Lawyer says it’s fair for Christians to discriminate because that’s what the Founders intended
It is fair for Christians to have the privilege of posting the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms because the nation’s Founders based the government on the Ten Commandments, a former Texas Congressman argued at the state Capitol April 29.
Matt Krause was in Austin to testify before the House Committee on Public Education, which was considering a Republican-sponsored bill to require posting the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom. Krause served as a member of the Texas House of Representatives from 2013 to 2023. He is currently the Precinct 3 County Commissioner in Tarrant County. But he was in Austin representing First Liberty Institute, a conservative legal advocacy group.
John Bryant
During his testimony, Krause was questioned by Rep. John Bryant, a Democrat from Dallas. Bryant asked Krause if forced posting of religious scripture would be fair to non-Christian students.
“The basic idea is whatever we pay for with our tax money, all of us together, that money is not used to raise up one person’s religion over another person’s religion,” Bryant said. Yet this bill requires every classroom to post the Commandments, “and the words come right out of the Christian-Jewish Bible, and half of them are talking about God or the Lord or making one reference or another to a deity.
“Now how do we ask non-Christians and Jews to pay taxes and nonreligious people to pay taxes to build a building and put our words, which I revere as much as you do, on the wall of that classroom and call that fair?”
Matt Krause
Krause replied: “It wasn’t our choice that the Founding Fathers used that document to build a lot of the foundational laws and structures and principles that we have. But that fact is inescapable as well. That’s what they used. And I think it’s good and it’s right for us to remind students of those foundations of law and those foundations of society that our country was built upon. And I think it’s good for them to remember that.”
This historical connection is often quoted by conservative evangelicals but is disputed by constitutional scholars.
Warren Throckmorton, a scholar who has researched and written extensively on Thomas Jefferson, said he wants to know where Krause finds such evidence.
“Matt Krause blames it on the Founders saying that they based the government on the Ten Commandments. I want to ask where did they do that? When did they do that? I don’t want to see Founders quotes about religion in some general sense. I want to see something linking the Ten Commandments with the Constitution. You will have a hard time finding it. In short, I do not believe Matt Krause or David Barton sitting beside him can back up those claims.”
Barton is a Christian nationalist who falsely teaches the United States was founded as a “Christian nation.”
