It is fair for Christians to have the privilege of posting the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms because the nation’s Founders based the government on the Ten Commandments, a former Texas Congressman argued at the state Capitol April 29.
Matt Krause was in Austin to testify before the House Committee on Public Education, which was considering a Republican-sponsored bill to require posting the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom. Krause served as a member of the Texas House of Representatives from 2013 to 2023. He is currently the Precinct 3 County Commissioner in Tarrant County. But he was in Austin representing First Liberty Institute, a conservative legal advocacy group.
John Bryant
During his testimony, Krause was questioned by Rep. John Bryant, a Democrat from Dallas. Bryant asked Krause if forced posting of religious scripture would be fair to non-Christian students.
“The basic idea is whatever we pay for with our tax money, all of us together, that money is not used to raise up one person’s religion over another person’s religion,” Bryant said. Yet this bill requires every classroom to post the Commandments, “and the words come right out of the Christian-Jewish Bible, and half of them are talking about God or the Lord or making one reference or another to a deity.
“Now how do we ask non-Christians and Jews to pay taxes and nonreligious people to pay taxes to build a building and put our words, which I revere as much as you do, on the wall of that classroom and call that fair?”
Matt Krause
Krause replied: “It wasn’t our choice that the Founding Fathers used that document to build a lot of the foundational laws and structures and principles that we have. But that fact is inescapable as well. That’s what they used. And I think it’s good and it’s right for us to remind students of those foundations of law and those foundations of society that our country was built upon. And I think it’s good for them to remember that.”
This historical connection is often quoted by conservative evangelicals but is disputed by constitutional scholars.
Warren Throckmorton, a scholar who has researched and written extensively on Thomas Jefferson, said he wants to know where Krause finds such evidence.
“Matt Krause blames it on the Founders saying that they based the government on the Ten Commandments. I want to ask where did they do that? When did they do that? I don’t want to see Founders quotes about religion in some general sense. I want to see something linking the Ten Commandments with the Constitution. You will have a hard time finding it. In short, I do not believe Matt Krause or David Barton sitting beside him can back up those claims.”
Barton is a Christian nationalist who falsely teaches the United States was founded as a “Christian nation.”
Bryant said Krause and Barton had religious motivations for wanting the Commandments posted.
Krause replied: “No, as a constitutional attorney, what I want to see is a restoration of … the expressions that we used to have in this country that we lost in 1980 by a flawed test and a bad opinion by the Supreme Court. I want to get us back that status quo ante that we had for 1789 to 1980. We should get back to that because I think that was well and good.”
Bryant countered: “With all due respect, I’m not buying that. I’m thinking about the people I represent. I represent 200,000 people like everybody else up here. Just take them. I’ve got every kind of person in my district. We have schools where there’s 20 languages that are spoken there and they’re trying to get everybody to speak in English. They’re coming from all over the world, or their parents did. They’re Americans. We have people been here generations and generations that are not Christians and Jews. And you’re asking us to put Christian and Jewish language on the wall of classrooms that they paid for. That’s not fair, and that’s not American.”
Krause replied: “We’ll have to agree to disagree.”
Warren Throckmorton
Throckmorton sees this as indicative of the disagreement between evangelical advocates like Krause and Barton and the rest of the nation.
“David Barton and Matt Krause have been on a prolonged mission to elevate Christianity to a favored status in American culture and America’s schools,” he said. “They are using faulty history to privilege Christianity over the religions of their fellow citizens. If the Founders wanted to privilege Christianity, why did they keep Christian language out of the Constitution, insert a clause prohibiting a religious test for office, and then amend the law of the land to prohibit the establishment of any religion?”
Earlier, both Krause and Barton testified before the Texas Senate Committee on Education. In that April 5 testimony, the duo was joined by Sen. Phil King, sponsor of the Ten Commandments bill.
King argued his bill is legally feasible because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. That is the highly contested case in which the court ruled narrowly in favor of a high school assistant football coach who wanted to conduct prayer times at the 50-yard line after games.
“This would be a good healthy step for Texas to bring back this tradition of recognizing America’s religious heritage,” King said, calling the Commandments “a fundamental foundation of America and Texas law.”
Krause then praised the Supreme Court for paving the way for this moment.
“The law has undergone a massive shift. … We think there can be a restoration of faith in America, and we think getting the Ten Commandments on these walls is a great way to do that. Not only do we think it’s a good thing, but it’s constitutional and legal as well, thanks to the Kennedy decision.”
Barton told the Texas Senate committee: “It’s hard to say that anything is more traditional in American education than the Ten Commandments.”
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