On Wednesday, June 19, the far-right governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, signed Home Invoice 71, which would require all public faculty lecture rooms within the southern US state, from kindergarten to school , present the Ten Commandments. The laws stipulates that the Commandments “have to be printed in a big, simply legible font” on a “poster or framed doc of not less than 28 x 35 cm.”
Shortly earlier than signing the regulation, Landry boasted, “I can’t wait to get sued.” And so it was, his prayer was rapidly answered, and on June 24 a coalition of Louisiana civil liberties teams and oldsters filed a lawsuit alleging that the regulation is unconstitutional and violates the separation of church and state.
If the case reaches the U.S. Supreme Court docket, the courtroom’s conservative supermajority will possible make sure that Landry’s eagerness to be sued was not unfounded. Latest rulings by the nation’s highest judicial physique on non secular freedom have been a boon for Christian nationalism, as if there was any doubt that right-wing politics and faith had been an ideal match.
A number of commentators have expressed concern that Louisiana’s new regulation indicators a slide towards theocracy in the US, whereas Vox senior correspondent Ian Millhiser warns that “to uphold this regulation in its entirety, the Supreme Court docket should burn to the bottom nearly all that is still of the constitutional ban on legal guidelines ‘respectful of the institution of faith.'”
Millhiser additionally warns that “permitting this regulation to face would imply taking a sledgehammer to the wall that separates church and state.” However how huge is that wall actually?
For starters, the truth that the phrase “In God We Belief” is stamped on all U.S. forex doesn’t communicate very persuasively to the secular nature of the state. The $20 invoice, for instance, contains this phrase above a picture of the White Home, an interpretation as apt as any fusion of church and state.
The Pew Analysis Middle, a assume tank primarily based in Washington, DC, the capital of the US, notes that “whereas the US Structure doesn’t point out God, nearly all state constitutions make reference to God or the divine.” , and God additionally seems within the Declaration of Independence.
Then there’s the great outdated Pledge of Allegiance, which I actually was in a position to recite each morning of my elementary faculty expertise within the U.S., in entrance of the American flag with my proper hand over my coronary heart. The pledge ends with the affirmation that America is “one nation below God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” – a system that each one however obviates the prospect of equal liberty and justice for individuals who don’t subscribe to stated God.
In my private case, I had the clear displeasure of attending a Catholic faculty, the place non secular indoctrination occurred with none kind of management and I realized such priceless classes as that my canine was not going to go to heaven. The top results of my Catholic upbringing was that I used to be endlessly disillusioned with organized faith, which I suppose now excludes me from membership in “one nation below God.”
As for the nation’s stewards, U.S. Supreme Court docket Justice Samuel Alito not too long ago expressed settlement with the concept that America must return to a “place of godliness” — a spot now not tormented by assaults on “freedom of faith,” by which he means threats to right-wing Christian domination. So, by Alito’s twisted logic, Landry’s Ten Commandments scheme is the epitome of “freedom of faith” and never precisely its reverse.
And whereas the weaponization of faith is mostly related to the Republican Celebration (recall how God advised President George W. Bush to go and declare struggle in Afghanistan and Iraq), Democrats even have a tough time with the entire query of separation of church and state. Barack Obama had a behavior of invoking Jesus in his public speeches; for his half, Joe Biden made no pretense of secular thought in his official assertion on the White Home on the event of Orthodox Christian Easter this Could: “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ reminds us of God’s ample love for us and the facility of sunshine over darkness.”
Biden went on to say that “on this holy season, we maintain the folks affected by struggle and persecution particularly near our hearts,” a very wealthy sentiment coming from the person who has been aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide within the Gaza Strip since final October.
Which brings us to the subsequent query: No matter occurred to “Thou shalt not kill,” one of many Ten Commandments that can quickly adorn the partitions of Louisiana lecture rooms “in massive, simply legible print”? How are American youth imagined to reconcile this order from above with their nation’s legacy of carnage world wide, from Iraq to Vietnam to El Salvador and past?
At residence there are additionally many murders, whether or not it’s blacks and Native People killed by police or asylum seekers dying in immigration detention facilities or folks killed en masse by poverty.
Then, in fact, there are the mass shootings which have develop into one thing of a nationwide pastime, a lot to the advantage of the gun trade. And what are you aware: On July 4, a U.S. vacation that final yr noticed a wave of mass shootings throughout the nation, Louisiana will enact a brand new regulation permitting state residents over the age of 18 to hold a hid weapon with out a allow or coaching programs.
In such a lethally dysfunctional context, Governor Landry’s sensational Ten Commandments campaign definitely serves as a helpful distraction from deeper existential points. To that finish, maybe the Ten Commandments may use the addition of an eleventh: “Thou shalt not assume.”
The views expressed on this article are these of the writer and don’t essentially mirror the editorial place of Al Jazeera.