Op-Ed by The Family Foundation and published in Kentucky Today.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams
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’s an important bill that was recently filed in the General Assembly, HB 670 by Representatives Josh Calloway and Richard White, that would remind America of its religious founding. Building upon the successful efforts to restore the Ten Commandments monument to the Kentucky Capitol grounds last year, this bill would require 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 It would also allow teachers to teach the Ten Commandments in school as a historical document.
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.”
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 based in relativism. If we hold that position consistently, it only leads to chaos. And more relevant to the intention of the bill, 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?
John Adams and our Founding Fathers were right. Our great 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.