Ten Commandments Day

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November 17, 1980

Supreme Court removed Ten Commandments from classrooms

On November 17, 1980, the Supreme Court of the United States (Stone v. Graham) ruled that a Kentucky statute requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments in the classrooms of public schools was unconstitutional. The Court ruled that this law violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because it lacked a secular legislative purpose. This ruling, despite the efforts of many states to craft legislation for the purpose of displaying the Ten Commandments, has been employed to keep the Ten Commandments out of the public arena and suppress it as an influence in the American legal system. Despite the fact that the Supreme Court has no Constitutional authority to intervene in individual states' rights to govern themselves in religious matters, no state has attempted to nullify this unconstitutional overreach by the Supreme Court. The Constitution delegates the authority of religious matters solely to the individual states. Dismissing the clear dictates of the Constitution and the Christian heritage of the United States, the Supreme Court on November 17, 1980 sided with secularists in usurping the authority of the states, but in this matter, Christians must not remain idle on the sidelines of cultural life!

Table of Contents

* Click headings to navigate; click headings to return.

The Ten Commandments in Early America

Public Support for Ten Commandments

Judge Roy Moore's Stand

Conclusion

The Ten Commandments in Early America

David Barton

The Ten Commandments formed the common law of the United States as demonstrated by the earliest state constitutions. In fact, in the massive scholarly study of professors Donald S. Lutz and Charles S. Hyneman, American Political Writing During the Founding Era, found that the Bible was by far the most often quoted reference by the Founding Fathers. Leading Christian political thinkers of the Enlightenment populated the second most influential group of authors cited by Lutz and Hyneman who influenced the thinking of the Founding Fathers.[1]

Well-known Christian historian, David Barton, has written at length concerning the legal foundation the Ten Commandments exercised over the federal and state constitutions. The attack upon the Ten Commandments by radical judges has been indicative of their denial of the role that the Bible in it entirety has exercised upon the founding and formation of America. Since Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote for the majority of the court in Everson VS Board of Education (1947), a falsely established "separation of Church and state" has existed which, for nearly 160 years, was never found by any other justice or court.

See David Barton's evidence of the use of the Ten Commandments in America law: "Affidavit in Support of the Ten Commandments."

Public Support for Ten Commandments

Barack Obama

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, public polls demonstrate that Americans believe the Ten Commandments should be publically displayed. However, because American citizens have elected liberal politicians to office, radical judges have been appointed to positions of authority by these liberal politicians that has allowed them to systematically dismantle the historic moral and legal foundation of America. If Christians—and Americans in general—are serious about reversing the decline of the nation, it is incumbent upon them to earnestly labor to elect conservative leaders to office. Liberal presidents have been most responsible for populating the Supreme Court with activist judges who legislate from the bench.

Judge Roy Moore's Stand

Judge Roy Moore

On August 16, 2003, I stood with my family, friends and students from the seminary where I taught at the front of Alabama's capitol building in Montgomery. Together with thousands of others, we had come to Montgomery to show our support for the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore, who was defying a court order to remove the Ten Commandments monument he had installed in the Alabama Supreme Court rotunda. For years, Judge Moore had displayed the Ten Commandments on the walls of the courtrooms where he served, and upon being elected Supreme Court Chief Justice of Alabama had placed this fitting monument in the rotunda. Unwilling to remove the monument from the Alabama Supreme Court, Judge Moore was removed from office in November 2003 but won reelection as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court on November 6, 2012. Few holding political office have had the courage of Judge Moore to stand against radical judges who have undermined the historic moral and legal foundations of America, but Judge Moore is one of the few—as was Governor Fob James who supported Judge Moore! He is a man to be highly honored for his courage and willingness to resist the socialistic erosion of American law by groups such as the ACLU.

Celebrating Our Christian Heritage!

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Conclusion

Ten Commandments Wall Display

Because the courts have broken with the historic legal foundation of America, the visualization of the Christian faith in America rests increasingly upon individual believers, the Church, private businesses, and other institutions and agencies. Lamentably, many Christian homes in America have little visible evidence of their Christian convictions and commitments. Likewise, businesses and various Christian organizations fail to evidence their faith in a visible way, choosing to hide behind the argument that they do not wish to offend anyone. Yet Muslims in America are not ashamed to stop traffic in New York City and elsewhere when they are called to prayer.

For far too long, Christians have sat idly by while secularists and the irreligious have imposed their ideologies upon America's courts. Predictably—with few exceptions—liberal judges have imposed new non-historical laws upon America. These judges have become usurpers and hijackers of American law and culture. Seeking to impose the Marxism ideology of their liberal law-school training, they impose their own subjective doctrines upon America. The answer—in part—is for Christians to become active participants in every arena of social and cultural life. If Christians are unwilling to put forth the effort to retain that which our Founding Father suffered to bequeath to their posterity, secularists will always fill the vacuum.

Private Ten Commandments Display

November 17

Ten Commandments Day

Most Americans appear to have grown tired of the incessant attack against the true Christian heritage of America and activist judges who are prepared to advocate the demands of the minority regardless of the sentiments of the overwhelming majority of Americans. In early America, however, Christian pastors and church leaders were responsible for stirring up the colonies against the tyranny of King George III,[2] and if America is not to experience the same secular and social demise as European nations, pastors must once again assume the same mantle of leadership to point America once again to its biblical foundation.

To recognize and celebrate the place that the Ten Commandments have occupied in American history, believers should be prepared to display them in their homes, businesses, churches, and other places of prominence. In addition, the Ten Commandments should be a staple of memorization for the family altar! Do what is in your power on November 17 of each year to call America back to the moral foundation of the Ten Commandments!

Thomas Jefferson's Wall of Separation Letter

On January 1, 1802, Thomas Jefferson penned a letter that has been employed by secularists against America's historic legal foundation. Repeatedly members of the Supreme Court have relied upon secular interpretations of both the writings and personal example of Thomas Jefferson. Employing Jefferson against the previous historic rulings of the Supreme Courts and the Christian foundation of American law, the Supreme Court, since 1947, has relied upon skewed and misinterpreted excerpts taken from the writings of Thomas Jefferson. A significant conRead more...

The Truth about Separation of Church and State

Since 1947, liberal judges have reinterpreted the historical context of the First Amendment that ensured that congress (or the federal government) would not establish a state church or elevate any single denomination over any of the other Christian denominations. America's Founding Fathers regarded the First Amendment as a guarantee that the federal government would not attempt to make any one Christian denomination the dominant and preferred denomination of the nation. Since the late 1940s (and particularly the early-1960s), liberal judges havRead more...

Washington's January 1, 1795 Thanksgiving Proclamation

Because nearly all American colonies under British control had established state churches,[1] America's Founding Fathers were not willing to raise issues that would unnecessarily divide them in their efforts to establish a stable government. For this reason, a promise was made not to establish a federal or national church when writing the Constitution and amended Bill of Rights. However, as the following proclamation demonstrates, America's Founders were not ashamed of their Christian Faith. The history behind the proclamation and its obserRead more...

Watch-night Service: From Ale-house to Revolution

For generations of Americans, the memory of candles flickering at the close of watch-night services—as one year waned and another began to wax—is one that evokes reverent appreciation for the spiritual fervor of by-gone days. Though the observance of the watch-night service began to wane at the end of the twentieth century, its origin in both the British Isles and America are significant chapters in the spiritual life of these nations. In America, few realize the place that one watch-night service had in the birth of the nation. The origin and Read more...

[1] John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987), 51ff.

[2] See David Barton, The Role of Pastors and Christians in Civil Government (Aledo, Texas: WallBuilder Press).