The Roanoke Times reports that the Giles County School Board has voted to remove a display of the Ten Commandments from a school building, following a complaint by a student who claimed that the display created a government endorsement of religion.
The board has instead chosen to replace the display with a copy of a page from a history textbook. That image does mention the Ten Commandments in conjunction with American government and morality, but are represented by a pair of tablets. The tablets appear along with pictures portraying Greco-Roman, Enlightenment, and English Parliamentary roots of the American democratic process.
Later this month, mediation sessions will be held in a lawsuit in which a student at Narrows High School is asking that the commandments be taken down. The suit was actually filed last year, and it is still unclear how the change in the display will impact the mediation sessions.
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The board has instead chosen to replace the display with a copy of a page from a history textbook. That image does mention the Ten Commandments in conjunction with American government and morality, but are represented by a pair of tablets. The tablets appear along with pictures portraying Greco-Roman, Enlightenment, and English Parliamentary roots of the American democratic process.
Later this month, mediation sessions will be held in a lawsuit in which a student at Narrows High School is asking that the commandments be taken down. The suit was actually filed last year, and it is still unclear how the change in the display will impact the mediation sessions.
Follow Pagan/Wiccan on Twitter or Join Me On Facebook.
Hmmm…….Am I missing something? . The impression I’m getting is that the message is now “See? It says so right here in this book that we ARE a Christian nation”. I’m not quite sure how the new display in an improvement. It still smacks of government endorsed Christianity. I’m guessing that the kid who complained in the first place is not going to be fooled by this!
on that same note is a teacher allowed to have the 10 commandments hanging up in a class room?
sometimes, as Pagans, I think we need to use some tolerance if we expect tolerance from others. We have to think what is the real reason for the 10 Commandments being posted there. All my childhood, I was taught that the USA was founded on Freedom of Religion, and I have to have tolerance.
Pagans were here long before any other religion and had a lot to do with the founding of some of the other religions, both good and bad. As I see it only an Atheist would be against the use of the 10 Commandments it the way stated above. But the above statement leaves out some of what I would need to know to make a decision on if I should be offended by the Commandment.
The Ten Commandments shouldn’t be hung up in a public school anyway. I have noticed that within the past ten years there has been several violations to the separation of church and state within the school systems. I was fairly certain that the guidelines issued in 1995 by the then Secretary of Education to all public schools in the nation stated clearly that such things were not prohibited in public schools. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like they violated that mandate.