Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.
The bill mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in Texas classrooms has been rendered inactive as it did not receive a vote by the House prior to a critical Tuesday night cutoff.
Senate Bill 1515 sailed through the Texas Senate on party-line votes last month and received initial approval from a House committee on May 16, but it was among dozens of bills that didn’t get a House floor vote before the midnight deadline.
The proposed legislation mandated that all public school classrooms should exhibit the Ten Commandments, with dimensions of no less than 16 inches in width and 20 inches in height. Additionally, the text should be displayed in a legible size and typeface, ensuring it can be easily read by individuals with average vision from any location within the classroom.
Democrats in both chambers had fiercely opposed the idea, saying it would be an insult to non-Christian Texans and an attempt to erode the separation of church and state. The legislation was the latest in an ongoing push by conservative Christians to center public life around their religious views. This session, lawmakers have called church-state separation a “false doctrine” as they push legislation that has concerned non-Christian groups, including a bill to allow unlicensed religious chaplains to work in Texas schools. That legislation has been supported by figures that have also endorsed using school chaplains as a tool for evangelism.
Christian groups have been emboldened by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that they believe have shown a blueprint for injecting Christianity into public education, though some experts have raised questions about the constitutionality of the Ten Commandments bill because it could be seen as an endorsement of one religion over another.
In the context of a growing acceptance of Christian nationalism on the right, the bill has been introduced. Christian nationalism is the belief that the establishment of the United States was divinely ordained and that its systems and regulations should prioritize Christianity. A recent survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute revealed that more than half of Republicans either adhere to or sympathize with the notion of the U.S. being an exclusively Christian nation. Alarmingly, approximately half of these individuals also expressed support for an authoritative leader who would ensure Christianity’s dominance in society. Scholars have identified significant links between Christian nationalist convictions and opposition to immigration, racial equality, and religious diversity.
Christian nationalist views have been pushed for decades by prominent Texas Republicans, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and David Barton, the widely debunked amateur historian who has spent nearly four decades arguing that church-state separation is a “myth.”
Barton, the individual who established WallBuilders, played a significant role as a witness advocating for the Ten Commandments bill. He, along with others, firmly believed that this legislation would reintroduce moral values into Texas classrooms and serve as a deterrent against various societal issues, ranging from school shootings to the increasing acceptance of LGBTQ rights.
Claims similar to these have been made by conservative Christians in Texas to support their endeavors of integrating their religion into the public sphere. This has been witnessed in discussions surrounding the chaplains bill as well as a bill in 2021 that mandated Texas classrooms to exhibit donated signs displaying “In God We Trust.”
After the passage of that bill, a North Texas school district rejected signs in Arabic that were donated by a local parent while allowing English versions that were provided by Patriot Mobile, a Grapevine-based conservative cellphone company that has funded numerous Christian nationalist campaigns in the state, including anti-LGBTQ school board candidates.
Leaders of the State Board of Education have also supported such moves: Last week, The Texas Tribune reported that Julie Pickren, a far-right Christian who was elected to the SBOE last year, has spoken in favor of using unlicensed chaplains to put God in Texas schools. Pickren’s comments came in a speech to the National School Chaplain Association, of which she and her husband are board members. The association has been instrumental in the push to put chaplains in schools and has direct ties to another group, Mission Generation, that has supported the use of chaplains to evangelize to children.
Tickets are on sale now for the 2023 Texas Tribune Festival, happening in downtown Austin on Sept. 21-23. Get your TribFest tickets by May 31 and save big!