Thou Shalt Not Show the Ten Commandments
A commentary by Scott Ashley
Good News managing editor
It's hard to say which was the greater miscarriage of justice in the
U.S. justice system this week—the federal court order that a granite
monument containing the Ten Commandments be removed from the Alabama
State Judicial Building, or the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal to have
anything to do with the case.
On the one hand we have a handful of federal judges ordering Alabama
Chief Justice Roy Moore to remove the monument from state property because
it offended the sensitivities of several lawyers, who then filed suit
to have it removed. As chief justice, Mr. Moore was within his legal
and official rights to install the monument, which bears not only the
Ten Commandments but also quotes from the nation's founding fathers.
Judging by the reaction of Alabama's outraged citizens—many of
whom voted him chief justice based on his stand in another case in which
he refused to back down on public display of the Ten Commandments—they
feel the federal courts are interfering with their religious freedom.
If the lawyers were that easily offended, they say, why couldn't they
just ignore it and look the other way? After all, law-abiding citizens
are expected to ignore public displays of nudity, profanity and every
kind of obscenity imaginable. Why couldn't the lawyers?
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is quite clear: "Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof." As former presidential candidate Alan
Keyes rightly asked at a rally in support of the chief justice, "If
Judge Moore is breaking the law, I'd like to know which law it is. .
. . Where, I ask them, is the law that is being broken? Where is the
Constitutional provision that is being defied?"
The Tenth Amendment is also explicit: "The powers not delegated
to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by the states,
are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." Since
Congress is expressly forbidden to interfere with citizens' religious
freedom, and has passed no laws forbidding display of the Ten Commandments,
this is clearly a state matter to be decided by the citizens and officials
of the state of Alabama.
The heart of the problem, Dr. Keyes noted, is that federal courts are
increasingly "imposing a uniform national regime of disbelief and
atheism on the people of this country. They are doing exactly what the
Constitution of the United States forbids."
Judging by the majority of recent court decisions, it would be hard
to argue with that conclusion.
Which brings us to the second travesty of justice this week, the U.S.
Supreme Court's refusal to hear the case.
Isn't it ironic that only a few weeks ago the Supreme Court somehow
discerned in the U.S. Constitution the legal right for homosexuals to
commit deviant sexual acts—acts that, incidentally, are the most
effective way to spread the AIDS virus and impose a death sentence on
one's sex partner—but the public role of the Ten Commandments aren't
worthy of their consideration?
What does this say about the priorities of the United States' judicial
system?
It's especially hypocritical that the Supreme Court justices would let
stand the lower court ruling that the Ten Commandments display must be
removed from the Alabama State Judicial Building, when the east entrance
of their own Supreme Court building showcases a massive sculpture of
Moses bearing two tablets on which the Ten Commandments are inscribed.
And that's not all. Moses appears again (holding two tablets) in the
south courtroom of their building, and two tablets bearing the Roman
numerals 1 through 10—a clear symbol of the Ten Commandments—are
carved onto the oak doors separating the courtroom from the building's
main hallway.
Allusions to or quotations from the Bible and God can be found throughout
many of Washington's federal buildings and monuments. At some point will
we see the day when they are chiseled away and carted off in ignominy?
The founding fathers of the United States were God-fearing, believing
men who established the new nation on a biblical foundation. John Adams,
a member of the Continental Congress and second president of the United
States, said of the U.S. Constitution that it "was made only for
a moral and a religious peoples. It is wholly inadequate to the government
of any other."
John Quincy Adams, sixth president of the United States and son of the
second president, said in 1821 that "the highest glory of the American
Revolution was this; it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles
of civil government with the principles of Christianity."
Now we are seeing those bonds between morality, religion and government
officially dissolved by the highest courts in the land. They are increasingly
making it clear that God has no place in American public life. "Thou
shalt not show the Ten Commandments," they have told one American
state and its highest judicial official.
Where will these sickening trends—the elevation of perversion
and the debasement of God's Word—lead? Thomas Jefferson gave the
answer two centuries ago:
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that
His justice cannot sleep forever."
If only America's courts, and its citizens, would heed. |
