Ten Commandments Closer to Presence In Public School Classrooms

Tennessee House of Representatives and the 10 Commandments (Photo by Tennessee General Assembly and Unsplash)

The Ten Commandments are one step closer to being posted in some public schools across the state.

The Tennessee Senate passed legislation on Thursday that allows school districts the option of displaying the Biblical texts, along with the first sentence of the second paragraph of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, and the preamble to the United States Constitution in a “prominent location.”

Senators opted to approve the House’s version of the bill, which stated that schools “may” display the Ten Commandments, instead of the original Senate bill, which required it.

Senate Discussion

The 27-6 vote came entirely along partisan lines, with every Senate Democrat opposing it.

Bill sponsor, Senator Mark Pody, R-Lebanon, defended his proposal against questions from Democrats about the potential to divide classrooms by religion.

“It's interesting that of the three documents we've chosen, of the 13 colonies that formed this nation, the Declaration of Independence was not in there when we formed our nation, nor was the Constitution, but what was in those 13 colonies was the Ten Commandments,” Pody said. “And that is one of the basic historic documents that we want to make sure that the founding of this nation was on.”

Senator Jeff Yarbro, D-Nashville, pushed back against that historical notion, saying the Ten Commandments were present as an influence on the United States founding fathers.

“The reason it was in those colonies is they were colonies that came from a kingdom that had an established state church,” Yabro said. “One of the very clear decisions that we made as a country was to not do that, and so I guess that still begs the question, ‘Why would we want to include in schools today the religious document?’”

Another senator asked Pody if schools would also be allowed to post religious documents that did not pertain to Christianity, to which Pody said, “This bill does not prevent the (schools) from doing anything that they have the freedom to do right now.”

The bill now heads to Governor Bill Lee’s desk for his signature.