To the editor: In arguing for displaying the Ten Commandments in public schools, contributing writer Josh Hammer, like most radical conservatives, would take the nation back to its antebellum days before the Civil War Amendments to the Constitution were ratified (“The 1st Amendment was never meant to separate church and state,” Jan. 23). He provides an outdated argument: that the 1st Amendment’s clause prohibiting Congress from establishing religion is only a proscription against the federal government, leaving state governments free to do whatever they want regarding religion.
The Civil War Amendments totally changed the relationship of the federal government to the states. Over time, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that nearly the whole of the Bill of Rights must be obeyed by each state. Thus, states cannot establish religion, which includes not picking and choosing which religious doctrines, including the Ten Commandments, to promote in schools.
Hammer asserts that the commandments were introduced by Judaism and spread worldwide by Christianity, but he ignores the fact that there are different versions of the commandments, depending on the religion or religious sect. Some later Christian versions have changed the original Jewish version, for example, omitting the prohibition against graven images. Some Christian sects place the commandments in a different order. Whose version would he want schools to display in their classrooms?
As for his claim that it is hypocritical for the U.S. Supreme Court to have a frieze above its entrance that contains a statue of Moses holding the Ten Commandments tablets while not allowing a similar display in schools, he evidently has not looked at the statue with eyes open. The tablets are blank.
Robert J. Switzer, West Hollywood
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To the editor: I often agree with Hammer’s observations, but not this time. His conclusion that religion should have a vital place in public schools is specious at best.
He cites no evidence that the founders intended the 1st Amendment to bind the national government in order to free the states to establish a state-supported religion.
James Madison opposed religious establishments at every level. The 1st Amendment’s federal-only language reflects political and constitutional limits, not Madison’s preference. No documented proof exists that he intended to preserve state establishment power; the documents we do have show the opposite.
Madison wrote in his Memorial and Remonstrance (1785) that established churches corrupt both church and state. There is no letter, argument for legislation, committee or convention document in which Madison says the 1st Amendment was crafted to allow state establishments.
Gary Hartzell, Manhattan Beach
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To the editor: Hammer denies that the 1st Amendment to the Constitution institutes a separation of church and state. He fails to make good on this claim.
He is wrong on both counts contained here: “The United States was founded on ecumenical biblical principles, and the Ten Commandments — the wellspring of so much of Western morality.” It is false that the U.S. was founded on ecumenical biblical principles and the Ten Commandments. It is false that the Ten Commandments are the source of Western morality.
Neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution of the United States show a founding in biblical principles, whatever those could be. Do “biblical principles” promote democracy and freedom from tyranny of a monarch? Do they promote a republican form of government, separation of powers and human rights found in the Amendments to the Constitution? Any student of religion, history and government would say “no.”
The claim of the Ten Commandments as the “wellspring” of Western morality is similarly groundless. Surely Western “morality” includes the rights of all people, an eventual forbiddance of slavery and recognition of the rights of women, obtained after a long struggle. It also includes the effort to limit war and the definition of what might be called a “just war.” None of this follows from any interpretation of the Ten Commandments. Hammer is surely delusional on these points.
Juan Bernal, Santa Ana