Statement by J. Brent Walker on religious displays on government property

February 23, 2005
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

I am J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee (BJC). I am a lawyer and ordained minister and serve as an adjunct professor at the Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. I speak today only on behalf of the BJC.

For 69 years, the BJC has pursued a well-balanced, sensibly centrist approach to church-state issues with the goal of promoting religious liberty for all. We take seriously both religion clauses in the First Amendment as essential guarantors of religious liberty - our "first freedom."

The wise architects of our republic fashioned twin constitutional pillars - No Establishment and Free Exercise. They placed them in the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights to protect what many believed to be a God-given right and to buttress the wall of separation that is critical to ensuring religious liberty.

The Establishment Clause is designed to keep government from promoting or helping religion. The Free Exercise Clause is intended to prevent government from interfering with or hurting religion. The two, together, call for neutrality on the part of government. Government should accommodate religion without advancing it, protect religion without promoting it, and lift burdens on the exercise of religion without extending religion an impermissible benefit.

The constitutional requirement of keeping church and state separate, however, does not divorce religion from politics. The metaphorical wall of separation does not block religious values from playing a role in public life. Religious people have as much right as anyone else to vend their beliefs in the marketplace of ideas and (with some limits) to allow their religious ethics to influence public policy by speaking out, organizing politically and even running for office.

While religious expression by public officials is ordinarily permitted, there are constitutional limits. The posting of the Ten Commandments by government officials in a way that demonstrates endorsement of them - such as in a monument on Capitol grounds or in a county courthouse - clearly crosses the line drawn by the First Amendment. The government has no business: (1) singling out one favored religious tradition, (2) choosing the preferred Scripture passage, and (3) displaying it in a way that creates a religious shrine. In so doing, government makes theological judgments. Which Commandments - Deuteronomy 5 or Exodus 20? Is it the English Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible or maybe the Septuagint in Greek? Is it a Catholic or Protestant one? Which translation - King James, New International or the Revised Standard? They all differ in form, style and theological nuance. These are fundamentally religious decisions that government officials are ill-suited to make. How strange it is to create a graven image out of a document that says we are not supposed to have any graven images!

We must always keep in mind the difference between government speech endorsing religion, which the Establishment Clause prohibits, and private religious speech, which the Constitution protects. Religious speech by private citizens, even in public places, is not forbidden; it is protected and commonly practiced.

There are lots of ways in which the Ten Commandments can be expressed in public without the help of government. For example:

1. They can be posted in front of every church and synagogue in the land in full public view.
2. They can be displayed even on public property if that property is a free-speech forum.
3. One can hold up a sign "Exodus 20" or "Deuteronomy 5," instead of "John 3:16," in the end zones of televised football games.
4. And taking a lesson from the prophet Jeremiah, we can write the commandments on our "hearts" instead of on stone, thereby providing a living witness to those teachings.

In sum, the question is not whether the Ten Commandments embody the right teachings; the question rather is who is the right teacher - politicians or parents, public officials or religious leaders, judges or families? As a minister, I can think of little better than for everyone to read and obey the Ten Commandments; as a lawyer, I can think of little worse than for governmental officials to tell us to do it.

Finally, even public officials are not prohibited from considering the Ten Commandments in the proper context. For example:

1. Schools may teach about the Ten Commandments in a Bible-as-literature course.
2. Schools may instruct students in ethical precepts in a proper character education program.
3. The commandments can be depicted as an integral part of an historical/educational exhibit such as on the frieze in the U.S. Supreme Court courtroom.

We must catch the vision of our nation's founders - religious freedom for all, unaided and unhindered by government. We must commit ourselves to protecting religious expression in public places, without allowing government officials to promote religion or to pick and choose among religions.

The BJC, along with the Interfaith Alliance, is filing briefs in the two U.S. Supreme Court Cases this term (Van Orden v. Perry, No. 03-1500 and McCreary v. ACLU, No. 03-1693) dealing with the Ten Commandments. They will be argued on March 2.

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