As I see states enacting laws to require religious education in public schools, I think of the history of trying to incorporate Christian philosophy in law. I’ve always wondered *which* Christian. The real answer, I expect, is everyone assumes it is their own. Good for garnering votes, but that’s going to make implementation dicey.

Obviously some sort of Reformationist Christianity (sorry Catholics!). But there’s a big difference between Lutheran, Southern Baptist, Mormon, Presebeterian, Mennonite, etc. And, yeah, they locked up the courts so what the Constitution says and what the authors meant probably don’t matter … But I like to throw Deist in there as a knod to the founding fathers.

My gut is it ends up being “left up to the states” generally. So Arkansas can be Southern Baptist, Maybe Catholics get Rhode Island (only like 40% of the population, but the next highest is Pentecostal at like 6%). In states like Ohio, religions are going to have to band together to get a majority — it’ll be like a coalition government in the UK. If we’re lucky, “I don’t want to live in a theocracy” will win a state or three.

We are either stuck with whatever religious edicts align with our region or we move. And the feds are just in charge of saying it’s not a violation of the Constitution when women wearing slacks gets banned in some state. For reasons. Really good, substantiated by history and text, reasons.

 

https://apnews.com/article/louisiana-ten-commandments-displayed-classrooms-571a2447906f7bbd5a166d53db005a62