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The Ten Commandments
Sat, Apr 23, 2005
Debate continues over display in public The U.S. Supreme Court has heard oral arguments on whether the Ten Commandments should be allowed to be displayed on government property and will issue its decision by the end of June. Proponents of the Ten Commandments being displayed point to the deep religious tradition and practices this nation was founded on, while those in opposition to the commandments being posted in government venues cite a possible violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.Peter Vivenzio, a Brunswick businessman, is a strong advocate of the Ten Commandments being posted publicly, while Derek Davis, director of the J.M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, and the editor of the Journal of Church and State, says they should not.As requested by The News, the two explained the reasons for their feelings on the subject.— Compiled by Murray PoolePro: by Peter VivenzioNo. 1, this nation was settled by a basically Christian people. These people came from Europe, in particular England and Scotland, and they came over because of the deep religious oppression in their countries. They came over to found this country on Judeo-Christian principles.And they came here to establish freedom of religion, not freedom from religion, meaning if you didn't want to worship anybody, you didn't have to but if you wanted to worship as Baptists, Catholics — any denomination — you had the freedom to do so.When you look at the documents that the founders of our country established — the Mayflower Compact, the Bill of Rights and the other documents that make up the core of the country — what you see is a people that believed in God. And the God of our founding fathers was not a generic god, but it was a specific God, the Jehovah God of the Bible.And when you go to the God of the Bible, he gave us a standard by which we can measure our lives. And that standard was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai by Jehovah God himself. It was not given as a bunch of rules and regulations, but was given as a standard by which man could measure his life against God's standards.The Ten Commandments are like a mirror. They show you not how good you are, but how far away you are from the standards of God. The reason why we should display the Ten Commandments is because we were established by Christians as a Christian nation. Back then, they wouldn't have thought of this nation as anything but a Christian nation because of the belief system that they had.Those people came here because of religious problems. They were willing to face the crossing of an ocean to a strange and uncharted land in order to establish a place where they could worship. Would they go to that trouble to worship no God at all? No, they wanted to worship Jehovah God.When we post the Ten Commandments, we're saying that we believe in God, and this nation believes in God. This nation is under a specific God, not a god in general. On our dollar bills, on our coinage, it says "In God We Trust," and in the highest court in the land, the U.S. Supreme Court, there is the Decalog, which is the Ten Commandments.Con:by Derek DavisMy position is that the Establishment Clause should be given a broad meaning. It means more than just the establishment of a national church. It means no advancements or promotions or sponsorships of religion.When the government wants to post in or around public places a sacred text like the Ten Commandments, this is a violation of the Establishment Clause. It promotes a distinctly religious viewpoint, especially that one that comes out of the Judeo-Christian tradition.If government has the right to promote one religious perspective, such as the Judeo-Christian perspective, then if another religion becomes a dominant religion at some point in the future, then that religion could dethrone the Judeo-Christian tradition.So in theory, you could have the Koran become the law of the nation, and therefore, Koranic texts could be posted everywhere rather than the Ten Commandments and other Biblical texts.The first 16 words of the First Amendment are usually referred to as the Religion Clause, the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause, and, together, they protect the free exercises of religion for all citizens and prevent the government from taking sides with anyone's religion.That's why I think it's not proper for government to post the Ten Commandments or other Biblical texts because it is favoring one religious tradition. This would mean that other citizens with different religions would be relegated to second-class status as citizens.
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