Placing a graven image of some holy image within a civic context--the grounds of a state Capitol, for example--is never a step that should be taken lightly, if at all. For it comes entirely too close to introducing a reference to the Divine within a profane context. Better to express our faith in Him without making a big production of it a la Cecil B. DeMille--or by producing some other epic production that might have more to do with our purposes than with His word.
Yes, there may be some exceptions to this cautious (and reverent) rule when it is acceptable to appeal for His help in some great cause, as in the Declaration of Independence or at other critical moment when we need all the help the Lord of Hosts can provide. As when a president of the United States takes his oath of office, or leads the nation into a war on which the future of the country depends. ("With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph--so help us God." --Franklin D. Roosevelt, December 8, 1941.) There may even be an acceptable form of civil religion that's more ceremony than sacrilege, more respectable than some kind of ersatz holiness.
All that is different from littering the grounds of another state Capitol, this time Arkansas', with still another gaudy monument of a religious (or maybe sacrilegious) nature. But you can always count on a state senator named Jason Rapert to embody poor public taste, whether the subject is holy matrimony or, in this case, the Decalogue.
Senator Rapert is our own contemporary William Jennings Bryan--only without Bryan's flashes of genuine eloquence. Here's the final touch to the senator's argument for erecting a graven image of the Ten Commandments on the grounds of the state Capitol: Since the funds to finance it will come from private contributions, "it does not cost the taxpayer any money." Oh, boy, this time Senator Rapert is proposing not just an Act of Grace, but cheap grace at that.
Editorial on 03/31/2015