Editorial
Taking Liberties
The Secular State Without the Decalogue
by James M. Kushiner
Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 film The Ten Commandments depicted a founding event of Judeo-Christian civilization, the Exodus and giving of the Law to Hebrew slaves from Egypt. DeMille's Moses says before his death, "Proclaim liberty throughout the land." Not the biblical Moses' final message, these words were lifted from Leviticus 25:10, where they were prescribed to announce the Year of Jubilee and the freeing of slaves.
DeMille was not the first to appropriate this verse about slaves. In 1752, the Provincial Assembly of Pennsylvania commissioned a bell inscribed with Leviticus 25:10, setting LIBERTY in all caps (aka the Liberty Bell). This general liberty was not particularly about slaves, for slavery was legal in Pennsylvania, though contested and eventually outlawed. Nor was it about American independence—the bell was rung in 1760 at King George III's accession to the throne. But it later became an icon of American ideas of liberty.
Many Americans who heard DeMille's Moses proclaim liberty no doubt equated it with the bell's LIBERTY, which America championed as the "sweet land of liberty." To most, this liberty was not secular but God-given. A connection between American liberty and the Judeo-Christian revelation of a God who gives gifts to men was, and still is, assumed by many, and is expressed in such anthems as "My Country, 'Tis of Thee":
Our fathers' God, to Thee,
Author of Liberty,
To thee we sing,
Long may our land be bright
With Freedom's holy light,
Protect us by thy might
Great God, our King.
New Liberty
American ruling elites have by slow degrees disconnected liberty from the Great God of the Decalogue. With the recent retirement of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, we are reminded of perhaps his most famous words: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." In other words, nothing is written in stone, and you're free to make up your own rules of life and revise them as you go. Everyone may do "what is right in his own eyes."
Such liberty requires independence from the Decalogue as eternal law. It is divorced from divine oversight or moral limits from on high. Regardless of whether the Enlightenment philosophy of liberty made this divorce inevitable, the fact is that today a new version of liberty stands in opposition to the biblical revelation of freedom as being rooted in loving obedience to a loving God. The state-approved or mandated removal of the Ten Commandments from various public places and state properties, including courtrooms, is surely a clear manifestation of a deep and longstanding rebellion.
In Justice Kennedy's and liberal America's secular view, citizens are effectively free to sideline every one of the Ten Commandments as a moral foundation for a free society. To assert this kind of liberty is to oppose the God who revealed himself to Moses and the people of Israel. While there are yet many faithful Christians, Jews, and Law-abiding citizens, various features of ascendant secularism are kicking hard against the Decalogue:
• I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. The Lord God is increasingly barred from the public square and the public school. His existence, revelation, and works are private matters, not to be spoken of in public places. Instead, the Self is promoted as the supreme god. Mammon may also serve. Or Eros. We owe God nothing.
• Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Blasphemy and repeated use of the Lord's name in vain permeates daily discourse, entertainment, and the arts. Criticism of such is considered prudish.
James M. Kushiner is the Director of Publications for The Fellowship of St. James and the former Executive Editor of Touchstone.
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more on the ten commandments from the online archives
31.5—September/October 2018
The Secular State Without the Decalogue by James M. Kushiner
more from the online archives
31.4—July/August 2018
Life & Love Are Real Despite Theatrical Illusions by Anthony Esolen
27.3—May/June 2014
Facts versus Stereotypes About Love & Marriage in the Land of the Free by Allan C. Carlson
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