JD Vance rejects arguments against Texas' Ten Commandments law: 'Cultural element of Western civilization'
Comedian and podcast host Joe Rogan publicly criticized a Texas law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms during a conversation with Vice President JD Vance, who defended the practice as a reflection of Western cultural and legal heritage rather than an imposition of faith.
In a wide-ranging discussion that touched on everything from war to Jeffrey Epstein to UFOs, the “Joe Rogan Experience” episode released Wednesday saw Rogan ask the vice president about identity in politics by referring to far-left Texas state Rep. James Talarico, who has appeared on his show.
“One of the things that I think he has a really good point about, even though I know you're Catholic and you're very religious, putting the Ten Commandments in schools, I don't think is the right way to go,” Rogan said. He added that “even though [Talarico] believes in the Ten Commandments, if you're just only representing the Christian faith in these schools, you're forcing your religion into other people's lives and that this is going to push people away from Christianity rather than encourage them to pursue it.”
Vance acknowledged the argument against coercion but rejected the idea that posting the Commandments constitutes forcing religion.
“Yeah. I mean, I think you'd never want to force things on people. And I do, I think one of the core Christian contributions to Western civilization is the idea of freedom of religion,” Vance responded. “It's actually very much a Christian idea because you recognize the dignity of each individual. And part of recognizing that dignity is that each person has to find their own pathway to God. You can't force this on anybody. I don't think putting the Ten Commandments up in school is, like, forcing things on anybody.”
Rogan countered that in public schools, displaying one faith’s text raises questions of fairness. “But it's public schools. So I mean, if you're going to do that, why not put Buddhist scripture? Why not put, you know, Muslim stuff? You could make an argument why you should have a bunch of different religious tenets in schools.”
In response, Vance pointed to the presence of various historical and cultural documents in places like the U.S. Supreme Court, including depictions of Moses with the tablets and noted the broader law-giving traditions in Western civilization that draw from Jewish, Christian and even Muslim contributions. He contended that America’s founders were deeply influenced by Christian culture, even if not all were Christians themselves.
“Even if you're not a Christian, like, does seeing the Ten Commandments ... force religion on a non-Christian child? I mean, my argument would be no,” Vance said. He added that a non-religious student or one from another faith could still appreciate the commandments as “an important cultural element of Western civilization, which is the foundation of the classroom that I'm sitting in. And this idea that the law comes in is sort of above any man, even if you don't believe in God yourself.”
The vice president added that he believes at least eight of the Ten Commandments “are something that I would hope that everybody would agree with, even if they're not themselves religious.”
Vance, who is the first convert to Catholicism to serve as vice president of the U.S., wrapped up the topic by arguing that exposure to Christian or any other faith-based texts is not necessarily exclusionary. He said he “would not be offended if I sat in a classroom as a Christian or if my kids sat in a classroom as a Christian and saw, you know, a religious text that wasn't Christian on the wall. I would encourage them to see that ... as a learning experience to try to understand.”
Senate Bill 10, which requires the display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom in Texas, has faced legal challenges from secular and multifaith groups, though it was upheld in April by a narrow 9-8 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
Similar displays on government property have also sparked pushback from anti-religion groups, including a recent case in Rockwall County where officials rebuffed demands from the Freedom From Religion Foundation to remove a Ten Commandments monument from outside the historic courthouse.
