In late June, the Louisiana state legislature passed a law requiring all classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. Not to be outdone, Oklahoma’s elected state superintendent of public schools, Republican Ryan Walters, issued a directive requiring that states “incorporate the Bible, including the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support into the curriculum” across grades 5 through 12.
Christian conservatives such as Walters argue that the Bible was foundational to America’s origin story and directly shaped the design of the American government. In defending his proposal, Walters told CNN, ” We’re not going to allow the radical left to continue to push a false history on our kids that said that faith played no role.”
It is not surprising that efforts to promote religious content in America’s public schools have been spearheaded in these two states. My organization has found that whereas nationally three in 10 Americans can be categorized as Christian nationalist adherents or sympathizers, the percentage of Christian nationalists is significantly higher in Louisiana (45 percent) and Oklahoma (41 percent).