Nine Louisiana families are suing the state of Louisiana over a new law that orders every public-school classroom to display a poster of the Ten Commandments.
And in a further sign of growing clashes between Christian and secular worldviews, Oklahoma’s top education official has ordered schools there to begin incorporating the Bible into lessons. The BBC reports there has been significant push back to these measures.
Under the Louisiana legislation, every school receiving state funding must, by 2025, prominently display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. The lawsuit, backed by secular civil-rights groups, claims that such a display violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion, and that the display ‘pressures’ students into adopting the state’s favoured religion. The law ‘simply cannot be reconciled with the fundamental religious freedom principles that animated the founding of our nation’, wrote the plaintiffs.
In Oklahoma, Bible lessons are now compulsory, said Republican state superintendent Ryan Walters, and the rule requires ‘immediate and strict compliance’. It will apply to lessons for all public school students aged 11–18. Walters described the Bible as ‘an indispensable historical and cultural touchstone. Without basic knowledge of it, Oklahoma students are unable to properly contextualise the foundation of our nation, which is why Oklahoma educational standards provide for its instruction’.
But Rachel Laser, head of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said: ‘Public schools are not Sunday schools’.
Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern, said: ‘Nations that have flourished historically have based their law and culture on the Ten Commandments rooted in the supreme lawgiver, God Himself. James Madison, the fourth President of the US, was right when he said the whole future of a nation depends upon the capacity to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments. Do away with God and you end up in societies strangled with a plethora of conflicting and incoherent laws. That’s exactly where we have ended up in the UK.’
