By Jacob Bembry
Greene Publishing, Inc.
The Ten Commandments Monument, which sat on private property for a couple of weeks at the Busy Bee at the corner of US 90 and Highway 53, now sits on private property across the street from the Madison County Courthouse. They are located on property just east of the Courthouse and north of the post office next to the building, housing Owens Propane.
In June 2010, fearing lawsuits, the Madison County Commission ruled 3-2 against allowing the monument to be placed on the Courthouse lawn.
A quote attributed to James Madison, the fourth President of our country, one of the authors of the Constitution and the man who Madison County was named for, reads, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves … according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
Some have contended that President Madison never made the statement because it cannot be found in any of his writings, while others believe that it could have been transcribed from one of Madison’s speeches.
Madison, known as “the Father of the Constitution,” believed in the Christian system of morality. He wrote that people who lived outside a Christian set of standards “live in darkness” because the other systems were “false religions.”
Whether one is Jewish, Christian, Muslim (the Koran has a list of commandments almost exactly the same as the Ten Commandments) or any other religion, the rules provide a great standard of living that everyone should strive toward.
