Texas Set To Mandate the Posting of the Ten Commandments in Public Schools

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me. – The First Commandment, Exodus 20:2-3

In a move that would affect more than 5 million students, Texas lawmakers are set to pass a bill requiring public schools to display the Ten Commandments beginning this coming fall semester.

Predictably, the measure has sparked a flurry of passionate support and opposition. “It’s religiously coercive,” said Heather Weaver, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief. “It’s an attempt to indoctrinate [students] into the state’s favored form of Christianity.”

“There’s no doubt about the historical and cultural foundations and the significance of the Ten Commandments for our heritage and systems of law,” said Jonathan Saenz, president and attorney for Texas Values, a Christian legal and policy advocacy group supporting the measure. “There’s value for students to have an awareness of those things.”

As the line between church and state continues to blur, critics of the law have pledged to challenge it once Governor Greg Abbott signs it, as expected. Their argument—that the measure is unconstitutional—mirrors the case currently unfolding in Louisiana, where a similar law was enacted last year. That legislation, which took effect this January, is now being contested by nine local families, represented by the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

A federal district judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the law in the five school districts named in the lawsuit. Although the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard the case in January, it has yet to issue a ruling. In the meantime, it allowed the law to take effect in all other public schools across Louisiana.

Elsewhere, one state after another moves more boldly to mandate Christianity in taxpayer-funded schools. In April, Arkansas, too, required classrooms, to display the Ten Commandments. Texas currently offers public schools a sixty dollar bounty per student to adopt a Christian-based curriculum starting with the fall semester. Oklahoma’s state superintendent has ordered Bibles to be present in every public classroom and plans to incorporate the Holy Book into instruction for fifth through 12th grades. And earlier in May, a deadlocked Supreme Court halted the establishment in Oklahoma of what would have been the nation’s first religious public charter school.

In Texas, Weaver also has a problem with the distinctly Protestant Decalogue. The version used by Catholics and Jews is worded differently. Texas is 42 percent Protestant, 22 percent Catholic, two percent Muslim, one percent each Buddhist and Hindu and less than one percent Jewish. The remainder identify as atheist, agnostic and nothing in particular.

No matter one’s religion, argues Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, “By placing the Ten Commandments in our public school classrooms, we ensure our students receive the same foundational moral compass as our state and country’s forefathers.”

That may be well and good, but what happens when a Hindu, Buddhist, or other non-Abrahamic child is confronted with the opening lines of that moral compass: “I am the Lord your God… You shall have no other gods before Me”? How are their parents to respond when asked about Hinduism’s many deities? Which of the “eleven gods whose home is heaven” is THE god? And are all the other Hindu gods bogus?

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry’s ready answer to puzzled parents of other faiths faced with an 11X14 poster of an alien religious code in their seven-year-old’s classroom: “just tell the child not to look at it.”