Public Morality and Christian Witness
How Christians Can Oppose 10 Commandments In US Public Schools
As of yesterday, all public classrooms in Louisiana will be required by law to display an edited form of the biblical 10 Commandments by 2025. Read LA HB71 here.
Much of the popular Christianity that operates in the American mainstream can do little else but affirm this bill as a positive. And that is dangerous. I want to take the time here to argue that Christians can oppose this sort of thing as Christians. Because not all Christian ethics are the same.
The narrative that Christianity alone can provide the morality for functioning democracy is the basis for a politics of conquest
Most common conceptions of biblical commands treat them as principles or rules. But Barth and Bonhoeffer called the 10 commandments in the Old Testament and the Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament as the “space where God establishes obedience.” This alternative theological vision confronts much of the ideological Christian ethics justifying this legislation and threatening Christian witness.
The details of HR71 actually reveal its theological danger.
The law mandates a 11x14 poster in every classroom. Each will need to include an edited version of the 10 commandments plus a “historical context” statement that begins with the claim, “The Ten Commandments were a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries.”
Predictably, we should expect a host of legal challenges on First Amendment/establishment of religion grounds. But the bill was designed with legal defense measures built in.
The legal defense mechanism is the “historical context statement.” It states the 10 commandments were part of the “American public education for three centuries” — which is factual. But this fact is given meaning beyond itself by setting it within a story of Christian supremacy, of the narrative that Christians must provide the moral contract for democracy to function.
And make no mistake: when we reduce the 10 commandments to moral principles lifted from the liberating story of God, we turn them into tyrannous abstractions amenable to ideological capture.
The narrative that Christianity alone can provide the morality for functioning democracy is the basis for a politics of conquest. It holds that Christians must be ascendant in all aspects of American life in order for America to continue to be America. Pushed to extremes, it destroys the church’s conception of its own unique existence and identity, even justifying violence in the name of Christian moral order. This is the problem of Christendom.
This is all raging beneath the surface. I’m trying to bring it up without being consumed in the background noise that keeps us locked in ivory academic towers.
HB71 explicitly tries to defend itself against legal challenges claiming it establishes a religion. It does this by including a historical context statement that draws from the precedent of a 2019 SCOTUS ruling. The court ruled in American Legion v. American Humanist Association in favor of their public display on the grounds the 10 Commandments have “historical significance” and may also represent a “common cultural heritage” in the United States.
This effort to protect the bill from legal challenges betrays one of its key theological errors. The text of the first commandment to be posting in classrooms reads “I AM the LORD your God” — which not only leaves out the story which provides meaning to this statement (i.e. the liberation from Egypt) but replaces that story with American greatness.
The Subtle, Insidious Anti-Semitism of HR71
By emphasizing the American heritage of the 10 commandments, the bill ironically rejects the God of the 10 Commandments. There’s a subtle, insidious antisemitism here. One that echoes the National Socialism of the Third Reich.
In his 1941 critical theological pamphlet that takes issue with the religious dimensions of Nazi ideology, Dutch pastor KH Miskotte (who studied under Jewish philosophy Franz Rosenzweig) observed the Nazis welcomed any and all conceptions of a Christian god as the “All” devoid of Jewish particularity.
Proponents of HR71 traffic in this same error without realizing it, as do general conceptions of “Judeo-Christian” morality.
German National Socialists welcomed an all-powerful “Christian god” but rejected the liberating God of Israel. They despised a God who reveals himself in covenant with the Jews as his chosen people.
Nazi Germany welcomed a Christian god who could be known through nature, general qualities, and moral principles. Not the God of Israel.
And make no mistake: when we reduce the 10 commandments to moral principles lifted from the liberating story of God, we turn them into tyrannous abstractions amenable to ideological capture.
This was why Miskotte insisted on the essential importance of God’s Name revealed in the Exodus narrative, “I Will Be Who I Will Be” — a God revealed precisely in his acting, in her dealing with her people, Israel.
In contrast, the Nazi god was revealed by totalizing ideas, not acts. The Nazi god could be “Christian” in so far as it was an “omnipotent” (all-powerful) god, sure, but not the God revealed in the story of powerful deliverance from the hands of Pharaoh.
It was a god who was revealed in the “natural order” and the hierarchies which reflect that order, not in the Messianic deliverance of Jesus Christ. In short, the Nazi’s would abide any god who went generally by the name “Christian” or “Protestant” or “Catholic” so long as it was a god amendable to their ideological moral order. Not the God of Israel.
The point here is simply this: we cannot extract Christian morality to function as a “cultural asset” without obscuring the reconciling & liberating truth of the Christian story.
Conservative evangelicals are celebrating this ruling without any sort of critical examination of the theological danger(s) it contains.
Dr. Andrew Walker, Professor of Christian Ethics at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary argues the law doesn’t establish a religion. He also claims that while Baptists are anti-establishment in terms of religion, they don’t advocate for the “separation of government and morality.” These points are all set within a decidedly American situation.
As such, there is a woefully underdeveloped theological consideration among Christians for the sort of danger lurking in this legislation. Dr. Walker is not alone in pursuing a course of action in this present American moment that might serve immediate strategies of political ascendancy but betray the grammar of the biblical Story and Christian witness.
While Christians celebrate some sort of ascendant, public morality, there is a theological danger found in misrepresenting the God revealed in the Scriptures which only ever leads to human beings justifying ourselves.
It’s not that Christian faith has no public expression and that churches should cloister away from the “impure” world. Rather, it’s that Christian worship in its public form cannot betray the God it worships by shattering morality from the story it confesses.
This is why it is precisely as a Christian that I’m struck by the contradictions made painfully visible in Louisiana classrooms. For example, putting the words “thou shalt not kill” on walls is empty worship apart from policies to reduce gun violence in these very spaces (i.e. banning assault weapons, high magazines, etc.)
Christian nationalist politicians who insist on the offer of the 10 commandments for moral formation in American life seem to not be interested in or formed by the God they reveal.
I’m deeply concerned about the sort of moral formation this bill will enact by emblazoning empty words over students. Make no mistake: Louisiana students will be subjected to a theological ideology that is misrepresenting the God who established these commands with his people.
Not all Christian ethics are the same. There is always a danger among Christian ethics to turn the commands of God into weaponized principles. In doing this, we might establish order, but never glimpse or give witness to the reconciling, liberating peace of Jesus Christ.
We don’t need signs in schools that pupils will ignore. We need more pupils in pews. That’s where moral instruction should and must be taught. When your church has either become an idolatrous trump rally or a seminar on social justice, it’s no wonder religion is dying in America. The government and public schools had nothing to do with this.
Religiosity was the strongest evidence of American exceptionalism - and the unchurching of America is leading us to become just like the rest of secular Europe. We should all agree something is wrong with the culture and the only way to fix it is one neighbor, one church, one community at a time. Conservatives used to understand that looking to government and politics to solve these problems was exactly the opposite of what it meant to be a conservative. When politics becomes everything - including the source of your own purpose, meaning and identity, we’ve lost the plot.
As I wrote in a footnote of a post today..."many modern communities today are still plagued by crime, distrust, and a lack of healthy productivity; and so the reason why these guys love the Ten Commandments so much is often because they still need the reminders."
And to understand why our society sees so many pastors, politicians, and police officers fall for the temptations of their roles it’s likely because many of these individuals are at the Obedience stage which is only one level up from the Dominance stage, and none of us are beyond regression.
These guys straddle the Dominance and Obedience stages, not so differently from the people (real or mythologized, it doesn't really matter) who needed the 10 Commandments 3400 years ago.
Right or wrong, communities like these are just earlier in their consciousness development and can't see it from the consciousness level you've been able to see it at. Christianity at each stage of consciousness means different things for the individual. (I would have vehemently opposed my last sentence 10 years ago, lol.) But there is an awakening happening in the West, and it may take another 50 or 100 years but these lower consciousness forms of Christianity will largely give way to something far more evolved. I see it coming, everyday.
Thank you for creating a space to share and discuss these ideas. Hope you have a great week, Jared:)