Texas Senate advances school prayer, Ten Commandment bills

The Texas Senate on Tuesday advanced bills that would require public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments and allow districts to provide students with time to pray during school hours.

Senators gave final approval to Senate Bill 11, the school prayer bill, on a 23-7 vote. It now heads to the Texas House for consideration. All Republican senators and three Democrats — Royce West of Dallas, Judith Zaffirini of Laredo and Juan Hinojosa of McAllen — voted for the bill.

Lawmakers also gave initial approval to Senate Bill 10, the Ten Commandments bill, on a 20-10 vote. Both proposals are on Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s list of priority bills this session.

The votes are the latest sign of confidence by conservative Christians that courts will codify their opposition to church-state separation into federal law and spark a revitalization of faith in America.

That much was clear during the debate on the Senate floor Tuesday. Several Democrats criticized both bills, saying they would infringe on the religious freedoms of Texans who are not Christian.

“I think you’re expanding the role of our public education system to include matters that particularly conservatives have previously said is a private matter,” Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, said of the school prayer bill. The proposal references the Bible but does not specifically name any other religious texts.

Republican Sens. Mayes Middleton of Galveston and Phil King of Weatherford, who authored the bills, expressed confidence that their legislation would survive in the courts. Religious conservatives see recent court rulings as a sign that legislation putting more religion in public schools will survive legal challenges — though critics of these proposals aren’t so convinced.

“Our schools are not God-free zones. We are a state and nation built on ‘In God We Trust,’” Middleton said in a news release following Tuesday’s vote. “Litigious atheists are no longer going to get to decide for everyone else if students and educators exercise their religious liberties during school hours.”

Middleton also thanked President Donald Trump for “making prayer in public schools a top priority.”

Some Texas faith groups have expressed sharp opposition to both bills. In a letter directed to the Texas Legislature on Tuesday, 166 faith leaders in the state — including those from Sikh, Baptist, Jewish and Buddhist communities — called on lawmakers to reject the school prayer bill and similar legislation.

“We do not need to — and indeed should not — turn public schools into Sunday schools,” the letter wrote.

Similar arguments to those made on the Senate floor Tuesday were also echoed during a Senate committee hearing on March 4, as supporters and some lawmakers argued that the legislation would reverse what they see as decades of national, moral decline.

The vote comes amid a broader push by conservative Christians to infuse more religion into public schools and life. In just the last few years, state Republicans have required classrooms to hang donated signs that say “In God We Trust”; allowed unlicensed religious chaplains to supplant mental health counselors in public schools; and approved new curriculum materials that teach the Bible and other religious texts alongside grade-school lessons.

Last month, Texas senators also approved legislation that would allow public taxpayer money to be redirected to private schools, including parochial schools.

Those efforts have come as the Texas GOP increasingly embraces ideologies that argue America’s founding was God-ordained, and its institutions and laws should thus reflect fundamentalist Christians views. Meanwhile, GOP lawmakers and leaders have continually elevated once-fringe claims that the wall between church and state is a myth meant to obscure America’s true, Christian roots. The argument has been popularized by figures such as David Barton, a Texas pastor and self-styled “ amateur historian ” whose work has been frequently debunked by trained historians, many of them also conservative Christians.

Barton and his son, Timothy Barton, were both invited to testify in favor of the bills on the March 4 hearing. Citing old documents and textbooks that mention the Ten Commandments, they argued that Christianity is the basis for American law and morality, and that their inclusion in classrooms would prevent societal ill such as gun violence.

“It used to be there was a very clear moral standard that we could point to,” Timothy Barton testified, calling it “ironic” that children can be arrested for breaking the law — and thus, he said, the Ten Commandments — but that they should not be able to read them in schools.

Other bill supporters and lawmakers said that there was a moral and spiritual imperative to introduce children to Christianity. Sen. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, cited a study that found around 25% of children have been to church.

“It’s absolutely horrific, and something we all need to work on to address,” he said.

Other lawmakers similarly invoked declining Christian participation as a reason to support the bills. “There is eternal life,” said Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels. “And if we don’t expose or introduce our children and others to that, then when they die, they’ll have one birth and two deaths.”

Texas is one of 16 states where lawmakers are pursuing bills to require the Ten Commandments in classrooms — pushes that supporters say have been enabled by recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions. In 2019’s Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, for instance, the court ruled in favor of a Washington state football coach, Joe Kennedy, who argued that his employer, a public high school, was violating his religious rights by prohibiting him from leading prayers on the field after games.

Kennedy was among those who testified in support of the Texas bills on March 4. He was joined by Matt Krause, a former state House representative and current lawyer at First Liberty Institute, a Texas-based law firm that represented Kennedy and other high-profile plaintiffs in lawsuits that have allowed for more Christianity in public life.

The Kennedy case, Krause testified, was a “ huge paradigm shift ” that allowed for the Ten Commandments to be in classrooms because of its historical significance to American law and history. Asked about the recent court decision that blocked a similar Louisiana law, Krause said he expected the Texas bill would be upheld if it were taken to the ultraconservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and, after that, the U.S. Supreme Court.

The bills have been strongly opposed by religious history scholars and some Christian groups, who argue that they are based on mischaracterizations of early American history and amount to a coercion of religion upon students. Opponents also say that the Ten Commandments bill diminishes a sacred text by stripping it of its religious nature, and that introducing more Christianity into schools will exacerbate tensions and isolate Texas’ growing number of non-Christian students.

“Since 2021, this Legislature has used its authority to impose increasingly divisive policies onto school districts, banning culturally relevant curriculum, forcing libraries to purge undesirable books and putting teachers into the crosshairs of overzealous critics,” said Jaime Puente of the nonprofit Every Texan. The bills “are two giant pieces of red meat that will further harm our schools.”

Christian opponents also testified that the bills would erode church-state separations — a cause that has historically been championed by Baptists and other denominations that faced intense religious persecution in early America.

“All Baptists are called to protect the separation of church and state,” said Jody Harrison, an ordained minister and leader of Baptist Women in Ministry. “Is it really justice to promote one type of Christianity over all schoolchildren?”

Harrison’s comments were strongly opposed by Campbell, the senator. “The Baptist doctrine is Christ-centered,” she said. “Its purpose is not to go around trying to defend this or that. It is to be a disciple and a witness for Christ. That includes the Ten Commandments. That’s prayer in schools. It is not a fight for separation between church and state.”

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This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.