Back to School with Christian Nationalism
Why the classroom is becoming the front line in the push to merge faith and politics.
The new school year has always been a time when families focus on teachers, supplies, and schedules. This year, however, it’s also about what children will see hanging above their desks. In Texas, every public school classroom must now display the Ten Commandments in bold print, legible from anywhere in the room. In Oklahoma, the state has ordered schools to teach both the Bible and the Commandments as core instruction. These aren’t isolated quirks of local politics. They are coordinated efforts to fuse public education with a Christian identity that excludes as much as it includes.
Supporters frame these mandates as heritage. State officials argue that the Ten Commandments are foundational to law, morality, and Western civilization. “Students should know right from wrong,” Texas lawmakers insist. But that argument collapses under scrutiny. There is no single “Christian” version of the Commandments. Jewish and Catholic traditions number them differently, while Protestant renderings dominate legislation. For Jewish parents in Houston who have joined lawsuits against the law, this is not neutral moral education. It is one sect’s theology being presented as civic truth.
This is where the broader pattern becomes visible. Christian nationalism has always sought to make the classroom a battlefield for identity. If children can be taught that America itself rests on explicitly Christian foundations, then pluralism can be redefined as a threat rather than a strength. In that framing, civic belonging is conditioned on religious conformity.
The leaders advancing these laws are explicit about their goals. Oklahoma’s superintendent Ryan Walters has repeatedly declared that schools must return to “biblical foundations.” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton insists that the Commandments represent “our heritage” and has pledged to enforce the law statewide despite ongoing court battles. Some districts, like Conroe ISD, are already moving forward with displays despite a federal injunction. Groups like the Liberty Library Project and conservative women’s clubs are mobilizing private donations to ensure that every classroom has the mandated posters. This is not an afterthought. It is an organized movement.
Families and educators see what is happening. Muslim and Jewish students describe the sense of exclusion when their classrooms display another tradition’s sacred text as the standard for all. Parents have raised practical questions, like who should explain “adultery” to a third grader, but their deeper concern is about civic equality. If the walls of a public school declare that one faith is official, then students outside that faith learn that their belonging is conditional.
This moment fits a larger cultural and political trend. In Louisiana, a federal court blocked a nearly identical law last year, ruling it unconstitutional. But the setback has not stopped legislators in Texas, Oklahoma, and beyond from pushing similar bills. Christian nationalist thinkers see schools as the lever to reshape public life for generations. The Ten Commandments are not just about the text. They are symbols of who gets to define morality, authority, and order in a pluralistic democracy.
Opponents, from civil liberties groups to interfaith coalitions, argue that these laws are less about heritage than about power. They represent an attempt to collapse the distinction between religion and the state, with children as the proving ground. As Rabbi Joshua Fixler, one of the plaintiffs in the Texas lawsuit, put it: posting a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments in every classroom is like hanging a neon sign that flashes “non-Christians not welcome.”
This is what makes the trend so significant. It is not simply about local culture wars or symbolic gestures. It is about defining who belongs in America, one classroom at a time. When the state enforces one tradition as the moral baseline for all, democracy itself is reshaped.
This is the warning. If Christian nationalism can normalize itself through schools, spaces meant to belong to every child, it signals a future where the rules of belonging are written not by democratic consensus, but by theological decree.
Further Reading
A “preferred sect of religion:” Houstonians react to Texas’ new Ten Commandments school law — Houston Chronicle
How schools in Oklahoma are responding to a new Bible mandate — PBS NewsHour
Paxton presses forward on Ten Commandments law despite legal challenge — Houston Chronicle
Texas showdown: Legal battle looming over Ten Commandments in schools — Washington Post
Conroe ISD moves ahead with displays despite injunction — Houston Chronicle
Thanks for writing, Andy! This is great. Important to remember that there are even two ways to list the 10 commandments, presuming most of these mandates call for the Protestant/Orthodox listing vs. the Catholic/Lutheran version.