A Missouri Senate bill aims to require classrooms to display the Ten Commandments.
The bill, SB 594, says that the display must be “at least 11 inches by 14 inches in size, with the text of the Ten Commandments as the central focus in a large, readable font.”
Republican Sen. Jamie Burger, the bill’s sponsor, said of the legislation, “I think if you go in our older courthouses, older state buildings, older federal buildings, there’s scripture on every floor, on every wall, and talks about God and our model for the state, for the United States is in God we trust. So why not put our faith in God and display that for people to read.”
“I have no data to support this, but I feel like when prayer was taken out of school that the guns came into school, violence came into school,” Burger explained, as per KHQA. “Prayer doesn’t hurt anything. I think it’s beneficial and we need to return to that.”
Democrats have voiced opposition to the measure. “I am not comfortable for our nearly one million students who have a right to receive a free and quality public education in the state of Missouri to be forced into a classroom where the first thing that they see in that classroom is ‘I am the Lord thy God,’ followed by the 10 Commandments,” State Senator Maggie Nurrenbern said.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed a bill last year requiring every classroom in the state to display a copy of the Ten Commandments. A court later blocked the law, claiming it violated the First Amendment.
