root of all counsel;it sprouts four branches,good and evil, life and death, and it is the tongue that continually rules them.” Ecclesiastical 37:16-18.
Joe Comment makes eerily simple observations that The Decalogue though innate in every human psyche and soul, stand to be debased for religioso political ends by being enforced in public schools. It would therefore be divisive and even ethereal among those accept them. The question is wether we as Catholics are imposing religious hegemony or are sufficiently infused with grace for the spirit to work in us the love of Christ that cannot be dimmed by anything, but can only illlumune – enlighten even over time or in time. As the Prophets have noted, God does NOT need to have his laws written in stones, much less hearts of stones as it the case. Hardness of hearts blinds the eye and corrupts religion, whereas a a heart that is graced and infused with the love of Christ is open to all, works in and through all without notice.
The real problem is that we have both relativized and distanced God from our lives, yet invoke His laws as plasters for narrow ends. In truth we have to suffer in penance and be purified for the Decalogue to work in us and into the world or school system. This is the job of the family- parents and the Church.
A case in point is the Southern Africa Catholic Bishops Conference agreeing years ago that Christmas should no longer be public holiday. It is a Holy Day. What sounded as apostate, was to actually affirm what Jesus Christ said and lived that we should not seek public social and political affirmations, but His Spirit in us suffices to both enlighten the world and convict it of sin and error.
Nice to have King Jesus Christ and His Word prioritized.
Why is there a commandment to not kill and yet killing is found acceptable in so many ways. Is any commandment that is so pliant?
Dear Charles,
Maybe check-out the various Catholic peace & pacifism movements – like Pax Christi, Charitas, etc.