I realize the lawsuit against the Ten Commandments plaque in the Chester County Court House turns on principle but isn’t it paradoxical that atheists should now be taking the Ten Commandments seriously when pretty much everyone else gave up on the bulk of them years ago?  Except for orthodox Jews, and some wayward Episcopalians whose devoutness has lately become the bane of the local bishop, most people have discarded seven out of the ten, I figure, or maybe six out of ten, depending on just how assiduously you go about coveting your neighbor’s wife.  That leaves only the ones against lying, stealing and murder still standing, and even the last two of these are not entirely embraced in some of the more agnostic precincts of Philadelphia.

  Margaret Downey, the president of the Freethought Society of Philadelphia which is bringing the suit, thinks that the plaque constitutes a government endorsement of belief over non-belief. She might be consoled to ponder, though,  that a great many of her opponents probably don’t believe in God any more than she does.  And I’ll wager that the larger division is not between believers and non-believers but between non-believers who take any mention of God to be proselytizing and those other non-believers who are willing to see the government historically, as the product of various traditions.

  The Ten Commandments are obviously religious, but until rather recently almost everything was.   It would be hard to cite very much serious writing before the Renaissance that was not in some way religious.  Certainly this calls for some leniency with regard to ancient texts. To ban two or three thousand years of thinking from the public square on the grounds that it predates the flowering of secularism, is to be willfully ignorant of the traditions that shaped our present condition.

  One gets the sense that Ms Downey views the Judeo-Christian tradition politically, as a sort of conspiracy got up to make her feel marginal in her disbelief, rather than as the historical parent of the government that protects her in it.  Liberal democracies come from the marriage of Judeo-Christian notions of individual dignity and the Greco-Roman notions of democracy, order and law. 

If the Ten Commandments were exclusively religious, if, for example, like the Hail Mary, they had no civic relevance, then certainly this plaque would be a violation.  But, as a seminal text in Western ethics, certainly it is of some interest to society.  Must it then be barred for, in effect, being a product of its time?

  The question is, can historical interest or cultural importance sometimes excuse religious content, especially in ancient texts where a modern neutrality would have been unthinkable?  Put abstractly, is every mention of God necessarily proselytizing, or coercive?  Further, is any idea disqualified if its provenance is Scriptural?   It seems illiberal for an intelligent society to be able to quote Lincoln or Robert Frost, but not, say, St. Matthew, if he has a pretty sentiment applicable to the commonweal.  And if Ms Downey et al are bothered by the mention of God in public spaces, they must be against the posting of the Declaration of  Independence.

Now, in the atheists’ defense, the Ten Commandments, true to their name, do indeed exhort. But are we to seriously imagine that the ordinary citizen, upon seeing these, feels compelled not to have false gods before Him and so on, as though  these were directives from the Court House, something akin to a very handsome No Smoking sign?  Or could we imagine that the ordinary citizen might look upon these and say, “Ah yes, the well-known Ten Commandments of Jewish and motion picture fame, erected by pious Christian ladies for our edification.”

  Ms Downey is correct that the Commandments’ text expressly rebukes her atheism, but it takes a rare sensitivity, given the age and historical importance of the document, and the now widespread acceptance of atheistic humanism, to see in this plaque a strategy of exclusion.  People of this sensitivity, who tend to resent history for not being modern, might well benefit from plaques that both teach history and invite reflection.  Such reflections remind us of the forces that shaped us and our position in the historical sweep.  Atheists might have some reason to reflect with pleasure on how much things have changed.  And, borrowing from the Preamble of the document they appeal to, they might count these opportunities for reflection among - pardon the expression - the blessings of liberty.