Religious Freedoms In American Classrooms Hit Another Major Milestone In One State

Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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Arkansas took one big step closer to mandating the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom Monday, with the house approving SB 433 in a 71-20 vote.

SB 433 passed through Arkansas’ Senate just under a month ago, and advanced out of the House committee on April 2, according to Word and Way. The majority vote from the Republican-controlled House now sends the bill directly to the desk of Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders to be signed. (RELATED: Texas Senators Introduce Legislation To Bring Prayer, Ten Commandments To Public Schools)

Once signed, SB 433 mandates that schools throughout the state display a poster of the Ten Commandments in every classroom and teach the historical significance of the text to Arkansas students. One writer for the Arkansas Times argued that this means “readers in classrooms around the state will soon be asking their teachers what ‘adultery’ means,” which feels fairly harmless given the gender indoctrination happening in millions of other classrooms, particularly given that these words come directly from God.

Separation of Church & State Ended In 2022

In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-to-3 in favor of high school football coach Joseph Kennedy’s right to pray at the 5-yard line at the end of each game, claimed NPR.

“Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic. Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a personal religious observance, based on a mistaken view that it has a duty to suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination. Mr. Kennedy is entitled to summary judgment on his religious exercise and free speech claims,” wrote Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch at the time. (READ MORE: God’s Big Return To US Classrooms Could Happen In 2025)

The decision overturned a short-held legal precedent regarding the constitutionality of public religious displays. It’s believed the Ten Commandments were a prominent part of American education for almost three centuries prior to 1980, when the prior legal precedent was held against it. The first purely American educational textbook “New England Primer” was published by Benjamin Harris in Boston in 1690, featuring an in-depth section on the Ten Commandments.

In the context of American history, 45 years, from 1980 to 2025, without having the Ten Commandments in our education system doesn’t seem like a very long time, especially when you take into account it was part of our curriculum from at least 1690 to 1980 (that’s 290 years). But ask yourself: how do the last 45 years or so compare to the previous 290?

Contact Your Reps To Protect America’s Future

It seems like every time we at Million Voices speak to lawmakers and their teams, they all tell us the same thing: if just 10 people in their district write them letters about issues that matter to them, they know they have a serious crisis on their hands. A thousand people could message that same lawmaker via email or social media, and it would mean nothing. But hand-written, or even printed and signed letters, will make your politicians take action (if they really care about your vote, that is).

Contacting your representatives should be easy, but there are myriad ways they can ignore your messages. That’s where we come in. 

Yes, Million Voices helps you with voter guides. Yes, we send letters from YOU directly to your elected officials because it’s the only way to guarantee they’ll listen to you. Yes, we publish data, articles, text messages, and help bridge the gap between education and civic action. But what do you want? Tell us today.

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Join us in our mission to advocate for religious freedom, support fair and secure elections, and uphold the values that this great nation was built upon. Tell us what you want from the next four years, and we will fight to make it a reality … again!