I think whenever a politician mentions “Judeo-Christian values,” something unsettling usually follows.
Two significant incidents occurred last month, in both cases where Republican officials introduced state legislation that would formalize the teachings of the Christian nationalist movement and, in the words of the National Association of Christian Legislators (AD 2019), “do all we can to restore the Judeo-Christian foundations of our nation.”
On June 19, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed a bill requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in public classrooms, a practice that was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1980. Donald Trump strongly supported the bill, boasting, “I love that the Ten Commandments are posted in public schools, private schools and so many other places. Read them. How can we as a nation be wrong?”
A week later, Landry's fellow Christian, Oklahoma Public Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters, announced plans to require Bible teaching in public schools, which he said was necessary to “understand the foundations of our legal system.”
Allow me to wonder: is he talking about an “eye for an eye” or the stoning of disobedient children?
In any case, it matters little to Trump and the true believers that the First Amendment is meant to protect religion from the state, not the state's ability to impose religion (that's what fundamentalism is all about). Their goal is to impose a form of religion, Christianity, whose underlying message is that those who don't agree with the religion must submit.
Not only have these efforts been declared unconstitutional (“I can't wait to get sued,” Landry said), but they are also exclusionary and offensive to many.
Despite what the Christian nationalist movement would have you believe, America was not founded as a Christian nation, and it remains so today. Neither the Bible nor Judeo-Christian values are universal in any pluralistic nation, including the two heavily Christian southern states where this law was passed.
In Louisiana, for example, 2 percent of residents identify with other religions, such as Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and Hinduism; 13 percent identify as unreligious, including 4 percent who are atheist or agnostic. In Oklahoma, a similar percentage identify with a non-Christian religion, and an even larger percentage (18 percent) identify as unreligious.
In a lawsuit challenging Louisiana's law, Americans for Separation of Church and State noted that many of the state's roughly 680,000 students do not practice any religion. Landry called on believers to “defend Judeo-Christian values.”
While most of the Ten Commandments deal with universal principles, and moral precepts can be found in the Bible, not everyone gets their ethical guidance from religion. And when the Ten Commandments say, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” they mean that there is only one true God. This is obviously not true for all Americans. Some atheists and secular humanists subscribe to the ideal of “deeds before creeds,” put forward by Felix Adler, founder of the Society for Ethical Culture, that is, how we act is far more important than what we profess to believe.
Many politicians regularly ignore Adler's ideals, but rarely do they include non-believers in their inclusive rhetoric, even though they are not what politicians call believers. It is precisely for this reason that leaders of both parties, by publicly praying and flaunting their religiosity, alienate people like me whose beliefs do not stem from a belief in God. Barack Obama was an exception in including people with “no faith at all,” but I think he would have preferred a more elegant phrasing. Many of us rationalists have faith, but it is faith in science or in humanity, however unfortunate that humanity may be.
When it comes to the Ten Commandments, four of the ten (three in the Catholic case) are about a particular form of worship of a particular god. For example, I agree with the rule against murder, but somehow this god has tolerated a lot of murder in his name.
And if we believe the Bible to be holy scripture, the Bible itself has a lot to explain, including its acceptance of slavery.
For me, the Bible's primary interest lies in its historical and literary influence: its stories and metaphors permeate literature, but it has also inspired and fueled many of the world's most violent and deadly wars throughout history.
The Republican Party is increasingly leaning into exclusivist territory, both to impose its religious beliefs on others and to prove its legitimacy as conservative Christians. Prominent, mainstream Republicans are increasingly espousing the doctrines of Christian nationalist movements that often incorporate anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim views into their beliefs. And it is perhaps no coincidence that this is happening at a time when many Christians are fleeing their religions, no doubt in large part because of the hypocrisy and intolerance they have witnessed.
Normally, all of this would be quickly rejected by the courts. Unfortunately, the conservative-majority Supreme Court, along with many Republican politicians, has demonstrated a penchant for prioritizing its own beliefs above all else when it comes to religious freedom (which of course includes freedom from religion).
This Fourth of July, let us remember that what many Americans value in our country is the inclusion and protection of all people, regardless of their faith.