Ten Commandments' Issue

Here we go again - the Ten Commandments are again in the news. The Supreme Court is taking up the issue, the Alabama granite commandments are touring Michigan and our governor, Jennifer Granholm has suddenly become a Republican wannabe and is promoting all sorts of religious issues.

It appears that Americans of today, have no idea why our Constitution demands "Separation of Church and State" and why our Founding Fathers insisted on that separation.

Not to insult anyone's intelligence but let me try to explain it as simply as I can.

Early settlers of America, in many cases, were willing to relocate to an unpopulated country that they did not know much about, because of religious persecution in their mother country.

In those historic days, many countries had "State Religions"; official religion of the government. Anyone not belonging to the state religion would be persecuted or discriminated against to the point that the lives of these dissenters from the state religion, were made hard if not unbearable and most of all, they could NOT practice their chosen faith.

Our Founding Fathers, knowing all this, determined to create a government that would NEVER have a state religion and therefore would NEVER persecute anybody for their religious beliefs.

They chose to insure this by creating a constitutional separation between Church and State.

The U.S. Constitution bans the government from creating or even endorsing a specific religion. In this way, all religions are welcome and all Americans can practice whatever religion they desire.

Is it not ironic that in 2005, Christian Americans want to establish Christianity as the state religion. Many if not all American Christians will deny this. They will also say that they don't see how government endorsement of the Ten Commandments can be misconstrued as favoring one religion over another.

Many American Christians feel that the Ten Commandments are universal; accepted by all humanity and are not strictly associated JUST with Christians.

Well, there are Jewish versions of the commandments, Protestant ones and Catholic/Lutheran ones. They do differ.

All other religions do not subscribe to the Ten Commandments but have their own sacred books/literature/commandments - so THE Ten Commandments are viewed as ONLY belonging to either Jewish or Christian religions.

So IF our government adopts the Ten Commandments, they basically are endorsing either Judaism or Christianity and all other religions are officially UNENDORSED.

As far as the Ten Commandments holding universal values accepted by all - all you have to do is read "Thou shall have no other gods before me". Since the original Ten Commandments were given to Moses who accepted them in the name of the Jews; the Jewish god is the ONLY god you can worship - according to the Ten Commandments.

Do you see now how having the Ten Commandments displayed in government buildings is indicating a preference for a specific religion?

Some Christians say that the Ten Commandments represent history and should be displayed as a historic document. Fine, but make sure you display, in the same space, the historic documents of ALL religions.

As for the argument that our country was founded/based on the Ten Commandments and the principals it represents - NOT SO. Our legal system is based on the English Magna Carta. Remember slavery was legal and women could not vote - principals?.

I hope this little essay helped you understand the opposition to displaying the Ten Commandments in government offices.

Also remember, our Founding Fathers were "deists", i.e. they believed in a higher power but NOT in any one religious doctrine.