Metro Voice News Celebrating Faith, Family & Community
The Missouri Senate this week began debate on a groundbreaking bill that would require state public classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. National push for displays shows similar efforts across states. Under SB 594, classrooms would have to display a poster of at least 11 inches by 14 inches with the commandments in “large, easily readable font” beginning Jan. 1, 2026. The bill follows similar legislation introduced in the Missouri House (HB 34) by Rep. Hardy Billington, R-Poplar Bluff.
“I honestly believe that when prayer went out of schools and religion was removed from schools that guns came in and violence came in,” the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jamie Burger, R-Benton, said, according to KCUR radio.
Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, D- Kansas City, expressed concern about the costs of potential litigation. She also opposed the bill on principle. “This goes against the very founding of our nation,” she said.
Burger disagreed. “You know one thing, I think, when they talk about separation of church and state, I think they were talking about, we don’t want any church run by the state,” he said. “That’s my feeling. That’s my interpretation.”
Faith leaders testified both in support of and opposition to the bill, and people on both sides took issue with the version of the Ten Commandments included in the bill. Faiths that adhere to the Ten Commandments, including Judaism, Catholicism and Lutheranism, have different versions of it, so the bill would “take sides in a deeply theological debate,” said Brian Kaylor, a Baptist minister and president of Word & Way, an online publication. Parents challenge law in similar cases.
“This bill would make many students feel like second-class citizens in their own classrooms, just because they come from a religious tradition that lists the Ten Commandments differently, they adhere to a religious faith that does not even include the Ten Commandments, or they have no faith at all,” he said.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed a similar bill into law last year. A federal judge blocked the law in November, and the state appealed the court’s decision. The case is part of a broader national religious debate. In 1980’s Stone v. Graham decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar law in Kentucky violated the establishment clause of the First Amendment, which states “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” The constitutional questions remain complex. The Ten Commandments are currently displayed inside the U.S. Supreme Court building, where a frieze shows Moses holding tablets with Hebrew inscriptions of commandments 6-10.
Sen. Rick Brattin, a Republican from Harrisonville, who chairs the education committee, spoke at length in favor of the measure. He cited his belief that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation.
“We just need to be willing to plant that flag, that God and the God of the Ten Commandments, is who gave us this amazing nation, and we need to be able to reflect and look at that,” he said.
–Dwight Widaman
