The Ten Commandments and the Clash of Worldviews in Alabama

On August 27, a moving crew went into the Alabama Judicial Building in Montgomery and moved the 5,280-pound monument bearing the Ten Commandments from the public rotunda to a place out of view in obedience to a federal court order. In other words, the federal government won this round even though the legal fight over the fate of the monument is likely to continue for some time to come.

Back in 2001, Chief Justice Roy Moore of Alabama placed the monument of his own design in the Alabama Judicial Building in Montgomery, a monument designed by himself and bearing the Ten Commandments. It did not take long before we began to hear from the usual suspects (the ACLU and groups such as the leftist Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center) on how the monument, in a state courthouse, violated the supposedly Constitutional separation of church and state. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson ordered Justice Moore to remove the monument from public view, giving him 15 days to comply. Moore refused. He contended that to do so would be to fail to acknowledge the God whose divine law is the ultimate source of the Constitutional basis for the rule of law in America. Moreover, he maintained on Tenth Amendment grounds that the federal court did not have jurisdiction. In retaliation, a judicial ethics panel suspended him. Moore’s eight fellow state justices turned their backs on him and ordered him to comply with the federal court. Thompson had threatened the state with fines of $5,000 per day for every day the monument remained on the rotunda in public view.

Evangelical Christians have maintained round-the-clock vigils outside Justice Moore’s courthouse. Judge Moore appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The appeal was turned down, allowing the lower court’s decision to stand. Moore stood his ground, saying, "The issue is: can the state acknowledge God. If this state can’t acknowledge God, then other states can’t… And eventually, the United States of America … will not be able to acknowledge the very source of our rights and liberties and the very source of our law." He continues to stand his ground, having filed a new appeal with the Supreme Court. The Tenth Amendment says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Thus Alabama could pass a law declaring itself an officially Christian state without violating the Federal Constitution as originally conceived by the Framers. Of course, doing so would be extremely ill-advised, but that isn’t the point. It is the federal government the Constitution prohibited from establishing a religion.

As these events play out, they promise to offer a lot of insight into where we stand as a society, and where we are headed – and for the philosophically inclined, to point toward which philosophical premises are guiding us. You see, this is not just another clash in the ongoing culture war, although it is that. It is not simply a clash between claims of state sovereignty versus federal imperialism, although it is that, too. This clash is more fundamental than the one over decisions such as Lawrence v. Texas in which the Supreme Court found a mysterious "right" in the Constitution no one had ever seen before, to practice sodomy.

The clash over the Ten Commandments in Alabama is just the latest and most visible skirmish in a much larger clash between comprehensive, incompatible worldviews. Let’s explore what this means.

The Christian writer C.S. Lewis contended that there are just two basic worldviews in Western European–American civilization (there are a lot of variants on each, of course). There is the worldview of Christian theism, as I will call it, and then there is the worldview of materialism, or materialistic naturalism.

Christian theism places the God of the Old and New Testaments at its center. The universe, according to Christian theism, is a divine artifact. It is the creation of God, as is the human race along with every other form of life on this planet. Its enormous size and complexity testifies to God’s commensurate creative powers. There are, in other words, at least two realms of reality. There is a nonmaterial order of things containing God, other supernatural agencies including the devil, Satan, and the human soul that survives the death of the body; and then there is the physical reality we experience through the senses. Although human reason also has its source with God and is capable of giving us at least partial knowledge of the physical universe and the nature of things generally, it neither can nor should be used as a path to God. According to Christianity, humanity is a fallen species, in need of redemption, with redemption possible only through His Son, Jesus Christ.

Materialism, or materialistic naturalism, offers a far different and obviously incompatible picture of the world. According to materialism, the universe is self-existent and not created. Science has simply failed to disclose any credible reason for thinking any gods or other supernatural agencies exist. The human race emerged as just one of countless products of a long but entirely natural process, a cosmic accident. There is, in this view, just one order of reality – physical or material reality, its structure disclosed by natural science. This reality may be a whole lot stranger than our senses alone can tell us – as evidenced by such discoveries as "charmed" quarks in elementary particle physics. But materialistic naturalism is dead set against interpreting any of the discoveries of science as pointing toward anything supernatural, such as God or a divine creation of the universe or a divine origin of human life.

Christian theism supplied us with a specific foundation for a moral life – even if this foundation predates Christianity per se. This is the Mosaic Law, of course, given its best-known expression in the Ten Commandments. The ethics of Christian theism consist of absolutes such as "Thou shalt not steal" and "Thou shalt not murder." These rules are not negotiable. As Christians sometimes sardonically say, God did not call them the "Ten Suggestions." At one time, long ago, understanding them was a component of every child’s education, and of classical learning generally.

What sort of ethics might follow from materialistic naturalism is something philosophers have been struggling with ever since it began to become dominant among the Western intelligentsia. A handful have followed the lead supplied in the late 1700s by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who was not a materialist but still held that morality could be deduced from the structure of human reason itself, and was not revealed. Kant spoke of the "categorical imperative," and of the "moral law within" that determined our duties. Another group of philosophers has followed one version or another of the utilitarianism with its roots in British thinkers such as Jeremy Bentham or John Stuart Mill. The latter spoke of the "greatest happiness principle," and the "greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people." There has been something of an ongoing debate between the two, with neither achieving true dominance although utilitarians have been the majority among ethicists for quite some time now. Meanwhile, the machinery of the omnipotent state has grown by leaps and bounds.

A few philosophers have adhered to the brand of individualism or ethical egoism espoused in its purest form by Ayn Rand. According to this view, rights are conditions for human survival on this planet. Man’s life, its sustenance, and human prosperity and happiness supply the standard. What is appropriate to the life of a rational being is good; what coercively interferes with or harms this life is evil. These ideas have been important among libertarians who have emphasized that theirs is a philosophy for life in this world. Rand’s Objectivism is a fundamentally materialist philosophy, however; and so are these brands of libertarianism although the latter usually eschew discussions of metaphysics and emphasize that it is a political philosophy. The fundamental issues cannot be evaded or avoided, however. The strong point of this brand of thought is its uncompromising individualism and defense of liberty, for which we should all be duly grateful. Its weaknesses involve its equally uncompromising materialism, its extremely dogmatic nature, leading to the drama of personality clashes, excommunications including libertarians who deviated in even the slightest way from Rand’s words, the movement’s cultlike aspects, etc., and its hopelessly optimistic conception of human nature.

Individualism has become an anathema, however, because of the fact that if individuals are left to their own devices, some will excel magnificently while others fall short. This violates egalitarianism. The idea that everyone either is or should be, in some sense, equal, emerges out of a vague sense of "fairness" that hearkens back to the Kantian approach – whose most significant twentieth century exponent was political philosopher John Rawls. Rawls was not a pure egalitarian. He believed some inequality was inevitable; but he also held that these inequalities should be justified carefully, and it be shown how they work to the benefit of the less well off. So to him, egalitarianism is still the human ideal, even if unreachable in practice. (Rawls’s major work, A Theory of Justice, offered a perfect ethic for central planners who are presuming omniscience in themselves while introducing machinery, the "veil of ignorance," to remove the individual and individual motivation, from ethical judgment – all very appropriate for a Harvard-based academic philosopher.)

The modern state has vacillated between utilitarian and egalitarian impulses, often mixing the two incoherently, depending on which fashion was prevalent or which war, in the eyes of its propagandists, was deemed necessary. The denizens of the modern state are not political philosophers. They couldn’t care less about all this hairsplitting. They just want power. That means crushing the competition.

Which worldview we are going to endorse obviously matters a great deal in a culture, therefore. Christian theism places God at the center of creation, of our ethical lives and therefore of our political order. It will follow that government – like every other institution – is subordinate to God’s commands in the sense of Justice Moore’s observation that God’s divine law forms the basis of all human rights and obligations embodied in a constitutional system of any sort that places checks and balances on government power. Government of some sort may be believed necessary because of man’s sinful nature; but concentrations of power are not to be trusted for the same reason. James Madison, in the Federalist Papers: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary; if angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary."

Materialistic naturalism recognizes no fundamental authority – except, perhaps, that of empirical science. It recognizes no sense of sin. Rather, it embraces the Enlightenment notion of man’s ability to perfect himself through various forms of scientific social engineering. Its apparent tendency, as evidenced by the past hundred-plus years of history, is to unleash the human will to power in the few by removing moral checks on power, while also unleashing human appetites – especially sexual ones, but also a more general lust for entertainment. Thus a political and financial elite accrues more and more power, centralizing it in government and closely associated institutions such as central banks, until we arrive at an age of central planners who see themselves as omnipotent and omniscient. (One of the fascinating things about operational atheists – those who may never have given two thoughts about the question but live as if atheism were true – is that invariably, somewhere along the way, God reappears in surrogate form. He reappears either as the State, or as Science, or occasionally as a presumably infallible Reason – think again of Ayn Rand and her disciples.) The masses become immersed in myriad distractions and cease to pay attention to matters of state that seem remote from the chores of daily life and the pleasures available in one’s off hours. In sum, in a culture that (whether openly or tacitly) embraces the worldview of materialistic naturalism, the State becomes the primary surrogate god because of its capacity to control resources by force or threat of force. Its authority becomes just as absolute although the rules may change with the times or with whichever gang of thugs happens to be running things. Individuals become self-absorbed. The larger culture, and eventually the legal culture, embraces increasingly radical forms of hedonism until we get a Lawrence v. Texas.

With all this as background, let us return to the controversy in Montgomery, Alabama. Much attention has been focused on what was originally meant by that phrase, separation of church and state. The first thing to note is something LewRockwell.com readers doubtless already know: this phrase doesn’t appear in the Constitution or any other official legal document but in the letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association at the start of 1802. What the First Amendment says is: "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…." Jefferson wrote, "Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and state…."

What, precisely, does this mean? It clearly does not mean removing all vestiges of religion (meaning by this Christianity) from public life and visibility. There were differences in the specific religious beliefs of the Framers, but all would have endorsed some version of Christian theism. None were materialists. This is clear from numerous individual statements. Four should suffice. From James Madison, writing in 1778: "We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions... upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." From Benjamin Franklin "The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth – that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? . . . I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers be held imploring the assistance of Heaven . . . in this assembly every morning." From Patrick Henry: "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ! For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship." From John Adams, our second president: "Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people.

The Framers might not have endorsed every belief held by every Christian – whatever this would mean – but they were clearly not materialists! They clearly had the sense that whatever justification could be supplied for government came from a transcendent and not a human authority. They did not endorse what today’s legal eagles mean by "separation of church and state" when that phrase is bandied around. What then could it mean? Nothing more and nothing less than the need to refrain from establishing a national church, on the order of the Church of England, or giving government sanction to a particular denomination such as the Anglicans. The federal government had no business either "establishing" one of them as the "official" religion of the new country, or interfering with the freedom to practice one’s faith in any way. That God would be worshipped was taken for granted; how to worship God was left to individuals and communities.

This puts us in a position to ask how Judge Moore’s placing the monument in his court house "establishes" religion. Moore himself recently stated, "It does not take a constitutional scholar to recognize that I am not Congress, and no law has been passed. Nevertheless, Judge Thompson’s order states that the acknowledgment of God crosses the line between the permissible and the impermissible and that to acknowledge God is to violate the Constitution." Following the removal of the monument to a place out of sight, Moore observed, "It is a sad day in our country when the moral foundation of our laws and the acknowledgment of God has to be hidden from public view to appease a federal judge."

This is likely to fall on deaf ears. In a society increasingly run alongside premises I’ve described as materialist, as the State increasingly becomes a surrogate god it will tolerate no competition for obedience. Hence the mounting efforts to remove every vestige of Christianity from public life, along with the growing supremacy of federal power not just over the states (in violation of the Tenth Amendment) but over everything else as well. Many Christians are rightly concerned about being driven to the margins of society. Christianity was driven out of government schools years ago. The culture is further threatened by UN-sponsored "resettlements" of non-Christian refugees from dysfunctional non-Western nations such as Somalia and the rise of influential and well-funded movements such as the homosexual lobby. Behind it all, of course, is the rising power of a global elite.

Numerous writers – including Edmund Burke, William Penn and Benjamin Franklin – have observed that if men are not ruled by God they will be ruled by tyrants. Human beings were not designed for freedom in the sense of total license. They were meant to be free within bounds established by a transcendent morality. Modern philosophical and scientific thought, freed from these bounds, has essentially left all moral questions up for grabs. Hence the thesis of existentialist writers that it is entirely up to us, working without guidelines, to figure out what to make of ourselves (as Sartre said, "existence precedes essence"). Hence "lifeboat ethics." Hence the "bioethics" of a Peter Singer who contends that infanticide is morally acceptable. Nietzsche saw clearly where this leads, with his contention, written in the late 1800s, that the twentieth century would witness the "advent of nihilism" – in a collection of writings later assembled under the revealing title, The Will To Power. Today’s academic postmodernists have essentially thrown up their hands in gestures of despair, having abandoned the quest for philosophical truth in favor of continuing the conversation of the West, as "superstar" academic philosopher Richard Rorty put it.

We can and must choose between worldviews if we are to have any hope whatsoever of restoring liberty. The logic of materialism is tyranny, whether imposed by violent revolution, as with Soviet Communism, or by stealth, gradualism and subterfuge, the primary methods at work in America today. We see this in every edict by a federal judge that says, in effect, "My way or the highway," often in plain defiance of the actual words of the Constitution. The removal of the Ten Commandments from public visibility is being trumpeted as a triumph of the "rule of law," illustrating the semantic confusion ensuing when rule of law defined as adherence to the Constitution is replaced by rule of law tacitly redefined to mean blind obedience to the federal tyrant. This conception of the rule of law could just as easily be applied to the eventual removal of what miniscule Constitutional controls on federal power yet remain. This would leave us completely at the mercy of those who would utterly destroy the U.S. as a sovereign nation in favor of a tyrannical global State that would doubtless be called a global liberal democracy.

Steven Yates [send him mail] is an adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute. A professional writer and editor with a Ph.D. in philosophy, he is the author of Civil Wrongs: What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1994). His latest book manuscript, In Defense of Logic, is undergoing revisions. He works out of Columbia, South Carolina.

http://my.voyager.net/~jayjo/primer.htm

excerpt from the New England Primer...

Q. 40. What did God at first reveal to man for the rule of his obedience ?
A. The rule which God at first revealed to man for his obedience was the moral law.

Q. 41. Where is the moral law summarily comprehended ?
A. The moral law is summarily comprehended in the ten commandments.

Q. 42. What is the sum of the ten commandments ?
A. The sum of the ten commandments is, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind, and our neighbour as ourselves.

Q. 43. What is the preface to the ten commandments ?
A. The preface to the ten commandments is in these words, I am the Lord thy God which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, and out of the house of bondage.

Q. 44. What doth the preface to the ten commandments teach us ?
A. The preface to the ten commandments teacheth us, that because God is the Lord, and our God and Redeemer, therefore we are bound to keep all his commandments.

Q. 45. Which is the first commandment ?
A. The first commandment is, Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.

Q. 46. What is required in the first commandment ?
A. The first commandment requireth us to know and acknowledge God, to be the only true God, and our God, and to worship and glorify him accordingly.

Q. 47. What is forbidden in the first commandment ?
A. The first commandment forbiddeth the denying or not worshipping and glorifying the true God, as God, and our God, and the giving that worship and glory to any other which is due to him alone.

Q. 48. What are we especially taught by these words (before me) in the first commandment ?
A. These words (before me) in the first commandment, teach us, that God who seeth all things, taketh notice of and is much displeased with the sin of having any other God.

Q. 49. Which is the second commandment ?
A. The second commandment is, Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them, for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me & keep my commandments.

Q. 50. What is required in the second commandment ?
A. The second commandment requireth the receiving, observing, & keeping pure and entire all such religious worship and ordinances, as God hath appointed in his word.

Q. 51. What is forbidden in the second commandment ?
A. The second commandment forbiddeth the worshipping of God by images or any other way not appointed in his word.

Q. 52. What are the reasons annexed to the second commandment ?
A. The reasons annexed to the second commandment, are God's sovereignty over us, his propriety in us, and the zeal he hath to his own worship.

Q. 53. Which is the third commandment ?
A. The third commandment is, Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for the Lord wilt not hold him guiltless, that taketh his name in vain.

Q. 54. What is required in the third commandment ?
A. The third commandment requireth the holy and reverent use of God's names, titles, attributes, ordinances, word and works.

Q. 55. What is forbidden in the third commandment ?
A. The third commandment forbiddeth all profaning or abusing of any thing whereby God maketh himself known.

Q. 56. What is the reason annexed to the third commandment ?
A. The reason annexed to the third commandment is, That however the breakers of this commandment may escape judgment from men, yet the Lord our God will not suffer them to escape his righteous judgment.

Q. 57. Which is the Fourth commandment ?
A. The fourth commandment is, Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God, in it thou shalt not do any work, thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid servant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates, for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day, wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.

Q. 58. What is required in the fourth commandment ?
A. The fourth commandment requireth, the keeping holy to God such set times as he hath appointed in his word, expressly one whole day in seven to be an holy Sabbath to himself.

Q. 59. Which day of the seven hath God appointed to be the weekly sabbath ?
A. From the beginning of the world, to the resurrection of Christ, God appointed the seventh day of the week to be the weekly sabbath, and the first day of the week ever since to continue to the end of the world which is the Christian Sabbath.

Q. 60. How is the sabbath to be sanctified ?
A. The sabbath is to be sanctified by an holy resting all that day, even from such worldly employments and recreations as are lawful on other days, and spending the whole time in public and private exercises of God's worship, except so much as is to be taken up in the works of necessity and mercy.

Q. 61. What is forbidden in the fourth commandment ?
A. The fourth commandment forbiddeth, the omission or careless performance of the duties required, and the profaning the day by idleness or doing that which is in itself sinful, or any unnecessary thoughts, words or works, about worldly employments or recreations.

Q. 62. What are the reasons annexed to the fourth commandment ?
A . The reasons annexed to the fourth commandment, are God s allowing us six days of the week for our own employment, his challenging a special propriety in the seventh, his own example, & his blessing the sabbath day.

Q. 63. Which is the fifth commandment ?
A . The fifth commandment is, Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

Q. 64. What is required in the fifth commandment ?
A. The fifth commandment requireth the preserving the honor, and performing the duties belonging to every one in their several places and relations, as superiors, inferiors, or equals.

Q. 65. What is forbidden in the fifth commandment ?
A. The fifth commandment forbiddeth the neglecting of, or doing any thing against the honour and duty which belongeth to every one in their several places and relations.

Q. 66. What is the reason annexed to the fifth commandment ?
A. The reason annexed to the fifth commandment is a promise of long life and prosperity, (as far as it shall serve for God's glory and their own good) to all such as keep this commandment.

Q. 67. Which is the sixth commandment ?
A. The sixth commandment is, Thou shalt not kill.

Q. 68. What is required in the sixth commadment?
A. The fixth commandment requireth all lawful endeavors to preserve our own life, and the life of others.

Q. 69. What is forbidden in the sixth commandment ?
A. The fixth commandment forbiddeth the taking away of our own life, or the life of our neighbour unjustly, and whatsoever tendeth thereunto.

Q. 70. Which is the seventh commandment ?
A. The seventh commandment is, Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Q. 71. What is required in the seventh commandment ?
A. The seventh commandment requireth the preservation of our own and our neighbor's chastity, in heart, speech & behaviour.

Q. 72. What is forbidden in the seventh commandment ?
A. The seventh commandment forbiddeth all unchaste thoughts, words and actions.

Q. 73. Which is the eighth commandment ?
A. The eighth commandment is, Thou shalt not steal.

Q. 74. What is required in the eighth commandment ?
A. The eighth commandment requireth the lawful procuring & furthering the wealth and outward estate of ourselves and others.

Q. 75. What is forbidden in the eighth commandment ?
A. The eighth commandlnent forbiddeth whatsoever doth, or may unjustly hinder our own or our neighbours wealth or outward estate.

Q. 76. Which is the ninth commandment?
A. The ninth commandment is, Thou Shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

Q. 77. What is required in the ninth commandment ?
A. The ninth commandment requireth the maintaining and promoting of truth between man & man, & of our own & our neighbor's good name, especially in witness bearing.

Q 78. What is forbidden in the ninth commandment ?
A. The ninth commandment forbiddeth whatsoever is prejudicial to truth, or injurious to our own or our neighbor's good name.

Q 79. Which is the tenth commandment ?
A. The tenth commandmelat is, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

Q . 80. What is required in the tenth commandment ?
A. The tenth commandment requireth full contentment with our own condition, with a right and charitable frame of spirit towards our neighbour, and all that is his.

Q. 81. What is forbidden in the tenth commandment ?
A. The tenth commandment forbiddeth all discontentment with our own estaxe, envying or grieving at the good of our neigbbour, and all inordinate motions and affections to any thing that is his.

Q. 82. Is any man able perfectly to keep the commandments of God ?
A. No mere man since the fall is able in this Iife perfectly to keep the commandments of God, but daily doth break them in thought, word and deed.

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