No Other Gods: The Politics of the Ten Commandments

Now includes discussion questions and contemplation exercises for individual study and reading groups.

Ana Levy-Lyons, a public theologian who is equally at home in secular and religious worlds, offers a deeply perceptive reinterpretation of the Ten Commandments for our modern lives.

The Ten Commandments are a spiritual resource for social justice. A politically and spiritually brazen prescription for living, the Ten Commandments would turn our world upside down if we actually followed them. Far from being only ethical norms on which everyone already agrees or a remnant of a bygone oppressive era, the Commandments are actually countercultural practices.

Today the Ten Commandments are a divisive part of American culture. Religious conservatives champion them, even if they don't always practice them. Religious liberals and the nonreligious may bristle at what they perceive as antiquated moral restrictions. But, this ancient code still has vital contemporary relevance. Rev. Levy-Lyons explores ways the Commandments bring us meaning, illuminate our values, and help us navigate through the turbulent waters of social injustice, environmental crises, and societal inequity.

No Other Gods looks at each Commandment in new ways, moving beyond interpersonal morality to the global economy and our hyper-connected age. From the first, You Shall Have No Other Gods Besides Me (Dethrone the Modern Deities of Political, Social, and Corporate Power), to the tenth Do Not Covet (Practice Your Liberation-You Have Enough, You Are Enough)-and all those in between-she underscores how the Commandments can produce a bold spiritual consciousness.

Whether you are deeply religious or spiritual-but-not-religious, learn how the Ten Commandments can guide you to resist injustice, heal our earth, and find personal dignity amid the free-for-alls of modern life. "We don't have to invent a bunch of new practices for a meaningful way to live out our spirituality and social justice politics," says Levy-Lyons. "There is a perfectly good set of ten of them, all ready to go, with as much progressive firepower as any of us can handle, that has existed for some three thousand years."