Making sense of new Louisiana Ten Commandment law: Display vs. recitation

The state of Louisiana has ignited a hot new controversy on the role of religion in American public life by passing a law requiring a poster-sized display of the Ten Commandments in “large, easily readable font” in every classroom and in every K-12 public school and college classroom in the state. Other states such as Texas, Oklahoma and Utah are considering similar legislation.

Predictably, Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the ACLU have declared this act as a violation of the constitutional mandate that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof … ”

Are these claims true? Most Baptists and many other Evangelicals supported the original Engel v. Vitale (1962) Supreme Court decision banning required nondenominational prayer by school officials in public schools and the Abington School District v. Schempp (1963) Supreme Court decision disallowing school-sponsored Bible readings and recitations of the Lord’s Prayer in public schools.

This new Louisiana law requires no public reading or recitation of the Ten Commandments. It only requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every classroom.

The Ten Commandments are religious. Indeed, it is the basic fundamental document of Judaism and Christianity and is highly respected by Islam. It also happens to be the foundational basis of Western Civilization, not to mention American society. That is why the Ten Commandments are prominently displayed in the Chamber of the Supreme Court.

When the Supreme Court struck down public Bible reading and prayer in public schools, they went out of their way to acknowledge the large role that religion has played in American society from the Mayflower Compact to the U.S. Constitution.

By the way, I attended public schools in Houston where we started each school day with the teacher leading us in a Bible reading, recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, and singing the national anthem until the Supreme Court decisions ended these procedures in 1963. I must admit, as a Baptist I thought it was unfair for my Jewish classmates to be standing there while the teacher (as the public school’s representative) led us in the Lord’s Prayer (my school was about 25% Jewish).

Having correctly decided the issue of prayer and the Bible reading led by school authorities in these two momentous decisions, the Supreme Court wisely issued a prophetic warning. In Abington v. Schempp (1963) in a concurrent decision to the majority decision, Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg issued the following caution:

It is said, and I agree, that the attitude of government toward religion must be one of neutrality. But untutored devotion to the concept of neutrality can lead to invocation or approval of results which partake not simply of that noninterference  and noninvolvement with the religious which the Constitution commands, but of a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular, and a passive, or even active, hostility to the religious. Such results are not only not compelled by the Constitution but it seems to me, one prohibited by it.

Justice Goldberg went on to observe:

Neither government nor this court can or should ignore the significance of the fact that a vast portion of our people believe in and worship God and that many of our political and personal values derive historically from religious teachings. Government must inevitably take cognizance of the existence of religion and indeed, under certain circumstances the First Amendment may require that it do so.

If Louisiana were to require a recitation of the Ten Commandments or some kind of individual affirmation thereof, then I would oppose their posting. However, the present law is no different than the posting of the Declaration of Independence which includes numerous references to the “Creator” and “the Supreme Judge of the World.”

Of course, most of the Ten Commandments are recognized as the basis for civilized living in most societies (don’t steal, kill, lie or commit adultery).

Now, it is undeniably true that the Ten Commandments are religious in that the First Commandment declares “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.” 

Most Americans have no problem with that acknowledgment of deity. However, for those who do, we now have a solution concerning the nation’s public schools. In 2002 the Supreme Court passed the Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002) case.

In this case, the state of Ohio granted vouchers to poor parents in Cleveland to allow their children to escape the failing Cleveland public schools. Several groups challenged this law because a majority of the parents chose the Catholic schools that were in their neighborhood and were relatively inexpensive. Their opponents argued that this promoted religion and violated the Establishment Clause.

The Supreme Court ruled in Zelman that the financial aid was to parents, not schools, and thus did not violate the Establishment Clause.

As a result, school voucher programs have flourished across the country. Zelman maximizes parental choice. All parents theoretically are now free to send their children to a school of their choice, without violating the separation of church and state.

Of course, as Dr. Phil McGraw pointed out in his new book, We’ve Got Issues. How You Can Stand Strong for America’s Soul and Sanity, too many Americans have forgotten or ignored the first Commandment and the results have been catastrophic.