Independence Day

When Louisiana passed a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom, they did a disservice to both religion and politics. It was a purely political gesture designed to gain favor with a portion of the electorate but was without redeeming value.

On the political side of the issue, our nation was expressly founded on the principle that church and state should remain separate. From the very beginnings of our country, the founders wanted to avoid the bloody religious conflicts that had plagued Europe for centuries. Thomas Jefferson expressed his feelings on the subject repeatedly. That has served our nation well.

There is absolutely no way, short of bloody, violent conflict that we would ever have consensus about which form a national religion would be. We are a majority Christian nation but there are myriad expressions of that before even considering the religious sensibilities of approximately 116 million citizens who do not claim Christianity. It is incumbent on any democracy to defend the rights of minorities. Majority rule works in many cases but is detrimental to the very structure of any society when it expressly denies the rights of the non-majority population. In short, it is bad governance to require citizens to conform to particular religious and other subjective expressions. Such laws invite internecine warfare.

In much the same way, this law damages the religious community. The Louisianna law takes a small portion of the scriptural text and presents it as encapsulating the reality of the whole. It uses a particular translation not universally agreed upon and assumes a cultural understanding that does not bear even cursory examination.

The Ten Commandments are merely the first of many commandments understood to comprise the covenant between God and the people. If the text is read honestly as presented in Exodus 20 through 23 we encounter other commandments which were, at the time, meant to be followed. Needless to say, many of those commandments are rarely acknowledged today. There are three different versions of the ten as well. Simply, when pieces of scripture are removed from the whole and out of context we lose understanding of what they mean and why we should obey the idea behind the words.

Invariably, there are and always will be differences of opinion about both the text and the form of behavior required. Requiring conformity of belief, once again, invites conflict between even those folks who generally believe the same thing. Laws which seek to impose belief without allowing for different understandings brings conflict to the body politic. It serves no good. Promoting a particular religious understanding invites schism. Religious life is already under siege in our country without inviting disputes between sects.

A pastor friend once came asking advice when his church suffered seven splits in two years over minor interpretations of scripture. Such conflict serves nothing worthwhile.

Our schools should teach the actual history of our nation instead of an idealized wish list of a portion of the population.