For hundreds of years Christians, Jews and others have voluntarily venerated the Ten Commandments, extolling this ancient code as a model for ethical, religious and moral behavior.Despite this, during the past few years some public officials have decided that the Ten Commandments need a little help from the government. They’ve called for displaying the Decalogue in city halls, courthouses, public schools and other government facilities.
Not surprisingly, the issue has escalated in this election year. Last Monday, Vernon Robinson, a candidate for U.S. Congress, placed a Ten Commandments monument in front of the city hall in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Given the timing, it’s fair to ask if this sudden interest in the Ten Commandments among some politicians is a legitimate attempt to increase piety or just a stunt to win votes.
Advocates of government display of the Ten Commandments seem to believe that the separation of church and state is a myth. Overlooking two centuries of constitutional law, they say it’s perfectly permissible for the state to endorse the sacred text of their personal religious tradition. This approach is misguided and legally flawed.
Here’s why: The principal aim of these efforts is to use the government to promote religion – a dangerous concept common in some nations but one that Americans have soundly rejected.
Unique among nations, America’s First Amendment means that government must remain neutral on religious matters. State-sponsored religious displays are not neutrality toward religion; they are government-mandated faith
This isn’t an argument between allies and opponents of the Ten Commandments, it’s between those who think government should promote religion and those who believe decisions about faith should be left to individuals and their families.
Most religious leaders in America understand this. That’s why, when Americans United and other groups filed a lawsuit against now ex-Chief Justice Roy Moore in Alabama, 42 members of the clergy from several denominations filed a legal brief urging a federal court to rule in our favor. Promotion of religion, these clergy asserted, is the job of houses of worship, not the state.
What supporters of government Ten Commandments displays fail to appreciate is that religion doesn’t need help from politicians. The Ten Commandments have done pretty well for itself for centuries; it will continue to thrive, with or without any politician’s assistance.
History shows that state-sponsored religion spawns only oppression. Real religious freedom flourishes when the government keeps its distance. Most of us would be satisfied if our elected officials would simply follow the Ten Commandments and stop trying to appear pious by posting them in every school, courthouse and municipal building.
No one is arguing that the public square should be a religion-free zone, and there’s no movement afoot to ban the Decalogue from public view. If people want to place copies of the Ten Commandments in their homes or on their lawns they’re free to do so. Houses of worship can and do display them in prominent places.
But for opponents of church-state separation, this isn’t good enough. They want the state to “help” religion, overlooking the fact that religion did not ask for and does not need the government’s help.
Or, worse yet, the people sit idly by while ambitious politicians use a religious text many consider sacred as a tool of demagoguery with the ultimate aim of winning an election. Such antics are only demeaning to religion.
The government-sponsored Ten Commandments crusade serves to cheapen the very religious symbol its supporters claim to treasure so much. During the Alabama controversy, it was easy to get the idea that Moore and his supporters seemed to believe that the Ten Commandments were a type of silver bullet politicians could use to ward off whatever evil they deemed to be menacing our republic. The purpose of religion is to help people connect to the divine or the eternal. It’s not a cattle prod to be used by the government to keep people in line.
If religion is to be meaningful, it must be cultivated voluntarily in the hearts and minds of believers. State-sponsored, coercive religious displays can never truly come from the heart.
There are also practical matters to be considered. Different versions of the Ten Commandments are found in the Jewish, Catholic and Protestant faiths. The Commandments first appear in the book of Exodus, but there are 17 verses, not 10. Faith traditions interpret and abbreviate them in different ways. There is no “standard” version of the Ten Commandments. By endorsing one version, government would necessarily show preference for one faith’s tenets over others.
Also, America is a diverse nation. If the state endorses one religious doctrine, other groups would seek similar and equal treatment for their own religious texts. One federal appeals court has already ruled that if a city displays the Ten Commandments, it must also display the “Seven Aphorisms of Summum,” an esoteric New Age religion. Rather than display both, the city donated the Ten Commandments to a church.
We can expect more battles like this if the backers of government display of the Ten Commandments continue their crusade. But the divisiveness and ill will that often follow such battles are simply not necessary. Let’s leave promotion of the Ten Commandments, the Five Pillars of Islam, the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, the Wiccan Rede, the Affirmations of Humanism and all of the other religious/philosophical codes to the leaders of these communities.
As for all the politicians who won’t give up on government-endorsed religious displays, let’s propose a brand new commandment: Thou shalt not play politics with religion.
The Rev. Barry W. Lynn is executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State in Washington, D.C. He is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and an expert on constitutional law. (www.au.org)
