Podcast host Joe Rogan, whose YouTube channel has more than 21 million subscribers, challenged a Texas law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms during a recent interview with Vice President JD Vance.
During Wednesday’s episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Rogan raised the issue while discussing political identity and referencing far-left Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a previous guest on the podcast.
“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 rejected the idea that displaying the Ten Commandments amounts to imposing Christianity on students, arguing instead that the text represents an important part of the West’s cultural and legal tradition.
“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 responded that displaying the teachings of only one religion in a public school could create concerns about equal treatment for other faiths.
“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.”
Vance pointed to historical and religious imagery found in institutions such as the U.S. Supreme Court, including representations of Moses holding the tablets. He also cited the broader legal traditions of Western civilization, which he said have been influenced by Jewish, Christian and Muslim thought.
“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.”
He said 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 added that he would not object to his children encountering the teachings of other religions in a classroom and would instead view the experience as an educational opportunity.
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.”
Texas Senate Bill 10 requires every public school classroom in the state to display the Ten Commandments. The measure has been challenged by secular and multifaith organizations but was upheld in April by a 9-8 ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
