Submitted by FCSAdmin0 on
Why Not America’s Secular Decalogue?
By Groff Schroeder
Imagine your child, children, or grandchildren in their public school, looking up at permanent displays they have seen on every kindergarten through state college classroom wall throughout their entire lives that displays a list of Biblical “commandments” that begins, “I am the Lord thy God, thou shall have no other God before Me.”
In the absence of its deeply religious context, it appears that the first commandment of the Christian Ten Commandments could easily communicate to impressionable young minds that it is not Jesus Christ or the monotheistic Abrahamic god of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism who is their god, but government authorities such as their teacher, local politicians, the state, and the United States government who is the “Lord thy God.” The United States Constitution contains no references to any god, no reference to Jesus Christ, and there is no evidence of any kind that Christianity, Catholicism, or the Ten Commandments were the model for, or contributed in any way to the founding of the United States of America.
Shouldn’t students in public school classrooms look up at permanent installations on the classroom walls (if any) that at least have some connection to factual math, science, American history, or civics, such as a list of the ten Constitutional Amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights – which begins, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise there of.“
To the apparent great delight of America’s Christian Dominionists and Christian Nationalist politicians, on June 19, 2024 the Catholic Governor of Louisiana signed an extremely controversial bill into law, requiring that the King James version of the Christian Bible’s 10 Commandments (Christianity’s so-called “decalogue“) be displayed in all of Louisiana’s kindergarten through state college public school classrooms. After choosing Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School in Lafayette, Louisiana for the signing ceremony instead of the rotunda of the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge, Governor Landry of Louisiana claimed “If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses, who got the commandments from God.” Supporters of the law claim that the Christian Ten Commandments are “...foundational documents of our state and national government.”
The foundational documents of the United States of America are the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the United States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights – not one of which include - or even mention - the Christian Ten Commandments. Furthermore, other than the 1700-odd year old Christian Bible, there is no archaeological, physical, or written evidence whatsoever to suggest that Moses existed, that he received his commandments from a supernatural being instead of writing them himself, that he was the earth's “original law giver,” or that the Moses’ commandments resulted in “respect for the rule of law.” In fact, there is a great deal of archaeological, physical, and written evidence that numerous other codes of law existed literally thousands of years before Moses was (allegedly) born, including the first known code of laws, Sumeria’s Code of Ur-Nammu, which was written in about 2100 BCE – more than 3,000 years before the founding of the United States of America.
Before today’s often openly religiously motivated ”originalist” majority on the Supreme court were (in several cases apparently unethically) installed on the court, countless previous Supreme Court Justices have repeatedly ruled that overtly religious content in America’s public schools is unconstitutional under the United States Constitution’s 1st Amendment, which states (in part), “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Since not all public school and state college professors administrators, teachers, students, and their families are Christians, it appears that the Louisiana state law that Landry signed in a Catholic school rather than the Louisiana State Capitol directly violates many public school and state college professors, administrator’s, teacher’s, student’s, and family’s free exercise of religion.
It also appears Louisiana’s politicians law forcing public schools and teachers to display the Christian Ten Commandments in Louisiana’s k-12 public school classrooms also violates the United States Constitution's 14th Amendment, which states (in part) “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; []; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Politicians in Louisiana requiring college professors, public school teachers, students, and families to endure religious indoctrination alien to their own religious beliefs (if any), clearly “...abridge[s] the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,” specifically their 1st Amendment guarantee of free exercise of religion. Furthermore, one or more states requiring college professors, teachers, students, and families to tolerate religious teachings alien to their own during the abridgment of their Constitutionally guaranteed civil right to free exercise of religion when other states do not unconstitutionally abridge their Constitutionally guaranteed civil right to free exercise of religion appears as a direct violation of their 14th Amendment’s civil right to equal protection of the laws.
Yet whether or not local politicians in the state of Louisiana will be able to successfully and unconstitutionally revoke civil rights guaranteed by the 1st and 14th Amendments to the US Constitution remains unclear. Specifically because the (largely Catholic) “originalist” members of the Supreme Court in 2022 simply ignored the United States Constitution, more than 200 years of American jurisprudence, and more than 200 years of American legal precedent to rule in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that local politicians and states can revoke American citizen’s civil rights and human freedoms under the 1st, 4th, 5th, 8th, 13th, and 14th Amendments to the United States Constitution by establishing unscientific and demonstrably deadly Christian religious beliefs prohibiting abortion as state law. (Note that in states that have implemented unscientific laws criminalizing abortion based on Iron Age Christian religious beliefs, maternal morbidity and mortality (illness, injury, disability, and death) has skyrocketed, and America’s maternal morbidity and mortality rate is now about two to three times higher than the morbidity and mortality rate in other high income nations.)
Not only are the Christian Ten Commandments allegedly the work of a mysterious ancient “lawgiver” who does not appear in the archaeological or historical record and who allegedly lived centuries after the authors of earth’s oldest known laws, religious commandments are very different from civic laws. In addition, America’s founders already provided the American people with a written and legally ratified secular “decalogue,” the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution known as the Bill of Rights – that actually is one of the founding documents of the United States of America.
On July 4, 1776, America’s Founders signed the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration of Independence does not mention Jesus Christ, any god, or the commandments of any religious belief system. On November 5, 1777, the Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation does not mention Jesus Christ, any god, or the commandments of any religious belief system. On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth of America’s thirteen states to ratify the United States Constitution. The United States Constitution does not mention Jesus Christ, any god, or the commandments of any religious belief system. The Congress drafted 12 Amendments to the Constitution, and on December 15, 1791, ten of the proposed Amendments to the Constitution were ratified by three quarters of the states, and the Amendments were adopted, eventually becoming known as the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights does not mention Jesus Christ, any god, or the commandments of any religious belief system. Just as the Ten Commandments contains ten sections defining numerous religious commands to Christian faithful, the Bill of Rights contains ten Amendments to the United States Constitution defining numerous civil rights and human freedoms guaranteed to the American People.
Therefore, it appears that the Bill of Rights constitutes America’s secular “decalogue” of ten Amendments to the Constitution. It very much appears that it is America’s secular decalogue, the Bill of Rights, and the civil rights and human freedoms the Bill of Rights’ ten Amendments guarantee, that should be displayed upon the walls of every kindergarten through state college public school classroom in Louisiana. And it also very much appears that no American politician, appointed official, executive official, legislative body, or state should advocate - let alone require – that taxpayer funded public schools display nakedly religious materials (such has the “commandments” of ANY religion) upon the walls or in the classrooms of any taxpayer funded public building in the United States of America. This is especially true when the taxpayer funded public building is a public elementary or middle school filled with impressionable young children – and even more especially true when the sect of the religious belief system seeking to use taxpayer dollars to force its religious beliefs upon young children has a long and extremely well-documented history of inter-generational and international criminal child abuse.
Why would Louisiana’s proudly Catholic governor choose a Catholic school instead of the governor’s office to sign a bill requiring that the overtly religious Christian decalogue of the Ten Commandments of just 1700 years ago, which have basically zero connection to America, the United States Constitution, and the civil rights and human freedoms that countless Americans have given their very lives to protect and defend be displayed in the classrooms of more than 600,000 school children in the goverrnor’s state? Is the governor sending a not so subtle signal to his his Catholic brethren that the law he is signing is designed to help not Louisiana’s public schools and Louisiana’s school children – but Christians, Christianity, and especially, Catholics and Catholicism?
Louisiana already ranks 49th of 50 overall among American states for the quality of Louisiana’s public schools. Why require that Louisiana’s school children learn the Christian Ten Commandments instead of the Bill of Rights’ first ten Amendments to the Constitution - unless Louisiana’s politicians do not want Louisiana’s public schools to successful educational institutions that provide a correct, complete, and high quality education to Louisiana’s children. When a Catholic governor chooses a Catholic school to sign a law that does nothing to improve the education of the school children in his state, but instead openly advances his own personal unscientific, unverifiable, increasingly irrelevant Iron Age religious beliefs, it at least appears that the governor’s goal is to turn Louisiana's public schools and state colleges into pseudo-churches that are little more than taxpayer funded Christian Sunday schools.
