Religious Right Tries, Again, to Impose the Ten Commandments on American Citizens

The Secular Coalition for America Responds

On May 8, 2008, the Reverend Rob Schenck held a press conference in Washington, DC in an effort to drum up support for a Congressional resolution declaring an annual National Ten Commandments Weekend. Schenck also called on the Supreme Court to issue a definitive ruling allowing the public display of the Ten Commandments in its decision on the Utah case of Pleasant Grove City v. Summum, a case the Court takes up this fall.

Schenk is President of Faith and Action, “a Christian outreach whose mission is to challenge Capitol Hill with Biblical Truth and change the nation one policy maker at a time.” Joining Rev. Schenck at the press briefing in front of the Supreme Court were the Reverend Patrick J. Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition and William J. Murray of the Religious Freedom Coalition. All three groups are active in national politics and are part of the larger conservative religious movement.

Schenk told his audience, “Religious freedom is the first and most important of all freedoms,” and that “the Ten Commandments unify all Americans.”

In response to this renewed effort to pass a Ten Commandments Weekend resolution, originally introduced in 2006, the Director of the Secular Coalition for America, Lori Lipman Brown, issued the following statement:

“Someone should ask Rev. Schenck how he can say he supports religious freedom when his goal is clearly to undermine religious freedom in our country. Apparently Rev. Schenck is unable or unwilling to see the hypocrisy of his position.

“Calling on Congress to endorse the Ten Commandments flies in the face of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The Establishment Clause states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" and yet the first few Commandments demand the worship of only one god. The First Amendment also protects the free exercise of religion, but the Commandments prohibit it by prescribing even the act of uttering God’s name, not to mention how we get to spend our weekends.

“Furthermore, imposing the Ten Commandments on citizens by forcing them to pay with their tax dollars for their presence and maintenance in public places also flouts the First Amendment; asking the Supreme Court to allow the public display of biblical laws is fundamentally un-American.

“The Ten Commandments are not unifying. They are, in fact, divisive in the way they privilege a few religions and reject the rest and would, if sanctioned by our government, condemn the tens of millions of Americans who don’t believe in a god. America prides itself on religious diversity, and our government must never tell us how – or whether – to worship. Anyone looking for ten rules to rally around need look no further than the Bill of Rights.”

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The Secular Coalition for America is the national lobby for atheists, humanists, freethinkers and other nontheistic Americans with the unique mission of protecting their civil rights. Based in Washington, DC, its full-time lobbyist and support staff engage public policy makers and the media to increase the visibility and respectability of nontheistic viewpoints and to protect and strengthen the secular character of our government as the best guarantee of freedom for all. Information is at www.secular.org .