The AHA has sent a letter to members of the Alabama State Senate opposing Senate Bill 166/HB 178, which would require Alabama public schools to display the Ten Commandments in US history classrooms. This legislation would “require schools to promote an oversimplified account of the American founding that does considerable disservice to the rich and compelling history of religion in our country,” the letter states. “The lawyers’ fees sure to result from passage of this bill would be much better invested in instructional materials and professional development opportunities for history and social studies educators across the state.”
Dear Senators,
The American Historical Association registers strong objections to House Bill 178 and its companion Senate Bill 166, which would require public schools across Alabama to display the Ten Commandments in US history classrooms. The amended text of HB 178 that passed out of the House would require schools to promote an oversimplified account of the American founding that does considerable disservice to the rich and compelling history of religion in our country.
Everything has a history, including efforts to display the Ten Commandments in public schools. The Supreme Court declared the core provisions of this bill unconstitutional more than 40 years ago. In Stone v. Graham (1980), the court struck down a Kentucky law to do exactly what HB 178 proposes. Further, when Louisiana enacted a bill (HB 71) along these lines last year, a federal judge almost immediately blocked its implementation. As such, the likeliest outcome of HB 178 would be prolonged litigation challenging settled constitutional precedent at significant expense to Alabama taxpayers. Is it worth it?
HB 178 serves no clear educational purpose. Writing for the majority in Stone v. Graham, Justice William J. Brennan observed that displaying the Ten Commandments should not be confused with integrating the history of Christianity into the school curriculum, writing that the “[p]osting of religious texts on the wall serves no such educational function.” More than a century of history pedagogy accords with this finding.
More alarmingly, the bill insists that schools present a caricature of the religious history of the United States under the title “Historical Truths.” HB 178 describes “The Ten Commandments” as “a key part of the Judeo-Christian religious and moral tradition that shaped Western Civilization and ultimately the founding of the United States,” as if any of the component claims in this statement represented the settled view of professional historians, legal scholars, and the US judiciary. This is not true, and Alabama students deserve history education that is accurate and consistent with professional standards.
The founders of the United States would not recognize the historical interpretation that this bill uses to explain their actions. They inhabited a world defined by denominational pluralism and in which theological differences were part of the fabric of daily life. The idea of a singular “Judeo-Christian tradition,” for instance, is a product of the cultural politics of the Cold War, when some Protestant Christians sought to include Catholics and Jews in a larger movement to counter the perceived cultural and political influence of nonbelievers. It is misleading and ahistorical to describe “Judeo-Christian values” prior to this period, let alone as a purportedly absolute and unchanging force in world history that inspired the founding documents of the United States.
The character and extent of the influence of the Christian Bible in the founding era has stimulated decades of thoughtful historical investigation. This legislation, rather than helping students participate in and learn from those conversations, inhibits their ability to understand the culture of revolutionary America and the early republic. Moreover, the bill’s intellectual framework imposes a rigid and dangerously undefined assertion about the Christian Bible’s “influence” into a Constitution famously lacking even any direct reference to the Bible or Christianity. Indeed, Article 6 specifically guarantees that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
The silence of the Constitution on religious matters beyond Article 6, and the provisions of the First Amendment guaranteeing no “establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise” did not go unnoticed in the republic’s earliest years. The 1796 treaty between the United States and Tripoli stipulated that the young nation’s government was “not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” Writing to Baptist supporters in Connecticut in 1802, Thomas Jefferson described the First Amendment protection of the free exercise of religion as “building a wall between church and State.”
The AHA agrees that it is important to address the comparatively limited coverage of religious history in public school curricula. But Alabama students deserve a fuller and richer account of the American founding than the cherrypicked examples invoked in HB 178. The spiritual beliefs and practices of Americans vary and change over time. The creative interaction of many different faiths and denominations is a defining feature of life in the United States. By insisting instead that a single Biblical text can stand in for the American political tradition, the bill misses opportunities to create space for wide-ranging, interesting classroom inquiry into the extent, character, and role of the Bible in a country awash with multiple Protestant, Jewish, traditional African, Catholic, Native American, and Islamic religious traditions.
We encourage you to consider wiser and more productive investments of state resources. The Alabama Department of Education recently revised the excellent Alabama Course of Study: Social Studies, among the best state academic standards in the country. These standards require teachers to discuss the history of the Bible and Christianity in a variety of contexts.
With more than 10,500 members, the AHA is the largest membership association of professional historians in the world. Founded in 1884 and incorporated by Congress in 1889 for the promotion of historical studies, the Association provides leadership for the discipline, helps to sustain and enhance the work of historians, and promotes the imperative of historical thinking in public life.
HB 178/SB 166 does disservice to the religious history of Alabama and the United States. We encourage you to set it aside. The lawyers’ fees sure to result from passage of this bill would be much better invested in instructional materials and professional development opportunities for history and social studies educators across the state.
Sincerely,
James R. Grossman
Executive Director