Commandments displayed

To the editor:

In response to "Making problems" in Speak Out, I received this in an e-mail just last week:

Did you know? As you walk up the steps to the U.S. Supreme Court you can see near the top of the building a row of the world's lawgivers facing one in the middle who is facing forward. It is Moses holding the Ten Commandments. As you enter the Supreme Court courtroom, the two huge oak doors have the Ten Commandments engraved on each door. As you sit inside the courtroom, you can see on the wall right above where the justices sit a display of the Ten Commandments. There are Bible verses etched in stone all over the federal buildings and monuments in Washington, D.C.

James Madison, the fourth president, known as "The Father of Our Constitution," made the following statement: "We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

Patrick Henry, that patriot and Founding Father of our country said: "It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians, not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ."

Every session of Congress begins with a prayer by a paid preacher, whose salary has been paid by the taxpayers since 1777.

JODY BURGESS, Jackson