My 6-year-old grandson attends a Christian school in Northern Virginia. Each week he is expected to memorize a different Bible verse, most of which encourage personal morality. I think that’s great.
On the other hand, I object to two recent decisions to interject religion into public schools. The state of Louisiana wants the Ten Commandments displayed in classrooms, while in Oklahoma, the superintendent of schools wants teachers to teach the Bible alongside spelling, grammar and math. The difference between the cases is clear. My grandson’s school is both private and Christian. The schools in Louisiana and Oklahoma are public and secular.
While many early settlers brought their Christian faith to America with them, the history of the United States took a different turn with the drafting of the Constitution. Perhaps more than anyone else, Thomas Jefferson objected to the attempts of any religious group to force others to follow their beliefs. According to biographer Edwin Gaustad, Jefferson wrote, “The effort to seek uniform belief has resulted in the burning and torturing of millions of men, women and children, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. The only discernible effect of coercion in religion was to make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites.”
When Jefferson was president, some Baptists from Danbury, Connecticut, wrote to him and asked him to declare a national day of religious fasting. In his reply he denied their request and described the need for “a wall of separation between church and state.”
Displaying the commandments and teaching the Bible in public schools fly in the face of what Jefferson and others tried to do when they laid the foundations for this great nation of ours.
Another reason I object is because the commandments themselves are examples of religious morality, not civil morality. Of the Bible’s Ten Commandments, only two of them — You shall not murder, and you shall not steal — are illegal in a court of law. As someone once quipped: “It is not illegal in the United States to have another God before Yahweh. It is not illegal to manufacture graven images. … And if it were a crime to covet the ass parked in your neighbor’s driveway, it is hard to know how capitalism would survive. Coveting your neighbor’s donkey or house or car or other material stuff is the whole basis of our prosperity.”
Nor are the Bible and the Ten Commandments the basis of everyone’s religious faith. Hindus and Buddhists don’t follow the Ten Commandments nor Muslims the teachings of the Christian Scriptures. When political leaders insist on the teaching of these beliefs in public schools, they are attempting to elevate the Christian faith above the faith of others.
A final thought. If you ever visit the National Archives in Washington, you will see displayed America’s sacred documents: the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. As I think about these national treasures, so hallowed in American history, I also think about what’s missing.
There are no Bibles among those national documents. Do you know why? Not because the Bible is not a sacred book, but because it is not officially sacred to our nation. It is undoubtedly sacred to millions of Americans today just as it was sacred to many of the Founders of our nation. But in America the Bible does not have an officially sacred status like the Constitution or Declaration of Independence.
I think it’s better that way, because I prefer to live in a country where everyone is free to practice religion in his or her own way, and not worry about those who would force the Christian religion — even though it’s the same faith that I also affirm — down other people’s throats.
The Rev. Albert G. Butzer, III, a retired Presbyterian minister, lives in Norfolk.
