From the Salmon

Well, the Ten Commandments are making news again. The Supreme Court heard arguments today regarding whether or not it’s constitutional for displays of the Ten Commandments to appear on government property.

I can’t say that I really have a dog in this fight. I don’t find the displays terribly objectionable, but I don’t know that I’d fight that hard to make the case that they belong on government property. As I read about the case today, I was interested to find that in the instance of the Texas monument, it was one of hundreds of such monuments constructed throught the country in the 1950s by the Fraternal Order of Eagles. A quick search of the FOE (seriously, couldn’t they come up with a less ominous acronym?) website turned up a little history behind the genesis of these monuments:

The F.O.E. began its Ten Commandments program in 1951, thanks to Judge E.J. Ruegemer of St. Cloud, Minnesota, member of local Aerie 622, past Grand Aerie officer, member of the Eagle Hall of Fame and onetime chairman of the Eagles National Commission on Youth Guidance. Appearing in Judge Ruegemer’s court one day was a teenager charges [sic] with auto theft. When Judge Ruegemer asked if he realized he had broken the Ten Commandments, the young defendant said he had never even heard of them. The judge promptly sentenced him to learn and live by them, and the boy was never in trouble again.

At Judge Ruegemer’s behest, Minnesota Eagles sponsored the distribution of copies of the Ten Commandments to state courtrooms for the guidance of defendants. The State Aerie adopted the program in 1951, and it grew so rapidly in popularity that the Grand Aerie soon enthusiastically got behind it at the national level.

When famous Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille, then making the movie “The Ten Commandments,” heard about it, he contacted Judge Ruegemer about having granite monoliths engraved with the Ten Commandments and placing them in courthouse squares, at city halls and in public parks around the country.

Micah at McCarty Musings has already written an amusing take on these monuments as movie promotions (also, he refers to the commandments as the “Big 10,” which makes me smile). So I won’t dwell on the delicious absurdity of that aspect of this story.

But I will say that, while I’m fairly neutral regarding the monuments themselves, it seems to me that Eagle Hall of Famer Ruegemer’s courtroom manner was out of place. I’m by no means a legal scholar, but the fact that the teenager happened to break the Ten Commandments at the same time he was violating federal or state law seems irrelevant. And if you can’t make a compelling case for why auto theft is illegal without turning to the Big 10, I’m not sure you should be banging a gavel.

Ultimately, the more I read about this story, the more I was reminded of something Kurt Vonnegut wrote last year in In These Times:

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

“Blessed are the merciful” in a courtroom? “Blessed are the peacemakers” in the Pentagon? Give me a break!

That’s all. What, like I’m gonna improve on Vonnegut?

Update: Looks like Richard Mouw is thinking along the same lines. However, while I merely made the connection between the Court case and Vonnegut, Mouw takes that connection into modest proposal territory. Which is one of the innumerable reasons why he is Richard Mouw and I am not. (Via Jesus Politics)