On June 19th, Louisiana passed HB71, requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in schools.
The bill was sponsored by Dodie Horton (R-Bossier Parish). In 2023, Horton sponsored HB8, which required displaying “In God We Trust” in Louisiana classrooms.
Based on HB71’s title and its media coverage, one might assume the bill requires either the Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5 version of the Ten Commandments to be displayed or that the paraphrased Ten Commandments would indeed count to ten.
Those assumptions are false. These commandments are paraphrased, and there are twelve of them.
HB71 continues Christian nationalists’ terraforming of the United States, conflating “American” with “Christian” to refashion the country in their image. To make this equivocation successful, they must profess fealty to their trinity of sacred texts: the Bible, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
At its core, the bill directly attacks the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which ensures the constitutional right to religious freedom. But for and from whom does religious freedom exist?
The long answer to this question is that religious freedom in the United States has constantly privileged each era’s dominant forms of Christianity. Christian religious privilege can be seen everywhere, including the IRS Tax Code, Property Law and Federal Anti-Indian Law.
In the 2005 case Van Orden v. Perry, the Supreme Court ruled that a large stone monument of the Ten Commandments donated by the Fraternal Order of Eagles (FOE) to be placed on Texas state capitol grounds did not violate the Establishment Clause.
In the 1950s, the FOE embarked on a mission to distribute their revised “Ten Commandments” to thousands of lawmakers. The FOE’s Christian identity is implicit.
They are more interested in “God, Flag, and Country” than a commitment to the Christian faith. For them, patriotism trumps religious identity. Personal piety is exactly that: personal.
The FOE’s generic commandments are spiritual but not religious. They are the commandments of an individualized religion, a set of loosely held promises between an individual and their God. These are not the commandments of a religious community bonded together and delivered out of bondage.
The power of these commandments is in their aesthetic and affective power, which is derived from their imagined/desired display with a sense of monumentality. They feel powerful and authoritative, and I fear this might be the point— a feature, not a bug.
I watch and wonder if we are witnessing the (re)birth of a distinctly American religion. One that shares a kinship and affinity with prior permutations of American Protestantism but is now more nationalistic, sentimental and generically applicable. One that makes Christian Nationalism and Project 2025 all the more palatable.
As HB71 works through the courts, I wonder if using the FOE’s paraphrase of the Ten Commandments is another attempt to circumvent the Establishment Clause.
For example, the first FOE commandment, “I AM the LORD thy God,” is a vague platitude on par with “In God We Trust.” Thanks to Horton, both statements are now part of the Louisiana classroom.
The implicit assumption of both statements is that the god in question is Christian.
Watching this year’s Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) docket and reading the recent dissents of Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson is concerning. Because the FOE’s commandments are a decontextualized paraphrase, SCOTUS might squint and see that these Ten-Plus-Platitudes are just vague enough to squeeze through the eye of the Establishment Clause needle.
This would be another blow to religious liberty in the United States and would set a dangerous precedent.
Since most of these commandments are not presently part of the federal civil law code, is this the first step towards making them law? In the U.S., we have become accustomed to the law being passed first and then made visibly manifest, but with the FOE commandments, my concern is that the process is being reversed.
They are being made visibly manifest as a sort of “vision board” to inspire future politicians to make these commandments part and parcel of the civil law code.
HB71 and its kin are yet another attempt at legislating vaguely Protestant morality and religious feeling as a means of further policing the thoughts and intents of the people.
Christian nationalists begin with ornamental gestures like “In God We Trust,” installing public monuments of the FOE commandments and displaying them in public schools.
They do this as a barometer of cultural support or at least, acquiescence to the demands of projects like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025’s reshaping of America into a place where church and crown rule together once more.
International research associate and operations manager for the American Indian Law Alliance (aila.ngo). He holds a Ph.D. in Religion from Syracuse University.
