A bill at the Statehouse (H. 4762) that would require the Ten Commandments in every South Carolina classroom jumped its first hurdle on Jan. 21 when a House Judiciary subcommittee favorably approved it to the full committee for consideration.
Too bad. It’s a performative bill. Why? Because it seeks to appeal to a deeply conservative religious base but will do little to actually change public attitudes, much less make society more ethical. It has lots of troubling issues from constitutional and Christian perspectives.
From a constitutional perspective, it’s clear that there should not be the promotion of any one religious view in the public schools. The First Amendment states clearly and directly that “Congress should make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” It was for this reason that policies mandating school prayer and the display of the Ten Commandments were ruled unconstitutional in the 20th century.
There will be those who say this bill is not necessarily about promoting one religion but rather about universal principles. However, that’s simply not true. While there is, of course, general agreement on some values, such as not stealing and not committing murder, commandments about “having no other gods before me” or “not making graven images” and observing the Sabbath are certainly not held by every member of America’s diverse , pluralistic society.
This proposal is also deeply curious from a Christian perspective since the overwhelming majority of those pushing this law are professing Christians. But the center of the Christian faith is not the Ten Commandments. The center is the teachings of Jesus.
The famous American writer, Kurt Vonnegut, put it so well when he said, “For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. ‘Blessed are the merciful’ in a courtroom? ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon?”
Much of the rest of the American society and the global community may also see the complete hypocrisy of the current Republican Party clinging to the Ten Commandments while unapologetically supporting a leader who is a serial adulterer who bears false witness almost every day, has brazenly cheated on his taxes, failed to pay his workers and seems to be covetous about almost everything.
This is also the same party that is defending the killing of anti-ICE protesters. Perhaps Republicans in South Carolina should try to do a little self-examination before forcing the Ten Commandments on the rest of society in a performative stunt that will do very little but drive more division in our state’s culture wars and undermine the Constitution.
I think if Jesus were here, he would care far less about whether the Ten Commandments were in schoolhouses than about whether his own followers are living out his teachings, especially when it comes to caring for the poor, the outcast and immigrants. Perhaps the South Carolina GOP should focus a little more on those issues.
Will McCorkle of Summerville is a professor at a local college.
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