Mike Pence, The 10 Commandments, and the Republican Party
"Either the United Sates Shall Kill Racism, or Racism Shall Kill the United States," S. Jonas (Aug., 2018)
In a fundraising email letter dated August 7, 2023, former Vice-President Mike Pence and presently hopeless candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination for 2024 --- perhaps the central figure in the saving of U.S. Constitutional Democracy in the face of the Trump Insurrection on Jan 6, 2021 (although if he had given in to the totally un-Constitutional "give us ten days" [to rig the election] proposal of Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, even Justice Roberts' Supreme Court would not have allowed that) --- said:
"America has lost her way, but I believe returning to God and the Constitution [his emphasis in the original text] will reinvigorate the American Dream and together, we can rediscover America's promise."
Now that is a very interesting statement, on a number of levels. First, if "America has lost her way," I wonder to whose leadership, in person and in Party, he might be referring. Second, "returning to God and the Constitution." In reference to the latter, as it happens neither the words "God," nor "Christian," nor "Christianity" appear anywhere in the Constitution or are even alluded to. The word "Religion" does appear of course, but in the exclusionary sense, as in the "no religious test" provision of Article VI --- "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States" --- and the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." So, under the Constitution there is no way that "America" can "return to God," at least in the Constitutional sense, because it didn't start out there (and didn't make any Constitutional "God stops" along the way, either).
Indeed, there are several groups of people in the United States to whom this observation is of central importance. First there are the atheists, like myself, the agnostics, and the theists (many of them) who believe that religion has no place in the affairs of government (as in the banning of abortion on the "life-begins-at-the-moment-of-conception-or-near-it" belief that is always religious in nature). Second, regardless of which group one is in, one has to wonder exactly what the former V-P means by "returning to God." Let us hope that as an Evangelical Christian, he doesn't mean solely the discipline's concept of "God" or, even more broadly the generalized "Christian" concept of God.
As it happens, across its many disciplines there are certain commonalities, even though since what became "Christianity" began to form in the first century C.E., various sub-groups of Christians killed each other in truly appalling numbers right into the 17th century (see The 30 Years War which, while it ended as a political one, began as a --- nominally at least --- religious one). And then of course in this country, there are the Muslims, the Jews, the Hindus, the native religions, and so on and so forth. So, to simplify things, where might one find some commonalities, at least among the Judeo-Christian grouping?
Well, one could turn to the Ten Commandments: "According to the Book of Exodus in the Torah, the Ten Commandments were revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai, told by Moses to the Israelites in Exodus 19:25 and inscribed by the finger of God on two tablets of stone kept in the Ark of the Covenant." (Or, as Mel Brooks told us, as he brings the Ten Commandments carved in marble down a mountain to a group of waiting nomads-in-the-desert in "The 2000 Year-old Man," [at least I think that it was in that sketch] --- "God gave me 20, but I dropped 10 on the way down. Be happy.")
This gives us some commonality, at least among the various of Christian and Jewish sub-disciplines. For Jews, there are actually five of them (yes, Mike, "religion" is a complicated thing): Orthodox (with numerous sub-sets --- see Israel, and Williamsburg, Brooklyn, N.Y.), Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, and Secular Humanist (that's mine). There are, of course, several versions of each of them. There are many versions of the 10 Commandments (see the reference at "Terminology.") Here is one of the commonly used ones:
The Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2-17 NKJV)
1. "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.
2. "You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My Commandments.
3. "You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.
4. "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
5. "Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you.
6 "You shall not murder.
7. "You shall not commit adultery.
8. "You shall not steal.
9. "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10. "You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's."
OK, Mike, just a few comments about "returning to God," as referred to in your letter. (We shall leave the matter of how Mike thinks the U.S., and in particular which parts of the "U.S.," have "turned away from God," for another time. We shall also leave for another time just how doing so, in Mike's sense of the meaning of the term, would benefit the nation as a whole, and all of us individuals in it.)
Before getting into the details, I will say that I have for a long time regarded the Ten as a remarkable document, whether it was "handed down by God," or was created by a group of self-educated peasants/nomads whose place of the living at the time they were written down was somewhere in the Sinai Desert. There were written codes of conduct before it came into existence, see "The Code of Hammurabi." But they were always "handed down," by rulers. This one was "handed up," in my non-theistic view, by people who wrote it to attempt to control their own conduct.
And so, let us take a look at some of the details, in the context of Mike's concept of "returning to God." As for the First Commandment, how does it relate to those of us who don't believe in God, or "God?" As for the second, the "graven image" thing has become irrelevant. In a variety of modern religions there are graven images (or two-dimensional ones) of "God" or his (or hers, or its or theirs --- see Hinduism), all over the place). As for the third, oops, Mike, I think that you had better start at home, with certain members of your own party, who curse others all the time, maybe not explicitly, but then by intent. As for the Sabbath --- ah, the sabbath.
"Honor your father and mother" is certainly a good one, one of the set that can be accepted by any member of any religion. Then we come to murder. Not doing it is good idea, of course, but Mike, your party is just making it easier and easier [e.g., the virtual end of gun control], as we see all across the country, every day. (I do not have to go into the details of how that is being accomplished here, to be sure.) Then comes adultery. Ooops! See your current Party Leader.
As for the Eighth (Thou Shalt not Steal), if it hadn't had been you (and credit must be given where credit is due), then who? You (advised by Dan Quayle, of all people [!?!]) played a major role in preventing the leader of your Party from doing precisely that --- stealing the election --- in 2020. And now he is the likeliest Repub. candidate (at least as of now) for 2024. Not much of a "return to God" (much less the Constitution) there.
As for the false witness provision, again before telling everyone else to abide by it (and it is a very good idea, one which I have tried to abide by religiously --- oops, I mean rigorously ---for my whole life), check out the leadership of your own party. As for #10, I am not going into details here.
So why have I gone through this litany, seriously? For several reasons. First, and most importantly, according to the Constitution, "God" and religion have no place in civil life in this country. But, as is VERY well-known, it is Mike's party which is hell-bent-for-leather to place them right in the center of U.S. governance: e.g., the religious-belief-based illegalization of abortion. And then, in this country, there are many different visions/versions of God (or in Hindu terms, gods), or, in the case of people like me, Not God. So, Mike, I suggest that you go back to the drawing board for the design of your central belief/concept of just what would be best for our nation, moving forward.