Regarding the courts not allowing the 10 Commandments to be displayed in public classrooms in the name of so-called constitutional separation of church and state powers, Christians are partly to blame for this abridgment of their 1st Amendment protected right to religious expression for the following reason imo. If Christians made sure that their children were taught the Constitution and its history as much as they make sure that their children are taught the Holy Bible, then Christians would be able to call the bluffs of anti-religious expression justices concerning things like being able to display the ten commandments in public schools.
From a related thread concerning prayers at graduation ...
More specifically, first note that regardless what FDR's activist justices wanted everybody to beileve about the Establishment Clause and Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation," the real Thomas Jefferson had clarified the following about the religious aspects of the 1st and 10th Amendments. Jefferson had noted that the Founding States had made the 10th Amendment in part to clarify that the states had reserved government power to regulate (I say cultivate) religious expression to themselves, regardless that they had also made the 1st Amendment in part to prohibit such power to Congress entirely.
"3. Resolved that it is true as a general principle and is also expressly declared by one of the amendments to the constitution that ‘the powers not delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people’: and that no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, all lawful powers respecting the same did of right remain, & were reserved, to the states or the people: that thus was manifested their determination to retain to themselves the right of judging how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged without lessening their useful freedom, and how far those abuses which cannot be separated from their use should be tolerated rather than the use be destroyed (emphasis added); …" --Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions, 1798.
So given that the states have the power to regulate religion, the same power that enables the states to authorize creationism to be taught in public schools, there would have been no question up to the time that the 14th Amendment (14A) was ratified that displaying the 10 Commandments in public schools was constitutional. After all, the Bible used to be read aloud in public schools.
H O W E V E R ...
The 14th Amendment ultimately gave FDR's anti-state sovereignty / anti-religious expression justices a foothold to argue that 14A applied not only the 1st Amendment's personal religious protections to the states, but also the 1st Amendment's prohibition on Congress's power to regulate religion to state legislatures. This is evidenced by the following excerpt from Cantwell v. Connecticut.
"The First Amendment declares that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The Fourteenth Amendment has rendered the legislatures of the states as incompetent as Congress to enact such laws. The constitutional inhibition of legislation on the subject of religion has a double aspect." --Mr. Justice Roberts, Cantwell v. State of Connecticut, 1940.
H O W E V E R ...
By arguing that 14A took away certain powers from the states, in this case the power to address religious issues which "atheist" Thomas Jefferson had clarified that they had, activist justices wrongly ignored the following. They ignored that John Bingham, the main author of Section 1 of 14A, had officially clarified that 14A took away no state's rights.
"The adoption of the proposed amendment will take from the States no rights (emphasis added) that belong to the States." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 1866. (See second half of first column.)"No right (emphasis added) reserved by the Constitution to the States should be impaired…" --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 1871. (See first half of first column.)
"Do gentlemen say that by so legislating we would strike down the rights of the State? God forbid. I believe our dual system of government essential to our national existance." --John Bingham, Appendix to the Congressional Globe. (See second half of third column.)
In fact, consider that Justice Reed had noted the following about the 10th and 14th Amendments. Justice Reed had indicated that it is the job of judges to balance 10A protected state powers with 14A protected rights, as opposed to spinning 14A as an excuse to rob the states of such powers.
"Conflicts in the exercise of rights arise and the conflicting forces seek adjustments in the courts, as do these parties, claiming on the one side the freedom of religion, speech and the press, guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, and on the other the right to employ the sovereign power explicitly reserved to the State by the Tenth Amendment to ensure orderly living without which constitutional guarantees of civil liberties would be a mockery." --Justice Reed, Jones v. City of Opelika, 1942.
So the states still have the power to regulate religion regardless what activist justices want everybody to think about 14A, state power to regulate religion now limited by 14A as opposed to the PC idea that 14A took away such powers.
Again, the problem is that, regardless that Christian parents / guardians are making sure that their children are being taught the Holy Bible, Christians are evidently not making sure that their children are being taught the law of the land as constitutonal lawmakers had intended for it to be understood. Christians are therefore unsurprisingly suffering the consequences of their ignorance of their constitutionally protected religious freedoms by the hands of pagan judges.
Poland recently showed the world that they had the right idea and a way out of the separation of state and education.
Polish leaders have turned the entire education responsibility over to the Church.