Ultimately, the authors of this decision Stone v. Graham Justice William J. Brennan Jr., as you know, is not a sitting justice. He died in 1997, because the statute in question (passed in Kentucky in 1978) was ruled unconstitutional not this week, but in 1980.
This subject is worth revisiting because on Wednesday, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry (R) signed a bill that similarly requires copies of the Ten Commandments to be placed in classrooms. At the signing ceremony, Governor Landry suggested that the impetus for the bill was not to boost religion but to strengthen the legal system.
“If we want to respect the rule of law, we have to start with the first lawgiver, which is Moses,” he said.
The same ploy was written underneath each copy of the Ten Commandments placed in Kentucky schools, claiming to have “secular applications of the Ten Commandments.” Brennan didn’t believe it.
“The commandments are not limited to worldly matters, such as honoring parents, murder, adultery, theft, perjury and greed,” the ruling read. “Rather, the first part of the commandments concerns the religious duties of believers, such as worshiping the Lord God alone, abstaining from idolatry, not taking God’s name in vain, and observing the Sabbath.”
Given the current makeup of the Supreme Court, there is no guarantee that the majority will again vote against states mandating the posting of the Ten Commandments. But it is clear that the law Landry signed into law is intended to plant the flag for Louisiana’s “appeal to heaven” in support of Christian values, rather than to ensure that Louisiana’s young people have a healthy respect for the law. In February, PRRI released a state-level analysis of support for the Christian nationalist value that the United States should be explicitly Christian. Befitting the state’s far-right politics, Louisiana was one of the states with the highest support for the concept.
Governor Landry, who took office earlier this year, has policies that are in keeping with the state’s — it’s worth noting that he is Catholic and his mother taught religion in Catholic schools — but supporters of the law who think it will make Louisiana students more religious are likely to be disappointed.
The American National Election Study (ANES) survey is conducted around federal elections and has included questions measuring religious identity since 1948. It shows that the percentage of Americans who identify as “other” – any religion other than Protestantism, Catholicism, or Judaism – increased from the mid-1950s to the 1980s. Stone v. Graham decision to overturn Kentucky’s law. Among younger Americans, the increase was even steeper.
In 1960, 2 percent of Americans identified as belonging to the “other” category, which includes the non-religious. In 1980, that figure was 10.2 percent, in 2000, 19.5 percent, and by 2016, more than a third.
Growth stagnated in the 1980s, Stone v. GrahamOther measures of religiosity, such as the General Social Survey’s question about the theological nature of the Bible, show a similar subsidence. In 1984, about 14% of Americans said they thought the Bible was just a book of old stories that had nothing to do with God. By 2022, about a quarter of Americans held that view.
Notice the change that began around the year 2000, which is reflected by Gallup. Since the late 1970s, the venerable polling company has routinely asked Americans how important religion is in their lives. Since about 2000, the percentage of people who say religion is unimportant has steadily increased.
This change was obviously not due to removing the Ten Commandments from public places or abolishing prayer in schools. It was due to the Supreme Court decision of 1962. Engel vs. Vitale decision; conservatives are hoping the current court will go in the opposite direction.
It is unlikely, then (and certainly not an advocacy of doing so) that introducing the Ten Commandments into the classroom will suddenly make a new generation of students embrace Christianity, but the idea itself is consistent with current right-wing orthodoxy, which argues that the main reason young people express more liberal politics is because they have been overly brainwashed by nefarious leftists who serve as teachers and professors.
For Landry, the move would be great publicity: civil liberties groups have already filed lawsuits over the move, and Landry likely won’t hesitate to add it to his conservative resume. In fact, if his intention in supporting the policy is to advance his own political standing, this form of self-promotion itself has historical precedent: in the mid-1950s, director Cecil B. DeMille partnered with the Fraternal Order of Eagles to post copies of the Ten Commandments around the country to promote his film of the same name.
