As the U.S. Supreme Court deliberates the issue of whether or not the Ten Commandments should be displayed on government buildings they do so sitting below a depiction of Moses holding the Ten Commandments.
As the debate rages it would do us well to remember that for generartions we have placed our hand on a Bible and swear to tell the truth if called upon to testify at trial.
The court might also consider words uttered by their predecessors:
John Jay, 1777
The first Chief Justice of the United States
"Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and the interest, of a Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."
James Wilson,
a signer of the Constitution and an original Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court
"Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is divine....Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other."
Justice Joseph Story
"The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance [approve of], much less to advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity [secularism], by prostrating [overcoming] Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects [denominations]..."
Justice Joseph Story
"There is not a truth to be gathered from history more certain, or more momentous, than this: that civil liberty cannot long be separated from religious liberty without danger, and ultimately without destruction to both. Wherever religious liberty exists, it will, first or last, bring in and establish political liberty."
Chief Justice John Marshall
In a letter to Jasper Adams, May 9, 1833
"The American population is entirely Christian, and with us Christianity and Religion are identified. It would be strange indeed, if with such a people, our institutions did not presuppose Christianity, and did not often refer to it, and exhibit relations with it."
Thomas Cooley
In his General Principles of Constitutional Law 1890
"It was never intended by the Constitution that the government should be prohibited from recognizing religion, or that religious worship should never be provided for in cases where a proper recognition of Divine Providence in the working of government might seem to require it... The Christian religion was always recognized in the administration of the common law of the land, the fundamental principles of that religion must continue to be recognized in the same cases and to the same extent as formerly."
Judge Gallagher
Baer v. Kolmorgen
The Supreme Court of New York 1958
"Much has been written in recent years...to "a wall of separation between church and State." ...It has received so much attention that one would almost think at times that it is to be found somewhere in our Constitution."
Justice William Rehnquist
Wallace v. Jafree 1985
"It is impossible to build sound consitutional doctrine upon a mistaken understanding of Constitutional history... The establishment clause had been expressly freighted with Jefferson's misleading metaphor for nearly forty years... There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the framers intended to build a wall of separation [between church and state]... The recent court decisions are in no way based on either the language or intent of the framers."
Justice William Rehnquist
"But the greatest injury of the "wall" notion is its mischievous diversion of judges from the actual intentions of the drafters of the Bill of Rights... The "wall of separation between church and State" is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned."
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