On Wednesday, June 19, Louisiana’s far-right governor Jeff Landry signed Home Invoice 71 into legislation, which would require all public faculty school rooms within the southern US state – from kindergarten by way of faculty – to show the Ten Commandments. The laws stipulates that the Commandments “be printed in a big, simply readable font” on a “poster or framed doc that’s not less than 11 inches by 14 inches”.
Shortly previous to signing the invoice, Landry boasted: “I can’t wait to be sued.” Positive sufficient, his prayer was swiftly answered, and on June 24 a coalition of civil liberties teams and Louisiana mother and father filed a lawsuit contending that the legislation is unconstitutional and a violation of the separation of church and state.
If the case makes it to the US Supreme Court docket, likelihood is the courtroom’s conservative supermajority will see to it that Landry’s pleasure at being sued was not unfounded. Latest rulings by the nation’s high judicial physique on issues of spiritual freedom have been a godsend for Christian nationalism – as if there have been any doubt that right-wing politics and faith had been a match made in heaven.
Varied commentators have expressed concern that Louisiana’s new legislation signifies a slide towards theocracy within the US, whereas Vox’s senior correspondent Ian Millhiser warns that, “to uphold this legislation in its entirety, the Supreme Court docket might want to burn almost all that is still of the Structure’s ban on legal guidelines ‘respecting an institution of faith’ to the bottom.”
Millhiser moreover advises that “permitting this legislation to face would imply taking a sledgehammer to the wall separating church and state.” However simply how a lot of a wall is there within the first place?
For starters, the truth that the phrase “In God We Belief” is emblazoned on all US forex doesn’t communicate very persuasively to the secular nature of the state. The $20 invoice, for instance, options this phrase above a picture of the White Home – as apt a rendering as any of church-state fusion.
The Pew Analysis Heart, a suppose tank based mostly within the US capital of Washington, DC, notes that, “whereas the US Structure doesn’t point out God, almost all state constitutions reference both God or the divine,” with God additionally making an look within the Declaration of Independence.
Then there may be the great outdated Pledge of Allegiance, which I personally acquired to recite each morning of my elementary faculty expertise within the US, dealing with the American flag with my proper hand over my coronary heart. The pledge ends with the affirmation that the US is “one Nation underneath God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” – a components that just about robotically obviates the prospect of equal liberty and justice for many who don’t subscribe to stated God.
In my very own private case, I had the distinct displeasure of attending Catholic faculty, the place religious indoctrination proceeded completely unchecked and I discovered such useful classes as that my canine was not going to heaven. The last word upshot of my Catholic schooling was that I used to be completely disabused of organised faith, which I suppose now excludes me from membership in “one Nation underneath God.”
As for the stewards of the nation, US Supreme Court docket Justice Samuel Alito lately voiced his settlement with the concept that America must return to a “place of godliness” – a spot not suffering from assaults on “freedom of faith,” by which he means threats to right-wing Christian domination. In line with Alito’s twisted logic, then, Landry’s Ten Commandments scheme is the epitome of “freedom of faith” moderately than its precise reverse.
And whereas the weaponisation of faith is extra generally related to the Republican Celebration – recall how God instructed President George W Bush to go wage warfare on Afghanistan and Iraq – the Democrats even have a tough time with the entire church-state separation factor. Barack Obama had a behavior of invoking Jesus in public speeches; for his half, Joe Biden made no pretences to secular thought in his official White Home assertion on the event of Orthodox Christian Easter this Might: “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ reminds us of God’s plentiful love for us and the ability of sunshine over darkness.”
Biden went on to claim that “on this sacred season, we maintain people who find themselves affected by warfare and persecution particularly near our hearts” – an particularly wealthy sentiment coming from the person who has been aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide within the Gaza Strip since final October.
Which brings us to the next query: What ever occurred to “Thou shalt not kill” – one of many Ten Commandments that can quickly adorn Louisiana classroom partitions “in a big, simply readable font”? How are America’s youth speculated to reconcile this order from on excessive with their nation’s legacy of slaughter worldwide, from Iraq to Vietnam to El Salvador and past?
At dwelling, too, there may be loads of killing – whether or not it’s Blacks and Native Individuals being murdered by police or asylum seekers dying in immigration detention or folks being killed en masse by poverty.
Then, after all, there are the mass shootings which have come to represent a kind of nationwide pastime, to the good good thing about the arms business. And what are you aware: On July 4, a US vacation that final yr noticed a wave of mass shootings countrywide, Louisiana will enact a brand new legislation enabling state residents 18 and older to hold a hid handgun with no allow or coaching programs.
In opposition to such a lethally dysfunctional backdrop, Governor Landry’s sensational Ten Commandments campaign little doubt serves as a useful distraction from extra profoundly existential issues. To that finish, maybe the Ten Commandments might do with the addition of an eleventh: “Thou shalt not suppose.”
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
