SHELBY, N.C. — A school board in North Carolina is considering the possibility of having the Ten Commandments displayed at or near the entrance of every school in the district.
According to the Shelby Star, the Cleveland County School Board agreed during a Dec. 14 meeting to draft a policy requiring the Decalogue to be erected “in a prominent place at or near the main entrance to all of our campuses.”
Board member Ron Humphries introduced the resolution, noting that a state law passed in 2000 allows for displays with “historical significance” and when used to “exemplify the development of the rule of law,” such as the Magna Carta and Justinian Code.
The Ten Commandments display would need to be accompanied by at least one other historical tribute to be permissible under the law.
Board member Dena Green, however, expressed caution in moving forward with the idea, stating that she would like to hear from an attorney on the matter as she is concerned about potential lawsuits.
“I would think that the ACLU would really come down on us,” she stated. “We are probably going to get a lot of backlash on that, and it’s going to cost us a lot of money.”
Meanwhile, the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) has sent a letter to the district attorney to assert that the display would be unconstitutional.
“It would be a flagrant violation of the Establishment Clause for the Board to require all of its schools to display the Ten Commandments. The Supreme Court has ruled on Ten Commandments displays in public schools, finding that they violate the Establishment Clause,” its correspondence reads in part.
“Any student will view a Ten Commandments display in school as being endorsed by the school,” FFRF wrote, adding, “The district’s promotion of the Bible and religion over non-religion impermissibly turns any non-Christian or non-believing student, parent, or staff member into an outsider.”
As previously reported, in 1828, just 41 years after the signing of the Constitution, Noah Webster, known as the Father of American Scholarship and Education, wrote, “In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government, ought to be instructed. … No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.”
He also wrote in his publication “Letters to a Young Man Commencing His Education”:
“Let it then be the first study of your early years to learn in what consists real worth or dignity of character. To ascertain this important point, consider the character and attributes of the Supreme Being. As God is the only perfect being in the universe, His character, consisting of all that is good and great, must be the model of all human excellence, and His laws must of course be the only rules of conduct by which His rational creatures can reach any portion of like excellence.”
Romans 13:8-10 outlines that God’s law teaches what it means to love one another.
“Owe no man anything but to love one another, for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law,” it states. “For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet, and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”