"The Ten Commandments and Their Appropriations in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam."

Today is the second day of a conference on the Ten Commandments with that title, here at the University of Wisconsin. I'm chairing a 2-hour panel that begins at 11:15 this morning, "The Ten Commandments in the Public Square." Here's the lineup:

Jerome Copulsky, “The Ten Commandments and American Civil Religion”

Lesleigh Cushing, “Contemporary American Appropriations of the Ten Commandments”

David Smolin, “The Capacity of the Ten Commandments to Serve as a Unifying Symbol”

John Thatamanil, “Against Heteronomy: Some Tillichian Reflections on The Ten Commandments in Public Life”

Yesterday evening, His Eminence, Dr. Mustafa Ceric, Grand Mufti of Bosnia, gave the plenary address, “The Ten Commandments as a Basis for a Meaningful Jewish-Christian-Muslim Dialogue."

More on the conference later.

UPDATE: A key theme was that the Ten Commandments provide a beneficial common ground for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Counterthemes: 1. Lots of people fall outside of those three groups, 2. Jews, Christians, and Muslims disagree with each other despite the shared tradition. At dinner tonight, I had a long discussion with a philosopher in which I took the position that the Ten Commandments are not interesting as ideas. It's a rather bland text to concentrate on. Whether God commanded these things or not, people would have figured out most of these rules on their own. There's nothing especially surprising or challenging -- as there is in the Sermon on the Mount.