Religion > Christianity

Shrinking the Ten Commandments

The 5th Circuit’s ruling allowing the Ten Commandments in schools is not as encouraging as you might think.

Fay Voshell | April 3, 2026

Many Christians are rejoicing over a court ruling allowing the posting of the Ten Commandments in public schools.  As the Tulane Hullabaloo and other news outlets report, the commandments must be displayed in every Louisiana public school and university after the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down an injunction that had blocked the display.

It is better to see the commandments posted instead of a blank wall.  But there is little cause for jubilation.  The strictures placed by Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murril, concerning the postings of the commandments make them merely symbolic — a gesture of appeasement directed at Louisiana’s huge evangelical and conservative Catholic communities.

The posters are in effect announcements proclaiming the near irrelevance of a core foundation of the Jewish and Christian ethic.  They demonstrate contempt for and disregard of the persuasive spiritually and intellectually forceful Christian worldview that once dominated America and the West.  They are, in short, a politicized and tokenized gesture of condescension from the dominant leftist elite’s viewpoint that has seized public education for decades.

Even the visuals are indications that the measure is merely a token.  Murril has mandated that the posters be 11 by 14 inches, not to exceed 18 by 24.  She has also mandated that the displays not be posted behind teachers’ desks.

The measurements reduce the visual impact of the posters.  Further, the placement to the side of the teacher indicates that the commandments have no special relevance to his teaching, to the education of the children, or to the entire public school system.  In short, as the original decision indicates, the display is meant to be entirely passive, and in no way integrated into the public educational system, lest it be regarded as coercive.

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