Cecil B. DeMille and the Ten Commandments
by Gary DeMar

The History Channel’s two-part presentation of the history and application of the Ten Commandments had some high and low points. I pointed out in yesterday’s article that Alan Dershowitz does not believe the Ten Commandments are applicable today. If cross examined, I’m sure he would have added a number of qualifications to his overly broad and easily misconstrued remarks. Nevertheless, they are what they are.

Near the end of Part 2 of the series, Cecil B. DeMille’s name came up. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments came to movie theaters and drive-ins in 1956. To help with promotion, DeMille got behind an idea to place etched granite slabs of the commandments in parks, state-capital lawns, and courthouses around the country. Counts vary, but it’s estimated that “4,000 Ten Commandment monuments are displayed in U.S. cities.”1 These monuments and other representations of the Ten Commandments have come under legal scrutiny by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the courts for their supposed violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The History Channel gave the impression that the placement of the Ten Commandment monuments by DeMille was purely a publicity stunt to promote his movie. I don’t doubt that he had this in mind, but there is more to the story. DeMille believed the message of The Ten Commandments had important personal, social, cultural, and political implications. A single courtroom event ten years earlier had convinced him of this truth.

In St. Cloud, Minnesota, in 1946, juvenile-court judge E.J. Ruegemer confronted a defiant 16-year-old boy accused of stealing a car and causing an accident. The judge asked the young man if he had understood that he had broken one of the Ten Commandments, “Thou shalt not steal.” The boy claimed that he had never heard of the Ten Commandments. Shocked at the teenager’s ignorance, Judge Ruegemer took out a Bible, handed it to the young man and told him his sentence was to learn the Ten Commandments and obey them.

“I decided to give him a chance; he can’t follow laws he doesn’t know,” said Judge Ruegemer.

The incident prompted the judge to mount a campaign to place prints of the Ten Commandments in courthouses across the nation to serve for the guidance of defendants. He approached the Fraternal Order of Eagles for help in getting the message out. The service organization was inundated with orders from cities across the country.

“I thought that if the commandments could be placed in courtrooms, then judges could point them out to offenders,” he said.2

When Cecil B. DeMille heard of Judge Ruegemer’s earlier campaign, he decided to make a more permanent statement. He considered his production to be so important that he came out on stage at the beginning of the movie to deliver a short but powerful statement on the nature of freedom under the law of God ( listen to it by clicking HERE)

The theme of this picture is whether men ought to be ruled by God’s laws or whether they are to be ruled by the whims of a dictator like Rameses. Are men the property of the State or are they free souls under God? This same battle continues throughout the world today.3

DeMille certainly wanted to entertain his audience with the spectacular recreation of the story of Moses and the Ten Commandments, but he also wanted people to be “filled with the spirit of truth . . . a better understanding of the real meaning of this life that God set down for us to follow. . . . [F]or in the final analysis we do not break the Commandments. They break us, if we disregard them.” He spelled out very clearly what he meant by this:

“The Ten Commandments are not the laws. They are THE LAW. Man has made 32,000,000 laws since they were handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai more than 3,000 years ago, but he has never improved on God’s law. The Ten Commandments are the principles by which man may live with God and man may live with man. They are the expressions of the mind of God for His creatures. They are the charter and guide of human liberty, for there can be no liberty without the law. The motion picture ‘The Ten Commandments’ is as modern as this morning’s newspaper because the struggle between the forces represented by Moses and those represented by Pharaoh is still being waged today. Are men free souls under God or are they the property of the State? Are men to be ruled by law or by the whims of an individual? The answers to these timely questions were given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Like the divine source from which they came, they are eternal.”4

It couldn’t be said any better. Alan Dershowitz should take notice.

1. “Commandments back in court,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution (May 25, 2002), B1.

2. This story is related by Jabeen Bhatti in “Statue Wars Have Roots in 1950s,” Washington Times (May 22, 2002). For a more complete story, see “Commanding Presence,” Fraternal Order of Eagles Magazine (March 2002), 7 and Sue A. Hoffman, “The Real History of the Ten Commandments Project, of the Fraternal Order of the Eagles” (March 6, 2005).

3. DeMille’s introductory remarks can be seen only on VHS and DVD versions of the movie.

4. This quotation appears on page 2 of the theatrical program that could be purchased in movie theaters at showings of The Ten Commandments.