The Founder's Fury: Ten Commandments Invade Our Schools

It is utter BS to justify imposing religious doctrine on impressionable youth: there isn’t that much overlap between the Ten Commandments and American or Louisiana law...

The song that was inspired by this article is available here.
My reading this article as an audio podcast is available here.

“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” —Thomas Jefferson

How will the Ten Commandments do anything at all to help Louisiana’s many crises? That state has:

— One of the highest poverty and child poverty rates in the US (26% of all Louisiana children live below the poverty line),
— More than twice the rate of death for women in childbirth than the national average and almost twice the rate of child and infant mortality,
— Terrible high school graduation rates and one of the lowest adult literacy rates in the entire developed world,
— A 38.1% adult obesity rate, one of the highest in the developed world,
— One of the worst violent crime rates in the country (549.3 incidents per 100,000 people, vs the US national average of 366.7),
— STD rates off the charts, usually ranking in the top 5 in America for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis,
— The second-lowest life expectancy in the nation,
— One of the worst levels of income and wealth inequality in America,
— Almost twice the national rate of hunger (“food insecurity”) with almost one in five (16.7%) of their children going to bed hungry every year,
— More people dying from heart disease than almost any other state,
— Among the worst and most lethal air pollution in the nation (see: “Cancer Alley”),
— Almost twice the national rate of teen pregnancy (27.5 per 1000 females 15-19 compared with a national rate of 17.4), and
— Almost twice the number of people in prison as the national average (680 per 100K vs a national average of 419).

Republicans in the state now have a brilliant new solution to all these problems brought on by a half-century of Republican rule: post the Ten Commandments in every school and college classroom in the state, starting with kindergarten.

This is particularly bizarre, given that Republican Governor Jeff Landry says he’s ordering this “because if you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses.” He even includes a fake quote attributed to James Madison in his proclamation.

This, of course, is utter BS to justify imposing religious doctrine on impressionable youth: There isn’t that much overlap between the Ten Commandments and American or Louisiana law.

Our laws don’t, as do the Ten Commandments:

— Specify a single god who must be worshiped,
— Demand a ban on graven images (statues, crucifixes, and pictures of deities),
— Require us to take a Sabbath day off work every week or be put to death,
— Mandate that children “honor” their parents or be stoned to death,
— Make it illegal for men to “covet” other men’s wives or sleep with unmarried women,
— Or criminalize telling a lie except under oath (in fact, corporations have recently asserted the explicit “right to lie” under the First Amendment, and Trump averaged a lie every 3 minutes in his last speech).

The only two things in common between the Ten Commandments and most state or federal laws are prohibitions on killing and stealing, which have always been pretty obvious and don’t need giant posters saying, “Don’t Kill” and “Don’t Steal” in school.

This pitch for religious indoctrination by government was also a major concern for America’s Founders, which — remembering the then-fresh lessons of Salem, Massachusetts — they resisted as a naked power grab.

Religious leaders of that day tried to pull it off by claiming that America’s system of jurisprudence was founded on the Ten Commandments, and that therefore that document and Christianity more generally should be integrated into our nation’s political and legal systems.

The claim was made so often and so loudly — particularly by Virginia’s largest slave holder, the evangelical Patrick Henry, who right wingers today love to quote and vigorously opposed the Constitution in part because of the Establishment Clause and because it didn’t explicitly support slavery — that several of the actual Founders thought it necessary to refute it in detail.

Author of the Declaration of Independence, third President of the United States, and the man who wrote the first draft of the Bill of Rights which says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” Thomas Jefferson was probably the most methodical.

In a February 10, 1814 letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, Jefferson addressed the question directly:

“Finally, in answer to Fortescue Aland’s question why the Ten Commandments should not now be a part of the common law of England we may say they are not because they never were…”

Anybody who asserted that the Ten Commandments were the basis of American or British law was, Jefferson said, mistakenly believing a document that was “a manifest forgery.”

The reason was simple: British common law, on which much American law was based, existed before Christianity had arrived in England.

“[British conservative historian] Sir Matthew Hale lays it down in these words,” wrote Jefferson to Cooper, “‘Christianity is parcel of the laws of England.’“

But, Jefferson rebuts, it couldn’t be. Just looking at the timeline of English history demonstrated it was impossible:

“But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first Christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here, then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it....

“We might as well say that the Newtonian system of philosophy is a part of the common law, as that the Christian religion is,” wrote Jefferson. “...In truth, the alliance between Church and State in England has ever made their judges accomplices in the frauds of the clergy; and even bolder than they are.”

In a January 24, 1814 letter to John Adams, Jefferson went through a detailed lawyer’s brief to show that the entire idea that the laws of both England and the United States came from Judaism, Christianity, or the Ten Commandments rested on a single man’s mistranslation in 1658, often repeated, and totally false.

“It is not only the sacred volumes they [the churches] have thus interpolated, gutted, and falsified, but the works of others relating to them, and even the laws of the land,” he wrote.

“Our judges, too, have lent a ready hand to further these frauds, and have been willing to lay the yoke of their own opinions on the necks of others; to extend the coercions of municipal law to the dogmas of their religion, by declaring that these [Ten Commandments] make a part of the law of the land.”

It was a long-running topic of agreement between Jefferson and John Adams, our second president (who was a practicing Christian). On September 24, 1821, he wrote to Jefferson noting their mutual hope that America would embrace a purely secular, rational view of what human society could become:

“Hope springs eternal. Eight millions of Jews hope for a Messiah more powerful and glorious than Moses, David, or Solomon; who is to make them as powerful as he pleases.

“Some hundreds of millions of Mussulmans expect another prophet more powerful than Mahomet, who is to spread Islamism over the whole earth. Hundreds of millions of Christians expect and hope for a millennium in which Jesus is to reign for a thousand years over the whole world before it is burnt up. The Hindoos expect another and final incarnation of Vishnu, who is to do great and wonderful things, I know not what.”

But, Adams noted, the hope for a positive future for America was — in his mind and Jefferson’s — grounded in rationality and government, not in religion:

“You and I hope for splendid improvements in human society, and vast amelioration in the condition of mankind,” he wrote. “Our faith may be supposed by more rational arguments than any of the former.”

In a modern revival of religious leaders seeking political power, emails and tweets fly around the internet saying that Founders like Madison claimed the United States was founded on either Christianity or the Ten Commandments. 

Many originate in the writings of a right-wing group whose president helped prepare the History and Social Studies standards for Texas schoolchildren and are so badly taken out of context that they can only be called deliberate attempts to fool people. Others are simple fabrications, like Jeff Landry‘s fake Madison saying, quotes created from nothing.

The United States and our laws were not founded on the Bible, or even on biblical principles. Moral precepts against killing or stealing are found not only in the Bible, but exist among every tribe on Earth, some of whose cultures and languages measurably date back over 30,000 years.

They’re also part of the social code of animals ranging from prairie dogs to gorillas. They’re rooted in the biological imperative of survival. They’re part of our DNA.

As Jefferson wrote in a June 5, 1824, letter to Major John Cartwright:

“Our Revolution commenced on more favorable ground [than the foundation of English or Biblical law]. It presented us an album on which we were free to write what we pleased. We had no occasion to search into musty records, to hunt up royal parchments, or to investigate the laws and institutions of a semi-barbarous ancestry. We appealed to those of nature, and found them engraved on our hearts.”

Jefferson then thanks and congratulates Cartwright for writing that the American Constitution as well as both American and British common law are entirely secular in their origin:

“I was glad to find in your book a formal contradiction, at length, of the judiciary usurpation of legislative powers; for such the judges have usurped in their repeated decisions, that Christianity is a part of the common law. 

“The proof of the contrary, which you have adduced, is incontrovertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character had ever existed. But it may amuse you, to show when, and by what means, they stole this law in upon us.”

Ben Franklin, another Founder, fled Boston when he was a teenager to escape the oppressive environment created by politically powerful preachers, and for the rest of his life was openly hostile to the idea of secular political power being wielded by those who also hold religious power.

Although he was enthralled by the “mystery” of the spiritual experience, Franklin had little use for the organized religions of the day. In his autobiographical “Toward The Mystery,” he wrote:

“I have found Christian dogma unintelligible. Early in life I absented myself from Christian assemblies.”

Franklin — like most of the more well-known Founders — was a Deist, a philosophy made popular by early Unitarians who held that the Creator made the universe long ago and has since chosen not to interfere in any way, and that neither Jesus nor anybody else was divine.

Another founding Deist who resisted giving political power to those with religious power was George Washington.

On the topic of Washington’s religious sentiments, Thomas Jefferson wrote in his personal diary entry for February 1, 1799: 

“When the clergy addressed General Washington on his departure from the Government, it was observed in their consultation, that he had never, on any occasion, said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Christian religion, and they thought they should so pen their address, as to force him at length to declare publicly whether he was a Christian or not. They did so.

“However,” Jefferson noted to his diary, “the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly except that, which he passed over without notice.”

Jefferson concluded that Washington:

“…never did say a word on the subject in any of his public papers, except in his valedictory letter to the Governors of the States, when he resigned his commission in the army, wherein he speaks of ‘the benign influence of the Christian religion.’ I know that Gouverneur Morris, who pretended to be in his secrets [in Washington’s confidence] and believed himself to be so, has often told me that General Washington believed no more of that [Christian] system than he himself did.”

In fact, President George Washington supervised the language of a treaty with African Muslims that explicitly stated that the United States was a secular nation. 

The Treaty With Tripoli, worked out under Washington’s guidance and then signed into law by John Adams a year later in 1797, reads:

“As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, -- as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen, -- and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

But for the Founders this wasn’t just an issue of being Christians or not. They vigorously opposed all religious leaders gaining any access whatsoever to the levers of political power or intermingling in any way with state business. 

This was particularly true of the “Father of the Constitution” James Madison, who was himself (unlike Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson, but like Adams) a practicing Christian.

For example, on February 21, 1811, President Madison vetoed a bill passed by Congress that authorized government payments to a church in Washington, DC to help the poor. Faith-based initiatives were a clear violation, Madison believed, of the doctrine of separation of church and state, and could lead to a dangerous transfer of political power to religious leaders.

In Madison’s mind, caring for the poor was a public and civic duty — a function of government — and must not be allowed to become a hole through which churches could reach and seize political power or the taxpayer’s purse.

Funding a church to provide for the poor would establish a “legal agency” — a legal precedent — that would break down the “wall of separation” the founders had put between church and state in two different parts of the Constitution to protect Americans from religious zealots gaining political power.

Thus, Madison said in his veto message to Congress, he was striking down the proposed law:

“Because the bill vests and said incorporated church an also authority to provide for the support of the poor, and the education of poor children of the same;...” which, Madison said, “would be a precedent for giving to religious societies, as such, a legal agency in carrying into effect a public and civil duty.”

James Madison flatly rejected government supporting religion in any way whatsoever, noting in a July 10, 1822 letter to Edward Livingston:

“We are teaching the world the great truth, that Governments do better without kings and nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson: the Religion flourishes in greater purity without, than with the aid of Government.”

He added in that same letter:

“I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.”

Madison also opposed — although he didn’t stop — the appointment of chaplains for Congress.

“Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom?” he asked in 1820.

His answer:

“In the strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. ...The establishment of the chaplainship to Congress is a palpable violation of equal rights, as well as of Constitutional principles.”

Madison went on to suggest that if members of Congress wanted a chaplain, they should pay for it themselves:

“If Religion consist in voluntary acts of individuals, singly, or voluntarily associated, and it be proper that public functionaries, as well as their Constituents should discharge their religious duties, let them like their Constituents, do so at their own expense.

“How small a contribution from each member of Congress would suffice for the purpose! How just would it be in its principle! How noble in its exemplary sacrifice to the genius of the Constitution; and the divine right of conscience! 

“Why should the expense of a religious worship be allowed for the Legislature, be paid by the public, more than that for the Executive or Judiciary branch of the Government.”

As he wrote to Edward Everett on March 18, 1823:

“The settled opinion here is, that religion is essentially distinct from civil Government, and exempt from its cognizance; that a connection between them is injurious to both...”

But Thomas Jefferson was the most outspoken of the Founders who viewed religious leaders seizing political power as a naked threat to American democracy. One of his most well-known quotes is carved into the stone of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC:

“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny imposed upon the mind of man.”

Republicans often cite his reference to “upon the alter of God” as proof that Jefferson was a Bible-thumping Christian. You’ll even find it in Texas school books.

What’s missing from the Jefferson memorial (and almost all who cite the quote), however, is the context of that statement: the letter and circumstance from which it came.

When Jefferson was Vice President, just two months before the election of 1800 in which he would win his first term as President, he wrote to his dear friend, the physician Benjamin Rush, who started out as an orthodox Christian and ended up, later in his life, a Deist and Unitarian. 

Here, in a most surprising context, we find the true basis of one of Jefferson’s most famous quotes, mentioning his First Amendment:

“DEAR SIR, - ... I promised you a letter on Christianity, which I have not forgotten,” Jefferson wrote, noting that he knew to discuss the topic would add fuel to the fires of electoral politics swirling all around him. “I do not know that it would reconcile the genus irritabile vatum [the angry priests] who are all in arms against me. Their hostility is on too interesting a ground to be softened.

“The delusion ...on the clause of the Constitution, which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given to the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States; and as every sect believes its own form the true one, every one perhaps hoped for his own, but especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists.

“The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes, and they [the preachers] believe that any portion of power confided to me [such as being elected President], will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny imposed upon the mind of man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough too in their opinion.” [emphasis added]

Thus began a long and thoughtful correspondence — mostly about religion — between Jefferson and Dr. Rush. 

In later years, inspired by his discussions with Rush, Jefferson put together what is now called The Jefferson Bible, in which he deleted all the miracles from the New Testament and presented Jesus to readers as an inspired philosopher. His Jefferson Bible is still in print, and well received, if amazon.com sales and readers’ comments are any indication.

So, here we are. It’s now law in Louisiana that the Ten Commandments must be shoved down the throats of every child in that state, and the case will soon head to a Supreme Court that’s been seized by 6 fanatic Catholics eager to impose even more of their retrograde, cultish religious doctrines on the rest of us.

It reminds me of how Jefferson paraphrased a popular 1732 play by Henry Fielding, “The Lottery,” in which a character says “Sing Tantararara, Fools all, Fools all,” lamenting that in the lottery of life, the dishonest “rouges” win out all too often.

“What a conspiracy this,” Jefferson closed his 1824 letter to Major John Cartwright, “between Church and State! Sing Tantarara, rogues all, rogues all, Sing Tantarara, rogues all!”