May/June 2005

According to the narrative in Exodus, Moses came down from Mount Sinai with two tablets of stone engraved by the finger of God Himself. The words on the stone were a visualization of the words that God had previously thundered out to the multitude gathered at the base of the mountain.

For centuries Protestants have found a convenient division between the first and second tables of the ten-commandment law. Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, was the first American to associate two concepts: the separation of church and state and the two tables of the law. It was Williams, not Thomas Jefferson, who coined the phrase about a hedge, or wall, separating the garden of the church from the wilderness of the state.

Twenty-five years ago the Supreme Court held that public schools could not post the Ten Commandments in classrooms for the asserted purpose of demonstrating the origins of American law.

Efforts by government officials to display the Ten Commandments on public property is one of the most divisive church-state issues experienced in the United States for the past 25 years. Perhaps second only to state-sponsored prayer in the public schools, the posting of the Ten Commandments has spawned widespread debate throughout the nation and its courts. How ironic that a sacred text that millions regard as the word of God should be the source for so much discord.

Whenever the government becomes involved in religion, it is problematic, and the posting of the Ten Commandments is no exception.

It seems religious freedom has become an object of perpetual litigation. As a consequence, the struggle over church-state relations is vulnerable to a high level of crisis-mongering-especially in those ubiquitous fund-raising appeals. It is difficult to sort out real threats from mere shadows, and even harder to know where best to invest one's time and other resources for the long term. Although few people have been as free to practice their religion as present-day Americans, there are still crucial jurisprudential matters at stake. These matters get elbowed into the background when the spotlight is thrown on hot-button issues such as eliminating "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance or removing the Ten Commandments from a courthouse lawn.