When a politician cites “Judeo-Christian values,” I think something disturbing generally follows.
Two glaring incidents occurred last month. In both cases, Republican politicians introduced state-level legislation formalizing the tenets of the Christian nationalist movement—and, in the words of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers (AD 2019), “We are doing everything we can to restore our nation’s Judeo-Christian foundation.”
On June 19, Governor Jeff Landry of Louisiana signed a law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in public classrooms, a practice that was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1980. Donald Trump supported the law, saying, “I LOVE THE TEN COMMANDMENTS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER PLACES TOO. READ IT – HOW CAN WE AS A NATION GET IT WRONG???”
A week later, Landry’s Christian comrade Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s Secretary of Education, announced plans to require Bible study in public schools. Walters said studying the Bible was necessary to “understand the fundamentals of our legal system.”
Forgive me for asking: Does he mean “an eye for an eye” or the stoning of disobedient children?
Be that as it may, to Trump and true believers it hardly matters that the First Amendment was intended to protect religion from the state, not for the state to impose religion on them. (So much for originalism.) Their goal is to impose one form of religion, Christianity, and the underlying message is that those who do not share it must submit.
Not only have such measures been declared unconstitutional (“I can’t wait to get sued,” Landry said), they also seem exclusionary and offensive to many.
Contrary to what the Christian nationalist movement would have you believe, America was not founded as a Christian nation. And it is not today. In a pluralistic country, neither the Bible nor Judeo-Christian values are universal, even in the two heavily Christian southern states where these laws were passed.
In Louisiana, for example, 2% of residents belong to other faiths – including Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and Hinduism. 13% are unaffiliated, including 4% who are atheists or agnostics. In Oklahoma, a similar percentage belong to non-Christian religions, and an even larger proportion – 18% – belong to no religion.
In a lawsuit against Louisiana’s law, Americans United for Separation of Church and State pointed out that many of the state’s roughly 680,000 students have no religion at all. In response, Landry urged his followers to “stand up for Judeo-Christian values.”
Although most of the Ten Commandments contain universal principles and moral precepts can be found in the Bible, not everyone derives ethical guidelines from religion. And when the Ten Commandments say, “You shall have no other gods before me,” it means there is one true God. This is decidedly not true for all Americans. Some atheists and secular humanists embrace the ideal of Felix Adler, founder of the Society for Ethical Culture, that actions come before creed—that our actions are far more important than what we claim to believe.
Politicians, many of whom routinely flout Adler’s ideal, rarely bother to include nonbelievers—those of us who are not what politicians call people of faith—in their supposedly inclusive rhetoric. Here, leaders of both parties, with their public prayers and religiosity, typically alienate people like me, whose principles do not spring from belief in a god. Barack Obama was an exception, including people “without any faith,” though I would have preferred a more elegant formulation. Many of us rationalists have faith, but it is in science or in humanity, as disappointing as humanity can be.
Four of the Ten Commandments (three for Catholics) concern a particular form of worship of a particular god. For example, I agree with a prohibition against killing, but somehow this god has allowed many killings to happen in his name.
And if you consider the Bible to be a holy book, there is a lot to explain in it – for example, its acceptance of slavery.
For me, the Bible’s main interest lies in its historical and literary influence. It is a work whose stories and metaphors have permeated literature. But it is also one that has inspired and encouraged many of the world’s most violent and deadly wars throughout history.
In their efforts to impose their religious beliefs on others or to prove their conservative Christian credibility, Republicans are increasingly inclined to exclude others. Prominent and mainstream Republicans are increasingly supporting the tenets of the Christian nationalist movement, which often embeds anti-Semitism and anti-Islam views into its faith. And it is probably no coincidence that this is happening at a time when many Christians are turning their backs on their religion – many no doubt because of the hypocrisy and intolerance they have experienced.
In normal times, all of these allegations would be quickly dismissed by the courts. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has shown that these justices, like many Republican politicians, are willing to put their own beliefs above all else when it comes to religious freedom – and yes, that includes freedom from religion.
Let us not forget that many Americans value this country as being inclusive and protective of all people, regardless of their beliefs.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
