Louisiana, a state ranking near the bottom in multiple categories including education, has drafted legislation that mandates that the Ten Commandments be prominently displayed in every public school and state funded college or university classroom. It was signed into law by Republican governor Jeff Landry last week. Given Louisiana’s woeful rankings for education, economy, public health, infrastructure, etc, it seems strange that the state’s elected officials would focus on legislation that provides absolutely no benefit to the citizens of Louisiana and is clearly a direct violation of the separation of church and state. With those facts in mind, let’s explore some reasons why Louisiana passed this legislation in the first place.

The Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation (CPCF) produced a report entitled “Report and Analysis on Religious Freedom Measures Impacting Prayer and Faith in America” in which they outlined their plans to craft model legislation that they claim protects religious liberty, while in actuality it privileges extremely conservative Christianity with the hope of then foisting those beliefs on the broader public, including in America’s public schools. It relies heavily on cherry picked historical documents — some of which predate the actual founding of America by well over a century — and widely debunked studies that vilify and demonize LGBTQIA people. In Category 1 of the document, “Legislation regarding our country’s religious heritage,” it states that, “Measures in Category #1 mainly recognize the place of Christian principles in our nation’s history and heritage.” This is the category that I believe the Ten Commandments legislation falls under. The CPFC document admits that these types of legislation may not pass, but that they “can still provide later support for other governmental entities to support religious displays” such as the Ten Commandments. Fortunately, the ACLU and other religious freedom organizations are planning to sue Louisiana over this bill because it makes a mockery of separation of church and state.

Despite claims from the religious right that displaying the Ten Commandments teaches morality, the true motivation behind the posting of the Ten Commandments becomes crystal clear when one looks at the Decalogue. The first of the Ten Commandments reads, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.” These verses, Exodus 20:2-3, do not speak about morality at all, but rather about the primacy of the Israelite God for the ancient Israelites. Contextually, when this commandment was written, it dealt with “Israel’s obligations to YHWH,” and was not yet indicative of monotheism, as scholar John Collins notes in his text book, A Short Introduction to the Hebrew Bible, (pp. 75-77) because there were multiple gods worshiped in the Ancient Near East. For Christian nationalists like those behind the CPFC document (as well as the Project 2025 document and The Statement on Christian Nationalism and the Gospel) though ignoring that context is key to their assertion that the God of ancient Israel is the God of Jesus and therefore the only true God. This shows that putting the Ten Commandments in public schools and state funded colleges and universities is about establishing a national religion rather than morality. Early elementary students have absolutely no need to learn about adultery, murder, or not coveting “your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, male or female slave, ox, donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” (Exodus 20:17) Nor do students regardless of age need to have exclusively Jewish and or Christian texts thrown in their faces while they try to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic or any other subject they may be learning.

Christians do not have the market cornered on morality despite conservative Christian protestations to the contrary. Yet it’s obvious that it is only conservative American Christians who are trying to force the American people to believe a certain way by co-opting the Hebrew Bible and taking its 600 plus commandments out of context. This is just one of the steps along the way that the Christian nationalists have documented that they plan to take as they attempt to make America a theocratic state despite the existence of the First Amendment and the 97 million non-Christians in America who would be affected by their theocratic ambitions. Never mind the fact that those plans completely ignore all of the places where the Bible sanctions things that are now definitely considered immoral. If their motivation was actually to promote religious freedom and the teaching of morality, their plan would be to promote the golden rule in public life because it is found in every major faith on Earth, and if it was followed the immorality of coercing people to believe a certain way would never be allowed.

Christian nationalism must be stopped in America for there to be any hope that the loftiest ideals of the American experiment will finally truly come to fruition. Those lofty yet unfulfilled ideals are completely at odds with theocratic nationalism, Christian libertarianism, and the hatred, bigotry, racism, intolerance, and ecological destruction that white Christian nationalism promotes. Do not take these people or their agenda lightly. They are loudly proclaiming who they are and we should definitely believe them as we do all we can to stop their Christofascist agenda.

If you enjoyed this essay, please pick up a copy of my book Theological Musings Volume 1 from Quoir Publishing.

Peace be with you.