Cecil B. DeMille's Campaign for a Godly Culture
By _Rev. Mark H. Creech_
(http://www.christianpost.com/author/rev-mark-h-creech/) , Christian Post
Columnist
September 9, 2013|6:05 am
Few matters have initiated more litigation in the courts than the presence
of Ten Commandments monuments and other displays of the Decalogue across
the country located on public property. The presence of most of these is the
result of a joint campaign by the Fraternal Order of Eagles, working with
Hollywood Royalty and movie-magnate, the late great Cecil B. DeMille. Today
the radical left has erroneously argued these displays are an
unconstitutional violation of the "separation of church and state" and
disparage them as
nothing more than a publicity stunt by DeMille to hype his movie at the
time, The Ten Commandments, staring Charlton Heston. But if DeMille's motives
were purely carnal, then his history with the film certainly didn't show
him acting like it.
According to Bruce Feiler's research in his book, America's Prophet: Moses
and the American Story, DeMille was working to counter the direction of
the times. He writes:
"The undermining of the central plank of American life that began in the
late nineteenth century did not abate in the early decades of the twentieth
century. Even as World War I triggered a temporary surge in faith, and
Darwinism and other forms of modernity led to the blossoming of
fundamentalism,
the Bible continued to recede as the ultimate source of authority in
contemporary life. Americans attended church in extraordinary numbers and
espoused a near universal belief in God, but they relied less on the Bible as
the
chief source of public rhetoric. By the close of the 1930s, one scholar
wrote, Americans had grown accustomed to using 'a secular rather than
theological vocabulary when issues really seemed worth arguing about.'" [1]
Feiler also notes DeMille was born on August 12, 1881, to Henry DeMille who
was an Episcopal lay minister and playwright from North Carolina. DeMille,
with affection, could remember his father teaching Bible classes in their
home every Sunday and reading a chapter from the Old and New Testaments
each night. He got the idea for the movie, "The Ten Commandments," from a
contest Paramount Pictures held to solicit subjects and stories for film. An
oil manufacturer wrote in and suggested a tribute to biblical values, saying,
"You cannot break the Ten Commandments – they will break you." DeMille
stated the idea resonated deeply with him. "Here was a theme that stirred and
challenged me in the heritage of being Henry DeMille's son," he said, "a
theme that brightened memories of his reading the Bible aloud to us and
teaching his sons that the laws of God are not mere laws, but are the Law."
[2]
Feiler rightly argues that DeMille's purpose for the movie was to try and
reclaim the importance of a strong cultural morality in America, even
recalling the film's opening card that read:
"Our modern world defined God as a 'religious complex' and laughed at the
Ten Commandments as OLD FASHIONED. Then, through the laughter, came the
shattering thunder of the World War. And now a blood drenched, bitter world –
no longer laughing – cries for a way out. There is but one way out. It
existed before it was engraven upon Tablets of Stone. It will exist when stone
has crumbled. The Ten Commandments are not rules to obey as a personal
favor to God. They are fundamental principles without which mankind cannot
live
together." [3]
It should be remembered that DeMille did two productions of "The Ten
Commandments," the first filmed in black and white as a silent picture during
the rise of the immorality of the roaring twenties (1923), and the second epic
in color featuring Charlton Heston at a period when the Cold War (1956)
was heating up. Soviet Russia was a godless communist state and its atheistic
system was threatening to swallow up the world in the latest form of
tyranny. Loren P.Q. Baybrook, editor and chief of Film and History, says the
four-hour remake of the 1923 film was "a declaration from Hollywood that
American values, as opposed to Soviet values, were part of the longest history
of moral principle." [4] In the second film, DeMille once again saw the need
for reminding America of its strong Judeo-Christian heritage and what had
distinguished its place as the most free and prosperous people in human
history.
Part of that effort would include a partnership with Judge E.J. Ruegemer
and his fellow Fraternal Order of Eagles to distribute copies of the
Decalogue for placement in courtrooms and schools and to erect monuments to
the
same throughout the country.
Neither Judge Ruegemer nor DeMille could foresee that the secularists,
humanists, and atheists of our day would feverishly work to remove these
statutes and other presentations on public property as unconstitutional. And
why
should they? The very purpose of America's first and most cherished
liberty, the First Amendment, requires the state accommodate religion and
prevents
government from demonstrating any hostility to it. Moreover, the First
Amendment has never been about precluding the state from its own ability to
acknowledge God and religious principle. In fact, in the United States
Supreme Court, inscribed directly overhead of its Chief Justice, is a
depiction
of Moses and the Ten Commandments. The centrality of that display before the
highest court in the land was meant to clarify that all our laws are based
upon and derived from that timeless religious moral code.
Yes, the godless among us can argue, if they choose, that DeMille's
campaign for exhibitions of the Ten Commandments was largely nothing more than
a
publicity stunt for his movie, but they would be wrong – very wrong. Instead
DeMille and his colleagues were concerned that America should never lose
its soul. They didn't want us to forget that this country was birthed as a
Christian nation, and, if liberty and fortune are to survive in our midst,
we'll need to act like it.
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