Suppose today after school, your child or grandchild comes home from school with a note about a change in your child’s classroom. You’re a busy parent and haven’t been paying attention to the news and controversies over church and state, so somehow this just passed you by. The note says:
Dear Parent,
Pursuant to HB 72, all classrooms in our state and therefore our school district must now display the Hindu Ten Commandments. The legislature stressed that this mandated action is for educational and historical purposes.
The Hindu Ten Commandments will be displayed prominently is every classroom and we have provided a copy in this letter of what will be displayed in the classroom.
Sincerely, Mrs. Smith.
10 COMMANDMENTS OF HINDUISM
1. The purpose of life is to realize the omnipresent divinity intuitively.
2. Purification of mind is the purpose of all religious disciplines.
3. The divinity inherent in each one of us has a dharma of its own. We should strive to go back to God, our source. Every action of ours must be concordant with this natural order of things. These three are the fundamental axioms. The other seven follow from these three.
4. Act in the living present, in total detachment and dedication, by avoiding all egocentric desires, fears and anxieties. If such an action serves another fellow being, it becomes service to God.
5. Freely search for a personal God and seek His grace for the purification of the mind.
6. The avataras emphasise on one’s duties to one’s mother, father, guru and truth and love as the basic core of dharma and unity of all faith.
7. Remember God’s names, chant them. Be aware continuously of His presence.
8. Surrender to God in heart, soul and will. Then our future is His concern.
9. Discover the Ultimate in yourself. Allow intuition and mystical experiences to take you beyond reason and intellect.
10. All faiths are valid. It is the attitude that matters, not the rituals.*
Of course, this isn’t a real letter and no state is about to require this version of Hindu Ten Commandments to be posted in classrooms. However, the Louisiana legislature is poised to try again to get the Decalogue posted in every classroom in the state.
HB 71
Louisiana’s public schools are ranked 49th in the nation by World Population Review, and 41st by U.S. News & World Report. Education Week gave the state’s schools a D+. By whatever standard, Louisiana schools need improvement. So what are Louisiana’s legislators proposing to help their schools? Christian nationalism to the rescue.
To do her part, GOP Representative Dodie Horton has sponsored HB 71 (make sure you also read the amendments) which would require schools from kindergarten to college to post a “display of the Ten Commandments in each classroom.” The original bill threatened to pull funding if a school didn’t get the commandments up on the walls. Some amendments might change that, we’ll have to see.
Speaking of amendments, there have been a few, one of which requires additional mention. Although the bill is intended to teach history, there is some fake history on display in the text of the legislation. But that is expected anytime a Christian nationalist puts pen to paper.
Probably, the most egregious mistake is in an amendment offered by Senator Jay Morris. There is a lot wrong with his historical justifications throughout the amendment, but the prize winner is his appeal to a fake quote attributed to James Madison. Morris has Madison saying:
"(w)e have staked the whole future of our new nation . . . upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments."
Even though David Barton is the source of this quote back in his 1989 book Myth of Separation, he now says the quote shouldn’t be used. It can’t be found in any of Madison’s writings. Back in the day, Barton picked it from a secondary source and it stuck. Now here it is in 2024 being used to justify Christian nationalist legislation. Check out the first two episodes of my podcast Telling Jefferson Lies for more on Barton’s fractured history and specifically this quote. Let that sink in: a bill proposing to teach history uses fake history as a rationale.
In his autobiography, Thomas Jefferson said he intended his 1786 statute establishing religious freedom in Virginia to cover more than just Christian denominations. He said the law was “meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it’s protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.” So should we have the Hindu Ten Commandments up along side the injunctions Moses brought down the mountain? Well, if we have one, maybe we should have them all. It’s all history, right? I suspect people from a variety of faiths are reading this. Singling out one religious creed certainly appears to establish it as the state religion, doesn’t it? Do you want your child taught a religion that isn’t yours at school? One way to solve the issue would be to put all faiths up there. What could go wrong? People don’t ever fuss over religion, do they?
However, perhaps an even better way would be to post no creed. There are people in the school districts who don’t follow a religious creed. They pay taxes, and it doesn’t seem right for the state to take sides against them. Jefferson said, after all, that he meant his statute to cover the infidels as well, so we’re good with at least one of the key Founders. What real religious freedom means is at the least freedom of conscience. There is no solid educational benefit from posters hanging on a wall, and surely not from legislators who can’t even get history right in their legislation about history.
In another 2005 Ten Commandment case, McCreary County, KY v. ACLU, the Supreme Court decided against McCreary County’s Ten Commandment display. In her concurring opinion, Sandra Day O’Connor asked this question of those who want to degrade the separation of church and state:
"Why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?
This is the question that modern-day Christian nationalists cannot answer.
As for the Louisiana legislators, they just need to do their jobs which is making it easier for teachers to their jobs. Performative grandstanding using God to score political points doesn’t help anyone.
For more on what’s good about the separation of church and state and the O’Connor Question, see the last two episodes of my podcast series Telling Jefferson Lies wherever you get your podcasts.
*Taken from “The Ten Commandments of Hinduism” by Dr. Mayil Vahanan Natarajan.
Image credit: Bohemian Baltimore, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
How awful for parents in Louisiana, that they feel so incapable of teaching their children the tenets of their faith. And my goodness, the churches have failed, also? I realize certain politicians (Republicans) do not have the ability or will to write these commands on their hearts, as Scripture instructs. That's why they need Giant Cheat Sheets. They are unable to remember - especially those forbidding lying and theft....and adultery.
i agree with you, post no commandments, and if i may add, the pride flags and sexual orientation materials can stay at home too.