Schools shouldn’t favor Ten Commandments
Even though the Ten Commandments were “generally absent” from sermons of the founding fathers’ generation, and even though there is “an absence in the historical record that the Founders referenced the Ten Commandments when discussing republican government,” and even though the first four commandments collide with the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty, and even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that the posting of the document in schools violated the establishment clause of the Constitution, Tennessee Republicans want to allow public schools to display the Ten Commandments.
In addition, Republicans want both a Bible class and “vocal” prayer. Would the Bible class include stories of Lot and his daughters or Joshua slaughtering 12,000 Canaanites in one day (“He left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded”)? The focus, as someone wrote of prayer, “should be on the sincerity of the heart, not the volume.”
Lastly, in terms of posting famous documents, why not include Thomas Jefferson’s Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), James Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance (1785) and George Washington’s Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island (1790)? Just a thought.
Michael V. Woodward