Here's the commentary in whole. I know that's counter to the way we're suppose to post, but I just had this sent to me by a friend who knew I'd like it.

by Ian Wrisley - transcribed from: NPR's All Things Considered, March 29, 2005



Later this year, the Supreme Court issues a decision about government displays of the Ten Commandments. Defenders of the displays say that the Commandments are being displayed, not to endorse a religion, but to show their influence on the development of American law. Commentator and minister Ian Wrisley says neither argument makes him comfortable.



            Dorothy Sayers said that, it was a great mistake to present Christianity as something "charming" or popular. Maybe that's my problem with this whole Ten Commandments controversy. People who want the Commandments on government property are forced to argue that the Commandments belong there, precisely because they are not religious.

            They talk about the Commandments as a cultural, legal, historical document. This kind of thing might keep "God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, but only as an impotent artifact of history, not the Lord of history. It's a hollow victory. When the government adopts religious symbolism, it ought to scare the bejeebers out of people. Why? Because governments can't be trusted with metaphysics - that's why. When I was in the 8th grade, our principal said the Lord's Prayer over the loudspeaker every day. In his mind, it was just another way to control unruly adolescents. Communion with God lost out.

            When governments use religious symbols, they're NOT giving legitimacy to religion, they're using religion to prop up their own legitimacy. What's most confusing to me is that the people clamoring for religious symbols on government property are my fellow evangelicals.   It was, after all, the Baptists that needed Thomas Jefferson's assurance that the government would keep out of religion. His response to them gives us that great phrase, "...a wall of separation between church and state."

            The Baptists and the rest of us were protected from the encroaching hand of government. Two hundred years later, the evangelicals are asking the government to encroach! "Blasphemy", is a word we evangelicals don't use much anymore. It means to make secular, that which is sacred. Posting the Ten Commandments on government property is a case study in blasphemy. As a Christian, I find the commandments too sacred to be possessed by any government. If anything, the faithful belong to the Commandments, but that's another conversation...