Conservative Christians want more religion in public life. Texas lawmakers are listening.

Waving a copy of the Ten Commandments and a 17th-century textbook, amateur historian David Barton recently argued that Christianity has always formed the basis of American morality and thus is essential to Texas classrooms. “This is traditional, historical stuff,” he told a Texas Senate Education Committee last month. “It’s hard to say that anything is more traditional in American education than was the Ten Commandments.”