Commandment 11: “Thou shalt not think”
A copy of the Ten Commandments is posted in a hallway at the Georgia State Capitol Building on June 20, 2024, in Atlanta [File: AP/John Bazemore]
On Wednesday, June 19, Louisiana’s far-right governor Jeff Landry signed House Bill 71 into law, which will require all public school classrooms in the southern US state – from kindergarten through college – to display the Ten Commandments. The legislation stipulates that the Commandments “be printed in a large, easily readable font” on a “poster or framed document that is at least 11 inches by 14 inches”.
Shortly prior to signing the bill, Landry boasted: “I can’t wait to be sued.” Sure enough, his prayer was swiftly answered, and on June 24 a coalition of civil liberties groups and Louisiana parents filed a lawsuit contending that the law is unconstitutional and a violation of the separation of church and state.
If the case makes it to the US Supreme Court, chances are the court’s conservative supermajority will see to it that Landry’s excitement at being sued was not unfounded. Recent rulings by the nation’s top judicial body on matters of religious freedom have been a godsend for Christian nationalism – as if there were any doubt that right-wing politics and religion were a match made in heaven.
Various commentators have expressed concern that Louisiana’s new law indicates a slide toward theocracy in the US, while Vox’s senior correspondent Ian Millhiser warns that, “to uphold this law in its entirety, the Supreme Court will need to burn nearly all that remains of the Constitution’s ban on laws ‘respecting an establishment of religion’ to the ground.”
Millhiser furthermore advises that “allowing this law to stand would mean taking a sledgehammer to the wall separating church and state.” But just how much of a wall is there in the first place?
For starters, the fact that the phrase “In God We Trust” is emblazoned on all US currency does not speak very persuasively to the secular nature of the state. The $20 bill, for example, features this phrase above an image of the White House – as apt a rendering as any of church-state fusion.
The Pew Research Center, a think tank based in the US capital of Washington, DC, notes that, “while the US Constitution does not mention God, nearly all state constitutions reference either God or the divine,” with God also making an appearance in the Declaration of Independence.
Then there is the good old Pledge of Allegiance, which I myself got to recite every morning of my elementary school experience in the US, facing the American flag with my right hand over my heart. The pledge ends with the affirmation that the US is “one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” – a formula that pretty much automatically obviates the prospect of equal liberty and justice for those who don’t subscribe to said God.
In my own personal case, I had the distinct displeasure of attending Catholic school, where spiritual indoctrination proceeded entirely unchecked and I learned such valuable lessons as that my dog was not going to heaven. The ultimate upshot of my Catholic education was that I was permanently disabused of organised religion, which I suppose now excludes me from membership in “one Nation under God.”
As for the stewards of the nation, US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito recently voiced his agreement with the idea that America needs to return to a “place of godliness” – a place no longer plagued by attacks on “freedom of religion,” by which he means threats to right-wing Christian domination. According to Alito’s twisted logic, then, Landry’s Ten Commandments scheme is the epitome of “freedom of religion” rather than its exact opposite.
And while the weaponisation of religion is more commonly associated with the Republican Party – recall how God told President George W Bush to go wage war on Afghanistan and Iraq – the Democrats also have a hard time with the whole church-state separation thing. Barack Obama had a habit of invoking Jesus in public speeches; for his part, Joe Biden made no pretences to secular thought in his official White House statement on the occasion of Orthodox Christian Easter this May: “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ reminds us of God’s abundant love for us and the power of light over darkness.”
Biden went on to assert that “in this sacred season, we hold people who are suffering from war and persecution especially close to our hearts” – an especially rich sentiment coming from the man who has been aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip since last October.
Which brings us to the following question: What ever happened to “Thou shalt not kill” – one of the Ten Commandments that will soon adorn Louisiana classroom walls “in a large, easily readable font”? How are America’s youth supposed to reconcile this order from on high with their country’s legacy of slaughter worldwide, from Iraq to Vietnam to El Salvador and beyond?
At home, too, there is plenty of killing – whether it’s Blacks and Native Americans being murdered by police or asylum seekers dying in immigration detention or people being killed en masse by poverty.
Then, of course, there are the mass shootings that have come to constitute a sort of national pastime, to the great benefit of the arms industry. And what do you know: On July 4, a US holiday that last year saw a wave of mass shootings countrywide, Louisiana will enact a new law enabling state residents 18 and older to carry a concealed handgun without a permit or training courses.
Against such a lethally dysfunctional backdrop, Governor Landry’s sensational Ten Commandments crusade no doubt serves as a handy distraction from more profoundly existential problems. To that end, perhaps the Ten Commandments could do with the addition of an 11th: “Thou shalt not think.”
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.