I am a Baptist pastor in Texas, the mother of an elementary-school child and one of the plaintiffs in Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District, a lawsuit challenging a Texas law (SB-10) that requires public schools to post the Ten Commandments in every classroom across the state.
This week, I, along with more than two dozen other Texas families, asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear our case, reverse an appellate court decision upholding SB-10, and affirm our constitutional right to freely practice our faith without government intrusion.
Mara Richards Bim
From a theological and parenting perspective, there are too many concerns with Texas’ Ten Commandments law to discuss all of them here, but a couple of objections stand out.
The Texas version of the Ten Commandments
First, SB-10 mandates that schools display one specific, state-selected version of the Ten Commandments. The text is drawn from the King James Bible and is tied to a series of Ten Commandments monuments erected by Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille to promote his 1956 film starring Charlton Heston.
While the King James Version of the Ten Commandments may read poetically to some, it isn’t the most accurate translation of the biblical text. It’s also not the version used by many people of faith, my family included, in their regular religious practice.
Indeed, as a Baptist pastor, I believe the Texas version of the Ten Commandments is sacrilegious. It deletes whole phrases relevant to the commandments’ meaning and scope. For example, the commandment about keeping the Sabbath also directs that the faithful are to share their wealth and ensure that all people, animals and the land likewise benefit from rest. This commandment is a call to social and economic justice. Texas’ decision to simply erase this part of the text is more than a grammatical choice — it’s a theological one.
“I believe the Texas version of the Ten Commandments is sacrilegious.”
For the Christian faithful, this manipulation of Scripture is the textbook definition of blasphemy. Old Testament professor Matt Thomas reminded us of this fact in a recent article about the warning in Revelation 22:18-19: “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to them, God will add to that person the plagues described in this book; if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away that person’s share in the tree of life and in the holy city.”
Yet Texas politicians seem to think they know better than Christian Scriptures. This is precisely why government should not be giving any one biblical translation its stamp of approval and it certainly should not be forcing its preferred translation on public-school children.
Soul freedom under attack
Second, SB-10 is an affront to our soul freedom. For Baptists, “soul freedom” is essential to how we have expressed and practiced our faith for more than 400 years. Inspired by Roger Williams, who founded the first Baptist church in America, we believe faith is a personal choice to be made free from external pressures, including influence or coercion by the government. Imagining the church as the Garden of Eden and the world as the wilderness, Williams once warned that “a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world” would corrupt the church.
“Neither the government nor the church can mandate reverence for God.”
This metaphor — an early depiction of the separation of church and state — follows from the Bible: The biblical story from Genesis to Revelation is one of a sovereign and loving God inviting humans into relationship and humans either embracing or rejecting God’s call. Faith in God cannot be coerced. Neither the government nor the church can mandate reverence for God. Thus, Jesus never acted with coercion to gain followers. In fact, when he sent his disciples out, he told them if their message was rejected they should turn and leave and shake the dust from their feet.
SB-10 violates our soul freedom by imposing Texas’ version of the Ten Commandments on my child and others for nearly every hour of the school day, for their entire public education. The scriptural displays will be unavoidable: They must be a minimum size and posted in a “conspicuous” place, and the commandments must be legible to children no matter where they are seated. The displays are designed to convey that the state’s version of Scripture is authoritative, and they pressure students to fall in line with the state’s preferred brand of Christianity.
In one legislator’s words, SB-10 will help teach kids about “eternal life” and “eternity with God” so they will know that “when they die they had one birth, two deaths.” Another legislator said the law will teach students “that we keep our word — not just because we’re having a relationship with others but because God is watching.”
But it’s not for politicians to decide what my child or my family believes about God and religion. Scaring children into accepting the state’s version of Christianity because “God is watching” is manipulative and coercive, and it is contrary to the core Baptist belief that each person’s conscience is inviolable.
Enough is enough
I would not send my child to church to learn algebra; and I don’t send my child to public school to learn a government-mandated version of the Ten Commandments.
“I would not send my child to church to learn algebra.”
As a mother and a Baptist pastor, I could not stay silent in the face of this extreme law. It infringes our family’s constitutionally guaranteed right to practice our faith in the way we see fit. If SB-10 is allowed to stand, my family and faith community will spend years countering and trying to undo this violation of my child’s precious conscience.
Even though the Supreme Court previously struck down a law similar to SB-10 nearly 50 years ago, an appellate court recently ruled that SB-10 does not violate the Constitution’s religious-freedom protections. We’re asking the Supreme Court to step in and make clear that this decision was wrong. Religious liberty is a bedrock principle of our country because our Founders — and the Baptists who influenced them — understood that when government and religion are intertwined, religious oppression follows.
Mara Richards Bim serves as a Clemons Fellow with BNG and as the first Justice and Advocacy Fellow at Royal Lane Baptist Church in Dallas where she recently was ordained to the gospel ministry. She earned the master of divinity degree and a certificate in spiritual direction from Perkins School of Theology at SMU. She also is an award-winning theater artist and founder of the nationally acclaimed Cry Havoc Theater Company, which operated in Dallas from 2014 to 2023.