This essay is based closely on a Letter from last year that was in turn based closely on a chapter (Chapter 9) in our book, In Freedom We Trust. This essay includes little documentation, but the book chapter is carefully footnoted as to sources, in case that is needed. Where it says “we” in this essay, that’s not the “royal we”—it’s because it was written in our book by both me and my son, Michael E. Buckner.
First a brief summary from a letter to the editor from Dennis Middlebrooks of NY—
Governor Landry of Louisiana states that the Ten Commandments represent the foundation of contemporary "Judeo-Christian" laws. However, the first four commandments are strict religious mandates that are in direct contradiction to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Americans are free to worship the Judeo-Chrirtian God or not, to worship other deities, to take God's name in vain, and to sleep in on the Sabbath. Nowhere in the Ten Commandments is there a prohibition against owning slaves, although the Tenth Commandment prohibits "coveting" someone else's slaves. The 13th Amendment banning slavery is in violation of this commandment. Moreover, many biblical scholars regard Moses, whom Landry identifies as the original Law Giver, as a purely legendary figure. instead of posting the Ten Commandments, U.S. public schools should be posting the first ten amendments of the Constitution, better known as the Bill of Rights.
For a factual summary of the case from the Associated Press, see—
https://apnews.com/article/ten-commandments-louisiana-schools-religion-99b86fff51932374993c45ab3f0555c9
Louisiana—Moral Model or Land of Political Posturing?
In Louisiana this month, the Governor and legislature are, they claim, taking important steps to make the students of Louisiana aware of history and modeling for those students what sound morality looks like. They are allegedly doing this by mandating that the Ten Commandments be posted in every classroom in the state.
And Louisiana leaders explain how important and how obvious this is—
Rev. Steve Ryan [head of school at a Catholic school in New Orleans], said he was pleased that the Ten Commandments will be posted on public school walls.
“These laws, which are part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, are good safeguards for society. They are actually reasonable,” Ryan said.
In Baton Rouge, Attorney General Liz Murrill, a Republican ally of [Governor} Landry, said she was looking forward to defending the law.
“The 10 Commandments are pretty simple (don’t kill, steal, cheat on your wife), but they also are important to our country’s foundations,” she said on social media.
Really? One honestly wonders if Steve Ryan and Liz Murrill have actually read the commandments of which they speak. Of course there are commandments related to killing, stealing, and cheating on your wife—matters common to many human societies, including many where such proscriptions do not have Judeo-Christian roots. But honoring the one true jealous God exclusively is far from a practical, simple, reality-related, and reasonable basis.
The Ten Commandments, or rather various of the many versions of them, have been the source of confusion and controversy since the beginning of the United States in 1789, if not before. Thomas Jefferson engaged in disputes about these. And fights over posting some version or another in courtrooms or public schools still seem to erupt somewhere in the United States every week. As the Reverend Barry W. Lynn has written (years ago—but it fits the Louisiana demagogues well),
I’m tired of lawmakers using a religious code that’s important to hundreds of millions of Christians and Jews all over the world as a cannon to fire off salvos in a “cultural war.” It’s offensive. It’s time for it to stop. . . . The purpose of such displays is not to educate. It’s to make a political statement that religion and government should be joined at the hip. Such displays do a disservice to our residents.
Widespread claims that “our laws are all based, originally at least, on the Ten Commandments of God” quite often accompany claims that American government is Judeo-Christian in nature even if not in so many words in the Constitution. Adherents often seem baffled that anyone should oppose public posting of such basic moral guidelines; and the Decalogue (another term for the Ten Commandments) is sometimes even declared (ludicrously) not to be religious at all—only legal and moral.
Those who believe that the Judeo-Christian Commandments (that all good Christians and Jews “know” came directly from the one true God) seem at times, as in 2024 Louisiana, immune to facts, history, logic, and the actual words of the commandments they champion. The false claims go well beyond the nature of the Decalogue, extending even to details as to where they are allegedly posted. Many a preacher or political demagogue will assure you, as proof of the hypocrisy of the US Supreme Court, that the commandments are prominently displayed over the heads of the US Supreme Court Justices in their courtroom and posted on the main doors opening into the courtroom. And these advocates imply or say things like, “Given this fact, would anyone but a fool claim that this is not a Christian nation?” Also intoned often enough are questions like, “Where’s the harm, as long as the government doesn’t favor Methodists over Presbyterians?” A related frequent baseless question relies on a fabricated quotation from Madison and is usually cast something like, “Since Madison, who wrote the Constitution, said good government is dependent on the Ten Commandments, isn’t it obvious that the Constitution is profoundly Judeo-Christian?”
The answer to questions like these is based on a simple notion that, at times, we can all have trouble remembering. As already noted and as Jefferson wrote, anyone who cares about freedom of conscience should work to protect it for others if he wants his own protected. Only two concepts are relevant in these cases, in Louisiana or elsewhere: 1.) US citizens are not unanimous in their views on religion, including the precepts summed up in the commandments (and the differences are important ones) and 2.) Neither the majority nor any government acting on behalf of the majority has any right to make any religious decisions for any citizens. If a fundamentalist questioner can be persuaded of the truth of these two ideas, then it follows as a matter of straightforward logic that governmental neutrality regarding religion is necessary and desirable, as much for any Christian as for any non-Christian.
Many claim that the words of the Ten Commandments are posted in the US Supreme Court Building and that it is therefore hypocritical for the Court not to allow them to be posted in other schools or courtrooms. (On a related issue, the depiction of Mohammed in the courtroom, see my Letter [FFP; 21 April 2023], “Why Isn’t It Reasonable to Outlaw Blasphemy and Heresy?”)
Though often repeated, it is a false claim that the Big Ten are posted in the US Supreme Court building. We have been in the chambers ourselves and walked carefully all around the outside of the building, too. There are sculptural allusions, several of them, to Moses, just as there are to Confucius and Hammurabi and Napoleon and Mohammed
and many others—but in every case these figures are presented as lawgivers—some religious, some not. In no case are the words of the Ten Commandments presented in English (there are a few Hebrew-looking fragments and there are some roman numerals that could be interpreted as referring to the Ten Commandments or, more likely, to the Bill of Rights).
If government buildings—courtrooms or Louisiana classrooms—did post and endorse the Ten Commandments, the very first commandment would directly oppose the First Amendment. “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” may be a clear religious rule for Christians and Jews to follow, but if government is allowed to endorse or oppose it, government becomes the authority on religious truth, instead of each American citizen. Not only are the Ten Commandments not the basis of American law, but it is a very good thing they are not. Those who genuinely argue for a government based on the Decalogue—fortunately they remain on the fringes even of American Christianity—want a government that would more resemble a Christian version of Iran than the United States we know.
Posting a religious or anti-religious document is and assuredly should be every citizen’s right, and it is a right that is nowhere in the United States under any serious threat from government or the courts. But asking or even allowing the government to post similar documents in a way that suggests that the government endorses the religious ideas included in the document is a direct threat to the same individual religious liberty. And it is nonsense to argue, as some have, that if the government does not directly pay for printing or engraving or framing a document like the Ten Commandments (whichever version is used), then it is acceptable.
Any Louisiana public school teacher (or legislator or governor or other public official) who gets involved directly in the struggle over using the Ten Commandments in any way in a public school or other state-controlled institution, should consider referring to The Decalogue: Bible Scholarship for Use Today, by Brant Abrahamson and Frederic C. Smith. It includes thoughtful, scholarly discussions of the different versions of the Ten Commandments, the development of “The Golden Rule,” comparisons of ancient and modern history-writing, suggested activities, and more information for teachers as background. Probably few fundamentalists would accept using this in the schools, but that is part of the point. The book is scrupulously respectful of diverse views and, if it was actually used by a classroom teacher, should satisfy believers and nontheists alike.
To any American in any state, including Louisiana, who asserts that posting the Ten Commandments in all the schools is acceptable, ask if posting one of the Humanist Manifestos (at the expense of, say, the Council for Secular Humanism) would be acceptable. If the reply is that such a slogan or manifesto would offend most Americans instead of just a few atheists, ask if a majority of voters did convert to atheism, would that make one of these acceptable? It is crucial that, as atheists or secular humanists, we understand that not all Christians are our opponents on church/state separation. It should be stressed, we argue, that offending a few thin-skinned atheists is not the problem with an official religious slogan; the problem is that if the majority has the right to endorse any religious (or anti-religious) idea, then a later majority will have the right to endorse some other different or even opposite view. All of us (atheists, secular humanists, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc.) are either in some way now in the minority about religion or could easily be in the future. The important thing is not who is offended or who has the votes—the important thing is to protect religious liberty.
Alabama Judge Roy Moore tried—and for a while succeeded—to build his whole political career on the political gimmick of treating the Ten Commandments as a tool for winning political support. Most famously, Moore arranged, as Alabama Chief Justice, for a two-ton+ graven image (literally) of the Decalogue to be installed—snuck in under cover of darkness—in the Alabama Judicial Building. Moore insisted that, despite the plain language of the First and Fourteenth Amendments declaring that Alabamans are US citizens with full rights to religious liberty, Alabama officials (or at least one official named Roy Moore) could establish Christianity in Alabama, could decide for Alabamans what counted as sacred commandments.
Earlier in his career, Moore had successfully used his willingness to use the Ten Commandments as a political tool (posting them in his Gadsden, AL, courtroom and daring anyone to order him to take them down) to create controversy, stir publicity, and make himself famous. He was elected, in 2000 in a state-wide election, to be the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. And it was as a judge on that court that he pulled his infamous two-ton trick. But it ultimately backfired. A federal court ruled that his rock was unconstitutional and ordered it removed. Chief Justice Moore refused. But his colleagues on that court and others on the Alabama Court of the Judiciary drew a line in the sand (they apparently knew about the First Amendment) and unanimously voted to remove Moore from office. Not long before, Roy’s rock was also removed from public display.
Moore summarized the events leading up to November 12, 2003, when he appeared as a witness before an ethics panel—the one that voted unanimously to remove him from office:
The Ten Commandments monument that I had placed in the rotunda of the building to acknowledge God had already been declared unconstitutional by a federal district judge, ordered removed from the rotunda, and locked in a storage room by my colleagues on the court. But on this day, I was being questioned before an ethics panel because I had refused to move the monument.
“And your understanding,” Attorney general [Bill] Pryor asked me, “is that the federal court ordered that you could not acknowledge God. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” I responded.
Moore spent the rest of his 2005 book, So Help Me God, explaining and insisting that his interpretation of the law and the Constitution and his understanding of his duty to God superceded every possible authority available, regardless of what documents or officials were brought to bear. As the Rev. Barry Lynn has noted, “41 law professors and legal historians” in the Alabama dispute wrote to debunk “the idea that U.S. law springs from the Ten Commandments.” Moore’s attention-seeking, using the Ten Commandments, did not end with his book. He flirted with the possibility of running for the Republican nomination for President in 2012, and he sought and won election, again, as Chief Justice of Alabama in 2012. And he was again removed by his own colleagues over all this. He ran for the US Senate, but lost, twice. Moore will certainly keep using his favorite prop whether or not he is elected to any office.
As to the alleged Madison quotation on the Ten Commandments, that, too, is readily rebutted as a serious claim. But that doesn’t mean it is all that simple. It is related to another false claim the Christian nation mythologists love to make: the idea that even if the framers did not label the US government as Christian, they did base all our laws and procedures on the Bible and especially on the Ten Commandments. Despite frequent, confident repetition, this is demonstrably false. But the main issue here is an apparently fabricated quotation attributed to Madison.
Robert S. Alley explored this almost certainly false history at length and in sufficiently well-documented detail to persuade any reasonable person in a 1995 essay. According to Alley, David Barton quotes James Madison as saying:
We have staked the whole future of American civilization not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments.
Alley noted that Barton gave as his only sources two twentieth-century writers: “Harold K. Lane, Liberty! Cry Liberty! and Fredrick Nyneyer, First Principles in Morality and Economics: Neighborly Love and Ricardo's Law of Association.” Based on our own knowledge of Madison and on Alley’s essay, we deny that Madison is likely to have ever written or said what Barton claimed, regardless of how many sources are cited. But how can we know, and how can we prove to any doubting Thomases that we are right? The answer, of course, is that we cannot know, and we cannot prove it. The only way anyone could “prove” a quote is inaccurate is by having a complete, verified transcript of everything a person ever said or wrote—practically speaking, an impossibility. But that does not mean we should accept every quote anyone attributes to someone famous? As thoughtful, skeptical atheists and secular humanists, our only reasonable course, when provided with a quote (no matter whose side it supports) is to ask critical questions. Is it consistent with other things we know the man or woman wrote or said? Is there any specific written evidence from a primary source for the quote? If so, is the context in which it is found consistent with the apparent meaning of the quote? To return to the alleged Madison quote, no such quote has ever been found among any of James Madison’s writings. None of the biographers of Madison, past or present, have ever run across such a quote, and most if not all would love to know where this false quote originated. Apparently, David Barton did not check the work of the secondary sources he quotes. (He has since admitted that the quote, like a number of others he has cited and that others have repeated, cannot be confirmed.) For more, please read Alley’s excellent essay.
As Thom Hartmann has noted, Thomas Jefferson’s entanglement with those who claimed US law or government is based on the Decalogue was long-standing and his rejection of their claims—of Moses as the author of our Constitution—was complete. Jefferson himself addressed, clearly, the whole idea that American law or the US Constitution is somehow based on the Ten Commandments. Jefferson wrote a long, detailed, and heavily documented account explaining in 1814 to John Adams why he had concluded that neither American law or before it English common law rested on the Ten Commandments or Christianity. Jefferson first expressed skepticism that anyone could even have a record of the alleged Ten Commandments, as they were supposedly
written by the finger of god on tables of stone, which were destroyed by Moses: it specifies those on the 2d. set of tables in different form and substance, but still without saying how the others were recovered.
Jefferson then went on, at great length, to show how errors and mistranslations were the only basis for anyone concluding that English law was based not on Anglo-Saxon development of law but on Christianity and the Ten Commandments:
Thus we find this string of authorities all hanging by one another on a single hook, a mistranslation by Finch of the words of Prisot, or on nothing.
Aside from the detailed refutation by Jefferson of the idea that our laws and Constitution are based on the Ten Commandments, an even more straightforward reason for understanding that the connection is tenuous (at best) exists. If one reads the Ten Commandments, in whatever version one prefers, and examines our laws and Constitution even briefly, it is apparent that they have little connection. Not only are none of the religious commandments to be found enshrined in our legal system, but even the more secular ones—save false testimony, stealing, and murder—are also absent. We may have similar values inculcated in us by our culture—that we should honor our parents, for example—but not written into law. And arguably if following the last commandment became widespread even in the culture, our economic system might collapse. “Madison Avenue,” not James Madison, bombards us continuously with messages urging us to covet pretty much anything and everything.
Every religious American—Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Muslim, or any other sort—has the unrestricted right to believe that the Ten Commandments (whatever version) constitute direct commands from an all-knowing and all-powerful god. Each such American is fully within his rights to carefully obey those commands insofar as doing so does not impinge on the rights of others. But it is openly un-American to demand that one’s fellow Americans agree with you on any such understanding or to play political games regarding the posting of whatever you consider to be sacred words in governmental places.
The Republican political leaders of Louisiana are transparently not really interested in modeling morality and an understanding of American history to Louisiana students. They plainly want instead to “own the libs”—to get support from uninformed and misinformed voters for defending against lawsuits against the state by ACLU—lawsuits Louisiana will certainly lose, assuming the US Supreme Court has not gone even further off the constitutional cliff than previously.
Note: Anyone may copy and publish what I or my guests write, provided proper credit is given, that it’s not done for commercial purposes, that I am notified of the copying (you can just leave a comment saying where the copy is being published), and provided that what we write is not quoted out of context or distorted.
It's interesting that any catholic would be OK with posting the protestant/evangelical (or Jewish, for that matter) version of the decalogue. What would they do if forced to give up their creepy graven images?!
In all seriousness, all (primarily) christian attempts and successes at tearing down the Wall of Separation are horrific and unAmerican.
Whenever the Ten Commandments thing arises, I always rebut it with, perhaps we should require The Beatitudes instead.
3Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
4Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the Earth.
6Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be satisfied.
7Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
8Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called the Sons of God.
10Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
11Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.
12Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you...
(Of course they should be posted in the original Aramaic.)
Having just moved from Texas to Louisiana, I have standing in this controversy. I find Gov. Landry as a competent version of Greg Abbott or maybe even Ron DeSantis. Competent in that he gets his way with the legislature. I view this whole matter as performative. Will even one prospective gang-banger turn away from that life because of things posted on their classroom wall? (Especially, as the law dictates, the posting must be in KJV English, replete with the “Thees” and “Thous.”
There is no more evidence of the performative nature of this than the fact the Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick now wants this requirement in his state.