COMMENTARY: No New Monuments to the Ten Commandments

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Like most Americans, I like monuments. They’re big, they’re solid and they last. Mount Rushmore is ridiculously massive, but it is spectacularly American and looks great on a postcard. But do I really want to see a monument of the Ten Commandments springing up on every courthouse and state […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Like most Americans, I like monuments. They’re big, they’re solid and they last. Mount Rushmore is ridiculously massive, but it is spectacularly American and looks great on a postcard.

But do I really want to see a monument of the Ten Commandments springing up on every courthouse and state Capitol lawn in the country? No.


The ones already there, fine. As Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer rightly noted, mass Decalogue destruction could “create the very kind of religiously based divisiveness that the Establishment Clause seeks to avoid.”

But so would a campaign to erect monuments on public places throughout the land, as the Christian Defense Coalition has proposed. This is not what we need: a bloody battle of words over our most widely shared moral principles.

Maybe there is something sensible about placing those principles in public view. After all, teachers decorate their classrooms with maxims such as “be respectful.” Isn’t a public given to road rage and shoplifting badly in need of similar instruction?

Absolutely, says Kerri Ricketson, a Catholic mom and barista at my favorite coffee shop. After all, God was here before any of us and we need occasional reminders of his ground rules, she says.

I get this. In a culture sliding toward Gomorrah, we need some moral barriers to decline. Surely two-ton monuments declaring “you shall not steal” will deter some backsliders from immoral acts, would-be commandment-planters argue.

I also get that the commandments reflect the Founding Fathers’ recognition of God as the source of inalienable rights and are one basis of our legal system. Just look at the Supreme Court’s own frieze showing Moses toting two tablets.

But let’s look also at what Moses says about them: “Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road.”


Notice he doesn’t say, “Erect them on your City Hall lawns.” These are commands to be put on your hearts and lived every day, Moses says.

Jim Francis, the coffee shop proprietor who often gives me wisdom along with lattes, also points to Jesus’ admonition of the rich man who says he keeps the commandments. “Sell your possessions and give to the poor,” Jesus says, which is not what the guy wanted to hear.

The biblical point is to keep the commandments, which is much tougher than displaying them. We would like to think just putting them in people’s way will change their behavior. But living them daily is going to influence more people and cause less civil strife.

Further, there is some sense in the justices’ seemingly schizophrenic decision to allow monuments at the Texas Capitol but not framed copies in a Kentucky courthouse. The former are mixed in with Alamo heroes, while the latter clearly serve a religious purpose, the court reasoned.

Their 5-4 votes reflect our national ambivalence about public religion. But better peaceful ambivalence than religious warfare, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote: “Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?”

The constitutional questions clearly aren’t settled, but the monument movement clearly comes from Christian conservatives. That rightly makes non-Christians nervous in our pluralistic society.


And if states approve commandments displays on public grounds, peer pressure will compel almost everyone to follow suit. That would give them about as much moral weight as a postcard.

I say, leave the ones we have alone and don’t start chiseling more. We should build the commandments into our lives, not on our public squares.

(Charles Honey writes about religion for The Grand Rapids Press in Grand Rapids, Mich.)

MO/PH END RNS

Editors: Search the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for a photo of Honey.

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