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Guest Commentary February 28, 2002
Ten Commandments Should Remain on Public Buildings
The Honorable Mike Pence
We are told that "there is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven." At this time in our Nation's history, it is undeniable that citizens have found a newfound interest in spiritual things. And until 2 days ago, the Supreme Court was poised to hear a case from my home State of Indiana that was driven by, I believe, this newfound interest in the permanent things in our lives.
Indiana Governor Frank O'Bannan had asked to have the Ten Commandments posted on the lawn of the Indiana State House. It was the governor's purpose to replace a plaque that had been there for decades. It had been desecrated and destroyed by vandals. But on Tuesday of this week, the Supreme Court of the United States of America refused to take the case.
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In a similar case in the city of Richmond, Indiana, in my own district, the county government has been sued by the local civil liberties union. The plaintiff in the case has requested that Wayne County, Indiana, remove the Ten Commandments from the courthouse lawn, commandments that have stood on the lawn of the Wayne County courthouse for over 4 decades.
Lawsuits like this are being brought before courts across the country. These cases come at a unique time in our Nation's history. I am greatly disappointed that the Supreme Court has refused to hear this case at such a time as this. Not only are these lawsuits to remove the Ten Commandments from our Nation's public buildings based on a flawed reading of the U.S. Constitution, but I assert it also reveals a profound misunderstanding of the foundations of our national government.
The first amendment to the Constitution reads, as we all know, that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." As scholars and average citizens know, until the 1960s, most Americans understood this to be the Establishment Clause. It was intended to allow Americans to worship freely and prevented the Federal Government from creating any official religion. The Establishment Clause was interpreted again and again by the Supreme Court to be a requirement that we as Americans accommodate in the public square the fact that we are, as one court wrote a "deeply religious peoples whose institutions presuppose a supreme being." In fact, on the very walls of this Chamber that read, in my presence, the phrase, "In God We Trust," on the very walls of the United States Supreme Court hang the Ten Commandments themselves, this is proven out.
Beginning with the Supreme Court's decision in Everson v. Board of Education, our courts have reinterpreted the meaning of the Establishment Clause, and now many Americans believe the phrase, "wall of separation of church and State" actually appears in our Constitution.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist said, "There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the Framers intended to build a 'wall of separation' " as expressed in the Everson case. "The 'wall of separation' between church and State is a metaphor based," the Chief Justice said, "on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging."
With the phrase "bad history," the Chief Justice points out, perhaps the greatest problems with those like the civil liberty lawyers who would remove all vestiges of religion from public life, a lack of understanding about the foundations of our Nation and our national laws. The reality is that as evidenced on these walls, as evidenced as I look up in this Chamber and am looked down upon by the very gaze and likeness of Moses himself, the reality is that the Ten Commandments represent not just the cornerstone of the three great religions of planet Earth, but also they are the inconvenient cornerstone of western civilization. They are, however inconvenient to the modernists and the liberals of our day, they are the cornerstone of our moral and legal and governmental institutions in Western Civilization.
So for the court to have missed an opportunity this week to reframe our constitutional law to once again accommodate the religious expression of good people, the good people of Indiana, the good people of Wayne County, Indiana, is deeply saddening to me and to many millions of Americans.
Mike Pence, a Republican, represents the 2nd Congressional District of Indiana in the U.S. House of Representatives. The above column has been adapted from a speech Rep. Pence delivered on the floor of the House, February 28, 2002. To contact him, Click Here.
The above column has been distributed by PoliticsOL.com.
