Would Jesus vote for lawmaker’s proposal to display Ten Commandments in schools? | Opinion

You know what Jesus didn’t like? Being pushy.

Read the Gospels — something a lot of folks are doing this Christmas week — and one thing you notice is that Jesus didn’t spend much of his ministry elbowing his way into public squares and demanding people listen to what he had to say. (He made an exception for merchants who turned the temple into a “den of robbers.”) Instead, crowds seemed to gather and follow wherever he went, eager to listen and maybe witness a miracle or two.

Jesus had a message. But he invited people to hear it. He didn’t force them to pay attention.

He also gave his disciples a pretty clear directive: If people don’t want to hear what you have to say, move on. Don’t be pushy.

“If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words,” Jesus told them in the book of Matthew, “leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet.”

It’s right there in the Bible. Pretty straightforward, right?

I’m just not so sure that his modern-day followers have learned the lesson.

Take state Rep. Hardy Billington, a Poplar Bluff Republican who serves in the Missouri House of Representatives. Billington has long been a defender of Christian interests in Jefferson City — a few years back, he sponsored a bill to crack down on lawsuits against violations of the separation of church and state.

“I believe it’s high time that we fight for religious liberty,” he said in 2019.

To that end, Billington has a new idea in mind. He’s filed a bill that would require public schools and charter schools to display copies of the Ten Commandments in every Missouri school and classroom.

“I think that would be a good thing for kids to see, not that they got to promote it, or do anything about it, but it’s good to be there, right?” Billington told The Star’s Kacen Bayless. “To, you know, walk by and see it in the hallway.”

Let’s call that what it is: pushy.

Government shouldn’t be in the religion business

Billington’s proposal is — on the face of it — a pretty clear violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Government isn’t supposed to be in the religion business. Missouri’s own constitution affirms this: The state “shall not coerce any person to participate in any prayer or other religious activity.”

The Ten Commandments are nothing if not religious: The very first commandment tells us, “You shall have no other gods before me.”

That message would be expressly unwelcoming to Missouri students from other faith traditions, or who have no faith at all. Billington’s bill would effectively tell those kids that they have second-class status in their own schools.

Which should be the end of the discussion. But it isn’t.

Christian conservatives in America are feeling pretty assertive these days. Louisiana just passed a law requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in classrooms, though a federal judge blocked it last month. In Oklahoma, the state’s schools superintendent is pushing Bibles into public classrooms.

It’s obnoxious, chauvinistic stuff.

But they might get away with it. Billington, for example, thinks the conservative supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court might be willing to interpret the First Amendment, uh, a little differently than previous, more liberal courts.

“We got a very — a lot more conservative Supreme Court than we’ve had in the past,” he told Bayless.

You know what? He might be right.

So let’s make the case against Billington’s bill in terms that religious conservatives will hopefully understand: Forcing Missouri students to see the Ten Commandments every time they enter a classroom probably isn’t something Jesus would do.

In fact, Jesus encouraged his followers to actually be subtle about how they expressed their religiosity in public. “Be careful,” he preached, “not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.”

Jesus wasn’t pushy. He didn’t want his followers to be pushy or showy, either. Which suggests a Ten Commandments requirement in Missouri schools isn’t just bad from a First Amendment standpoint — it’s also bad Christianity.

Joel Mathis is a regular Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle Opinion correspondent. Formerly a writer and editor at Kansas newspapers, he served nine years as a syndicated columnist.

This story was originally published December 24, 2024 at 5:09 AM.