Arkansas lawmakers pursue another pointless adventure in gesture politics

Seven years of expensive legal wrangling over displaying the Ten Commandments outside of the State Capitol — which opened the door for Satanists to demand their own display of a goat-headed winged creature named Baphomet — should have taught Arkansas legislators the folly of trying to sanction religious messages in a secular republic.

Instead, Arkansas Republicans have launched another pointless adventure in gesture politics by voting to require public schools to post the Ten Commandments — a list that oddly grew from 10 to 12 in an effort to camouflage religious dogma as “historical” text to survive constitutional scrutiny in federal court.

The 10 Commandments bill, sponsored by Sen. Jim Dotson, R-Bentonville, and Rep. Alyssa Brown, R-Heber Springs, has been sent to Gov. Sarah Sanders for her signature after passing the House and Senate. It’s the latest example of something that we see far too often at the Capitol: Legislation initiated by political activists from outside of Arkansas — in this case, a father-son duo from Texas — that costs taxpayers money and makes us look ridiculous.

The insurmountable problem in setting out a list of commandments acceptable for public display is that there is no historical or theological agreement about what the 10 Commandments actually are. Most Protestants use a slightly different list than do Catholics and Lutherans, while Jews use yet a third set. Different faiths also number them differently. 

The complexity of the task did not, alas, raise any apparent concerns about its wisdom. Instead, the commandment numbers were just stripped away, and the remaining differences finessed by snatching bits and pieces from all three versions of the Judeo-Christian ethical menu. 

As you can see from the bill’s text, the result is 12 unnumbered commandments, although the first item on the list — “I am the Lord thy God,” a nod to the Jewish version — might be more of a statement of authority than a command.

The list also trims away language used in the biblical passages in Exodus and Deuteronomy on which the commandments are based, including an exhortation not to covet our neighbor’s donkey, although not coveting his cattle still made the cut.

We might be tempted to call this the Razorback Revised Version of the 10 Commandments, except the list follows word-for-word a similar law passed by lawmakers in neighboring Louisiana last year that was quickly blocked by a federal judge.

The version used in Louisiana and in Dotson and Brown’s bill is recognizably Protestant enough to cause problems in federal court. The language is drawn from the post-Reformation King James Version of the Bible, and it includes a prohibition on making “graven images” that Catholics don’t include (which some conservative Protestants cite as evidence of Catholics’ embrace of idolatry.)

The capriciousness of this process was perhaps best summed up on the House floor by one of the only two Republicans who voted against the bill, Rep. Steve Unger, R-Springdale, a former military chaplain: “I’m afraid what this does is it takes something holy and makes it trivial.” 

There is nothing wrong, per se, with promoting ethical precepts. We should all be able to agree that murder, stealing, lying and adultery are destructive and ought to be discouraged, that Mom and Dad should be given their props, and that coveting what other people have is a waste of energy that only leads to discontent (the latter being a central tenet of Buddhism.)

But here, those ethical standards are embedded within an overtly sectarian framework. They flow from the authority of a deity, not merely from the desire to be decent human beings and treat each other with respect.

Arguing that a list that starts out with “I am the Lord Thy God,” prohibits idolatry right off the bat and demands recognition of a Sabbath is not a religious teaching is in a word incredible, as is the idea that passive exposure to the 10 Commandments on a classroom wall will somehow make students better people in the absence of more hands-on ethical instruction. Or get them to stop worshipping Baal.

This particular bill of goods was sold to Arkansas legislators by David and Tim Barton, a father and son team from Texas who lead WallBuilders, a group that promotes the pseudohistory that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and opposes the separation of church and state.

Dotson and Brown let the Bartons explain the rationale for the bill during committee hearings, where they insisted that it was simply a way to revive the 10 Commandments as an historical artifact.

Tim Barton illustrated this claim by noting that the commandments were published in the 17th century New England Primer and in the McGuffy Readers, a textbook popular in the middle of the 19th century: “If there’s something we’ve always done in America, it’s probably fine to keep doing it.”

Of course, there were a lot of things that we did in America until the Supreme Court told us we had to stop, which it did 45 years ago in striking down a Kentucky law mandating display of the 10 Commandments in public schools.

The Bartons are resting their hopes on a different outcome this time around because of a 2022 Supreme Court decision that said school officials could not prevent a high school football coach from leading post-game prayers with his players.

Most Arkansas legislators were assuaged by this argument. But voluntary prayer that takes place in a school setting is a much different animal than mandating that public schools post religious dogma.

Indeed, Rep. Nicole Clowney, D-Fayetteville, warned her colleagues, to no avail, that the Supreme Court has consistently maintained promoting religious messages in schools has a “coercive” impact on students that is constitutionally impermissible — an argument echoed by the judge who struck down Louisiana’s law.

Of course, it’s easy for the Bartons to advocate for moving full steam ahead in defiance of binding Supreme Court precedent because, if Arkansas gets dragged into federal court, they won’t be on the hook for the legal costs. We will. 

Indeed, gesture politics can be a rather expensive hobby, which ought to be a compelling argument for Arkansas legislators to stop indulging in it. But, hey, somebody has to protect our cattle from all that unneighborly coveting.