Why Louisiana Was Unwise to Mandate the Ten Commandments in Classrooms

Too many Christians are still mired in a culture war mindset

The state of Louisiana just passed a law mandating the the Ten Commandments be put on display in public school classrooms in the state.

I believe this law is unwise, reflects a poor understanding of cultural conditions, and shows that a large number of American Christians are still living in a culture war mindset.

In my book about how America has transitioned towards a Negative World for Christians, I wrote about the need to stay prudentially engaged, and that different people are going to come to different good faith conclusions about the right actions to take. I wrote:

Prudential engagement also recognizes that not all evangelicals will come to the same conclusion about where and how to be involved politically and socially. We should be tolerant of evangelicals who make a different decision than we do in this matter. That doesn’t mean we avoid political conversations or refrain from critical evaluations of other people’s approaches. It’s perfectly valid to say, as I just did, that the counsel advo- cating political disengagement should be rejected.

But we should respect those who hold views different from our own and seek to be attuned to them when they’ve honestly made a different decision.

So in this case, I’ll say that I simply come to a different prudential judgment than the folks in Louisiana. I don’t think this is a blatantly illegitimate act. Not only would this have been very constitutional, even normal, for the vast bulk of American history, there are people my age who’ve been noting how they had the Ten Commandments in their classrooms when they were in school.

The courts may very well rule that this law unconstitutional. I choose to view the malleability of our constitution in that way as a feature not a bug. Meaning I too want to change various things that are presently viewed as “the constitution.” There’s no reason for anyone to treat current jurisprudence as settling anything, given that neither the left, nor America’s judges themselves, behave in that manner.

So I don’t think this law is per se illegitimate or outside the American tradition. I just think it’s unwise.

Why do I say that?

First, let’s consider some reasons people might put forth for why this was a good thing.

• It’s red meat that energizes the base, so makes good political sense in that way.

• It shows a willingness by red states to defy the national cultural consensus and even the federal government - a sort of assertive federalism.

• It will actively repel liberals from the state, helping to keep it red politically.

• It will have some sort of substantive, evangelistic effect on the viewers or culture.

I don’t personally find these compelling in this case.

Start with the fact that this is a classic “culture war” move. In fact, it’s literally a classic. Attempting to force the display of the Ten Commandments on government property is a longstanding culture war tactic. I seem to recall it even back in the 1990s, and have managed to find references to it on the internet from as early as 2002. In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled against this very practice when it comes to courthouses.

The fact that Louisiana Republicans are literally running the same playbook from 20+ years ago says that they are still stuck in a culture war mindset, and have not yet updated their thinking to account for the Negative World.

Precedent suggests that there’s a good chance this gets overturned by the courts, meaning there’s a very good chance this ends up as an L rather than W, which certainly isn’t great for a motivated base. That would also send a message that people who try to do something different merely get slapped down hard. In fact, that’s the main lesson leaders in Indiana seem to have taken away from the Mike Pence RFRA debacle, which basically led to a nearly decade long freeze in the state being willing to advance even the smallest culturally or socially conservative move. That loss set those movements back significantly.

As for any type of substantive effectiveness, there’s no evidence that previous such laws or efforts bore any fruit at all. America continued culturally on trend, and that may have even accelerated.

In reality, this law is almost entirely symbolic, and a highly provocative symbolic act at that, one that will alienate non-Christians and reinforce them in every bad thing the left has said about conservative Christians wanting a theocracy. It reinforces the idea that conservative Christians are basically unwilling to live peaceably as part of the multicultural society that, whatever one might think of it, actually exists today. This is true even for non-religious “normies” who aren’t necessarily inherently hostile to Christianity unless given some reason - such as a move like this made in a country in which only a minority of people are practicing Christians.

As for the “marketing effect” of this move, doing things to politically shape the electorate is a normal part of American political and social action today. Major urban centers make conscious choices designed to repel potential conservative voters. Seen through this lens, the fact that big cities are generally family hostile isn’t a bug of urban life, it’s a feature. Middle class, married families with children are the social base of the Republican party. Of course urban leaders don’t want them around.

Cities also give the green light to people creating a very hostile environment for anyone who is openly conservative, or even merely insufficiently liberal. We’ve all seen the videos of BLM activists harassing diners at outdoor cafes, for example. Here in Indianapolis, a group of activists ran the donut shop around the corner from our old house out of business for political reasons. Not a single person or entity in the city came to the defense of that shop. Implicitly, every single civic leader in Indy is ok with conservatives actively getting run out of town.

So based on what liberals already do day in and day out in the places they control, red state leaders are well within their rights to pass laws that are culturally offensive to liberals in order to encourage them to leave, or not to come in the first place.

But in this case, liberals aren’t moving to Louisiana. Despite being in the Sunbelt, Louisiana is actually losing population. It’s not a Colorado situation, where liberal Californians moving in are a threat to turn the state blue. This isn’t a Texas or Georgia. Louisiana’s bigger problem is that not even conservatives want to move to the state.

Additionally, if you are going to make cultural moves of that nature, they ought to at least be substantive, and ideally popular. Again, the Louisiana move is purely symbolic. Ron DeSantis actually did a good job of reshaping Florida’s demographics politically, mostly through conservative “popularism” with substance: going against Covid shutdowns, restructuring a university, eliminating sexual content from kindergarten, etc. Notably, he has not pushed for anything like the Ten Commandments display. (The things that got DeSantis into trouble were done when he was trying to showcase himself as a presidential candidate, rather than governing the state).

The Ten Commandments law is a culture war retread move that that suggests Louisiana leaders think we live in a country where the vast majority of people want Judeo-Christian symbols in their public school classrooms, but are being stymied by a sneaky but well connected cabal of atheist liberals and their allies in the courts.

In fact, only a minority of people want this type of thing - even in red states. And also remember that even in its heyday, the culture war itself was largely a failure (with its one major success, overturning Roe vs. Wade, a product of a narrow strategy to get aligned judges on the Supreme Court).

Conservative leaders need to take stock of changed cultural conditions and update their political strategies accordingly.

Cover image credit: Suijur/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0