Source; Anonymous
Despite a widespread misunderstanding of the role of Christianity in our founding and decades of bad Supreme Court rulings, and despite the fact that the founders were uniformly opposed to government imposing religion, they did think religion, especially Christianity, was extremely important to the founding of the country. They understood that humans are created in the image of God and instilled with dignity. And if people have dignity, they must have rights to protect that dignity. This is the religious inspiration for the huge number of rights enumerated for all citizens at the founding of the republic.
The founders also believed that to ensure the success of the America, people needed to use those rights responsibly. Put bluntly, they must be moral. As George Washington said in his Farewell Address: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” For a representative form of government to work, you must have a moral people, meaning a religious people.
What about Thomas Jefferson, you may ask? He is held up as the poster child for the strict separation of church and state, famously informing the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802 that the 1st Amendment created a “wall of separation between Church & State.” But fact is that the purpose of Jefferson’s letter was to reassure the Baptist congregation that the government wouldn’t interfere with their church, not that religion would have no place in the actions of government. He did not think the Constitution kept the government out of the business of religion altogether. For instance, as governor of Virginia, he invited his fellow Americans to join him in prayer. Jefferson also made the War and the Treasury Dept. buildings available for church services. So, in his own political life, Jefferson didn’t act as if there were a wall of separation between church and state.
Recognizing the role of religion in America is one thing. But does the display of the 10 Commandments in public schools go too far? There are all sorts of buildings in Washington, D.C., with scriptural engravings, including the Supreme Court building. No one has ever considered those an establishment of religion. And there’s also a long history and tradition of monuments of the 10 Commandments on public property. Unfortunately, in the 1970s, the Supreme Court profoundly altered how the courts think about the establishment clause. In the 1971 case of Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Supreme Court devised a new test for courts to use when establishment clause violations are alleged. The court advised lower courts to look at whether the law “has a legitimate secular purpose, does not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion, and does not result in an excessive entanglement of government and religion.” The justices thought the Lemon test would help resolve the establishment clause conundrum. It did the exact opposite. It has lived up to the parochial definition of being a lemon.
After Lemon, all sorts of things were held constitutional and unconstitutional. The court said a public school district couldn’t lend maps to a private religious school, but it could lend them textbooks that had maps in them. Government could subsidize bussing children to private Catholic schools, but it couldn’t subsidize field trips for children from private religious schools. The Lemon test was also applied in the 1980 Supreme Court case of Stone v. Graham. There the court struck down a Kentucky law mandating a standalone display of the 10 Commandments in public school classrooms.
Over the last decade, the Supreme Court has steadily dismantled the Lemon test. In American Legion v. American Humanist Association, the court held that the Bladensburg Cross, a 32ft Latin cross WW I memorial that stands on public property, did not violate the establishment clause. Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court, noted that the 10 Commandments have historical significance as 1 of the foundations of our legal system. 3 yrs later, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, the Supreme Court vindicated a public school football coach’s right to pray privately after games. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion rejected the “ahistorical” Lemon.
But shortly after Gov. Landry signed the Louisiana law mandating displays of the 10 Commandments in classrooms, the hypocritical left-wing aclu sued. It claimed the 10 Commandments are not a source of American law and that having the displays would unconstitutionally expose some people to a religion they don’t believe in. A federal judge ruled in the aclu’s favor, and the state appealed to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Expect the Louisiana case to be brought before the U.S. Supreme Court. Also expect more states to follow Louisiana and pass similar laws. Given the Supreme Court’s rejection of the Lemon test and its many rulings upholding public displays of religion, it is time to state unequivocally that passive displays of the 10 Commandments in public schools are most certainly constitutional.
Supplemental Info:
https://spectator.org/catholicism-on-the-decline-in-the-us/
https://thefederalist.com/2025/04/02/catholics-thwarting-a-black-mass-shows-you-dont-just-have-to-tolerate-everything/
https://spectator.org/rip-theodore-mccarrick/
