John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Since the founding of our country, religion, specifically the Christian religion, has played a significant role. Religion isn’t the only thing that influenced the founding of America, but Christianity is the soil that everything else was planted in.
There was an important bill filed in the General Assembly, HB 670 by Representatives Josh Calloway and Richard White, that would have reminded America of its religious founding. This bill would have required the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school, public college, and public university classroom with a plaque attached explaining their historical significance. It also would have allowed teachers to teach the Ten Commandments in school as a historical document.
Kentucky has been rightly remembering our religious founding. Last year, the Ten Commandments monument was restored to the Kentucky Capitol grounds. Recently, a Ten Commandments plaque was restored inside the Capitol complex. These are good things, but we should ask, when will the Ten Commandments be returned to our public schools? As things are right now, it seems like the commandments are only good for our legislators, but not our students.
The Ten Commandments serve as the foundation of the legal system of this country and Western civilization as a whole. The right to life is based upon the command to not murder. The right to property is based upon the command to not steal. The Supreme Court building even has the Ten Commandments included in a mural above where the Justices sit during arguments. There can be no serious debate that Ten Commandments displays fall within the history and traditions of the United States and are thus consistent with the First Amendment.
This was further reinforced when Coach Joe Kennedy won a monumental victory in the 2022 Kennedy v. Bremmerton decision that saw the High Court fully abandon the problematic Lemon Test and return to a more historic understanding of the First Amendment. Relying on the Kennedy decision, Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman argued in a legal opinion last year that Kentucky now has “considerable latitude in deciding whether and how to draw attention to the historical significance and influence of the Ten Commandments without offending the Establishment Clause.”
More recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld laws in Texas and Louisiana that require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms. The court ruled that these laws do not violate the Establishment Clause or the Free Exercise Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
It must also be noted that the Ten Commandments are a benefit to public morality. The first four commandments deal with man’s relationship toward God, and the remaining six deal with man’s relationship to man.
The belief in a transcendent moral order is foundational to a coherent ethic. If there is no moral order that transcends us, then ethics is just a human creation. It has no lasting significance, and all we’re left with is relativism. If we hold that position consistently, it only leads to chaos.
Our founders understood that there was a transcendent moral order that governed our temporal order, and that this moral order came from a moral lawgiver.
Not all of our founders were Christians, but none of them believed government was the end all be all. That’s why the Declaration of Independence says that we have been endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights. Our rights come from our Creator, not our government.
The final six commandments deal with our relationships with one another. The Bible teaches us to love our neighbor, and the Ten Commandments tell us how to do that. Imagine the type of society we would have if we all abided fully by those commandments. Why would we not want these principles taught to the next generation?
The reality is, there is no such thing as ideological neutrality. There is a morality and a worldview being pushed in our public schools, colleges, and universities. The rainbow flags and antipathy toward Christianity, and religion in general, make that obvious, but this view is new and contrary to the view of most of our country’s history.
John Adams and the rest of our Founding Fathers were right. Our nation and state can only flourish with a moral and religious people that are grounded in the timeless values found in Scripture. Instead of neglecting the influence religion has had on America, we need to acknowledge America’s religious history and reap its benefits.
During the 2025 and 2026 legislative sessions, Rep. Josh Calloway and Rep. Richard White introduced bills to bring the Ten Commandments back to Kentucky classrooms. Unfortunately, those bills did not receive any movement, likely due to opposition from some in leadership. However, the Fifth Circuit’s decision provides strong persuasive authority in support of bringing the Ten Commandments back to Kentucky classrooms. Given that a Kentucky law was at the center of the Stone v. Graham decision, it would be fitting for Kentucky to repass a Ten Commandments law and declare victory over the improperly decided 1980 case.
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