Whose Bible?

In Defense of Religious Pluralism

May 30, 2025

The Texas legislature has passed a bill that forces me to return to an issue I have already addressed here and here: law, politics, and religion in America. As the Washington Post reported this week, “Texas lawmakers are close to passing a bill to require public schools to exhibit the Ten Commandments in classrooms starting this fall, a victory for the religious right that critics say blurs the line between church and state.”

This follows the 2024 Texas Republican Party platform plank stating “We support affirmation of God, including prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments being returned to our schools, courthouses, and other government buildings.” Louisiana and Oklahoma too have sought to institute similar requirements.

And the 2024 national Republican Platform was quite specific in this regard. In its Chapter Nine, Item 3, it states:

“We are the defenders of the First Amendment Right to Religious Liberty. It protects the Right not only to Worship according to the dictates of Conscience, but also to act in accordance with those Beliefs, not just in places of Worship, but in everyday life. Our ranks include men and women from every Faith and Tradition, and we respect the Right of every American to follow his or her deeply held Beliefs. To protect Religious Liberty, Republicans support a new Federal Task Force on Fighting Anti-Christian Bias that will investigate all forms of illegal discrimination, harassment, and persecution against Christians in America.”

Yet this position forgets an essential feature of our system of government: your right to religious freedom does not include either a right to impose your religious beliefs on me (and vice versa) or a right to use government to advance your religious beliefs. Therefore, preventing you from doing so is neither a violation of your religious freedom nor an act of anti-Christian bias.

Religious pluralism in the United States is a fact. The question is, do we respect and protect it, or do we attempt to eliminate it (good luck with that)?

The Pew Research Center’s latest, invaluable Religious Landscape Survey details American religious pluralism:

62% of U.S. adults identify as Christians:

· Evangelical Protestant: 23%

· Mainline Protestant: 11%

· Historically Black Protestant: 5%

· Catholic: 19%

· Latter-day Saint (Mormon): 2%

· Orthodox Christian: 1%

· Jehovah's Witness: <1%

· Other Christian: 1%

7% of U.S. adults identify with other religions.

· Jewish: 2%

· Muslim: 1%

· Buddhist: 1%

· Hindu: 1%

· Other world religions: <1%

· Something else: 2%

29% of U.S. adults identify as religiously unaffiliated.

· Atheist: 5%

· Agnostic: 6%

· Nothing in particular: 19%

Who, though, owns the term “Christian”? Leaving aside non-Christian religions and people that are religiously unaffiliated, there are substantial differences among Christian religions. Religious pluralism exists not only between these major traditions but within them as well.

Those identifying as Protestant subdivide, according to this study, into quite a number of individual religious traditions: Baptist, Nondenominational Protestant, Pentecostal, Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Restorationist, Episcopalian, Holiness, Congregational, Reformed, Adventist, Anabaptist, Pietist, Friends, and others.

The differences at issue among these Protestant denominations are meaningful—and of course we cannot forget the history of Protestant-Catholic tensions. According to a 2015 Cato Institute article, “[m]any Protestants doubted that Catholics could be truly American.” With particular relevance to the current Texas statute at issue, the article goes on to state:

“Pennsylvania created its first real public school system in 1834. Like most schools of the day, the Bible featured prominently in instruction. Yet, this raised the question: which Bible? Protestants and Catholics use different versions of the Bible. For Protestants, it was a religious act to read the Bible in public schools; for Catholics it was a form of Protestant sectarianism.” (I previously discussed the question of whose Ten Commandments here.)

For another example, in Judaism there is no such thing as the Old Testament—that term presupposes that it’s a text that has been superseded by a New Testament. Christian faiths may believe that, but Judaism does not. So, whose Bible? And of course, I haven’t even addressed the various religious texts of other western and non-western faith traditions.

What this means, in brief, is that for us to live peacefully with the ineradicable fact of religious pluralism in our country, government may not take a position, nor do anything that amounts to taking a position, on the truth or worth of religion, religious belief and values, or religious practices. While you’re entitled to discuss your faith with anyone and even to attempt to persuade someone that yours is the true faith that everyone should adopt, you are NOT entitled to use the power of the state—i.e., government—to aid you in that project.

The various proposed laws in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and elsewhere violate this principle and with it, I suggest, the Establishment Clause.

Therefore, the fundamental question is this: is the American political order itself a religious community—Christian Nationalism appears to be a conservative Protestant version of this view, while what is called integralism (see here and here) is a conservative Catholic version—or does the American political order allow for and encourage the existence of particular religious communities without being a religious community itself?

Openness to the fact of religious pluralism is a delicate norm. Don’t let militant “religionists” trample it. Using the words of the Republican platform, I suggest that they do NOT “respect the Right of every American to follow his or her deeply held Beliefs.” By endorsing particular religious beliefs, they disserve all religions.