Hanging Decalogue raises theological, constitutional issues

By K. Hollyn Hollman
General Counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee

Advocates of hanging the Ten Commandments in public buildings are back. Across the nation, including at our back door in the Virginia Assembly, people are spending a great deal of time, energy and money looking for ways to post the Decalogue in government buildings. Legislative efforts have intensified since the September l1th attacks, with more than 20 bills introduced at the state level.

You might wonder why they have resurrected the “hang ten” movement, given the clear legal guidance the high court issued more than 20 years ago. In the 1980 case of Stone vs. Graham, the Supreme Court struck down a Kentucky law that required the posting of the Ten Commandments in public classrooms.

Recognizing the Ten Commandments as “undeniably a sacred text,” the court properly found that the Kentucky statute served a religious purpose. Other courts have reached the same result when the Ten Commandments are posted on other government property.

With such a clear legal precedent against them, leaders of the “hang ten” movement are looking for creative ways to avoid losing again in the courts.

The new tactic in this old campaign involves surrounding the Ten Commandments with secular historical texts. Placed in a broader display, advocates assert, the Ten Commandments simply serve a secular educational purpose, which is to acknowledge them as a basis of our system of law. The context, it is argued, neutralizes the religious nature of the display making it less likely to be viewed as endorsement or promotion of religion and thus as a violation of the Constitution.

While it is difficult to imagine how one can secularize a commandment such as “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” the effort to do so highlights a main problem with the “hang ten” movement.

Simply put, the placement of the Ten Commandments among secular texts does not respect their religious significance in Christianity and Judaism.

The commandments are Holy Scripture. Government should neither endorse such indisputably religious texts nor seek to deny their essential meaning by depicting them as a secular foundation of our legal system.

Apart from whether a collage-type display can clear the constitutional hurdle — one federal court in Kentucky has already ruled that it cannot — there are other theological and practical reasons to oppose government postings of the Ten Commandments.

First, any posting necessarily begins with the government choosing which version of the commandments they will enshrine as orthodox. One scholar estimates that more than 250 English translations exist. Even in the original Hebrew, the twin accounts in Exodus and Deuteronomy vary. Do we really want the government in the role of secular high priest choosing which is most worthy? Any such decision will likely engender rivalry among proponents of the various translations.

Second, even if the Supreme Court were to approve the collage approach as lawful, the treatment of the Ten Commandments as just another secular text would remain deeply offensive to people of faith in the Christian and Jewish traditions.

Finally, if we take “hang ten” proponents at their word regarding their central objective — to promote morality and shared values, not religion — decorating public buildings with sacred texts is unlikely to be effective.

In the classroom, the inclusion of character education would better teach children the difference between right and wrong. In addition, in the community, individuals should actively impart their religious values in their homes and houses of worship, rather than relying on government to do so in public schools and courthouses.

“Hanging ten” is unconstitutional, represents a bad theology and is not the way to achieve its advocates’ lofty goals.

This article is reprinted from the February issue of the Report from the Capital.

June 2002