The Public Display of the Ten Commandments: Let the Communities Decide
By Monte Kuligowski (06/29/05)
Local authorities and residents in two Kentucky counties are understandably upset because a Court in Washington D.C. says their courthouse relics must come down. Meanwhile a question mark hangs over the head of county commissioners in Atlanta over whether to leave their gold-framed Ten Commandments on the wall – because the same Court says a monument bearing the Commandments at the Texas Capitol may remain.
With another mixed and confusing First Amendment ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court – this time on the public display of the Ten Commandments – it is time, yet again, to rethink the church and state issue.
First, in the latest case, what church needed to be separated from which state? Which state was trying to establish the Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran or Catholic Church as its state church? Of course, the answer is no state was. There is a subtle, but vast difference between congress establishing a religion and individual communities endorsing, promoting or advancing religion. And second, why are federal courts instructing localities on how much of their own religion is permissible? Is it possible that different communities across the country hold different values? Whatever happened to the celebrated liberal idea of diversity?
Early in our nation, the general Christian religion was relied upon by the individual states and even collectively at the national level. Anyone who has done even a scintilla of honest research knows that to be true. Everyone should know that it was an open prayer to the God of the Bible by a so-called deist at the Constitutional Convention that saved the convention during a time of frustration and deadlock. Scriptures were quoted and a request was made to have a clergy member from the City of Philadelphia begin opening the convention daily with prayer (the request was voted on and approved). The significance? This was the very convention that produced the U.S. Constitution that is now interpreted to ban public displays of the Bible and its Commandments in the public venue. Everyone ought to know which U.S. president (hint: he helped draft the Constitution) said that “religion and morality are indispensable supports” of the state. That was fairly apparent during the Constitutional Convention itself! And the president of the convention noted that they were staking the future of our country, not on government, but on our ability to keep the Ten Commandments of God.
So, what’s the big deal about the country being mislead for years over the legal and necessary role of religion in public places? People of faith can just worship God at church and be happy, right? Religion should be confined to places of worship because the red herring known as separation of church and state erects a wall to block our real history and reason. Additionally (agreeing with the Court’s reasoning in 1980 when the Ten Commandments were stripped from the schoolhouse), some argue that religion in public is dangerous. “[A Commandment] says you cannot take the Lord's name in vain, but we have freedom of speech in America. So, those are bad messages that we're sending to children,” argues Ellen Johnson of American Atheists.
What about the free speech of displaying the Commandments? What about every village’s, county’s, city’s and state’s right of freedom of speech to display its values without the federal courts intervening and saying, “No you can’t.” No one is forced to obey the Ten Commandments, but people are being forced to take monuments down and are being told when it’s acceptable to display them.
One must agree that tearing the Commandments down sends a message to children that Ellen Johnson is right. The message of the stone tablets is so bad that the authorities must remove them from public view. I believe the Commandments send good messages for children. So whose view is the federal Court endorsing? Why, the minority atheist’s, of course.
What’s really at issue is the right of a community to publicly display its own values. The community must be free to endorse its religious ideals at the public level. Currently, the Bible is bound and chained, while every other form of expression goes free. Values are always being transmitted to the next generation – but the question is: whose values? Kids can see what is important and what’s not. The right to not even see (even though no one is forced to read) the Ten Commandments is more important than the right to display them (The right to be free from them is more important than a community’s right of encouraging its indispensable support).
Rather than committing the values of each particular community to nine people in black robes, in some far-away place, it’s truly time to limit and eliminate jurisdiction of the federal courts. This can be done through the constitutional process of representative government. This must be done while there remains any hope for change. With the ongoing transmission of counter values (centralized, politically correct values at odds with the People), there probably isn’t a whole lot of time to spare.
If action is not taken soon, the nation will wake up one morning with no understanding whatsoever of the indispensable support religion must provide for society.
©2005 Monte Kuligowski – Nonprofit use of this material is permitted, provided it is displayed in full (except for brief excerpts) and original form, bearing this copyright.
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