Massive Ten Commandments Get A Pass From Protesters At Dallas Mall

Richard Morton, manager of the Music City Mall, located in a suburb of Dallas. Image by Music City Mall

By Ari Feldman January 5, 2018

An 800-pound granite slab engraved with the Ten Commandments placed in a mall outside Dallas is being mostly left alone by protesters, the Religion News Service reported. In fact, it’s a big hit with the mall’s loyal customers.

Music City Mall, a privately owned shopping center in Lewisville, Texas, has two granite slaves with biblical messages. The inside slab has the Ten Commandments. A smaller slab that greets shoppers outside the door has what the mall’s owner considers to be the two most important messages of Jesus Christ: “Thou shalt love the Lord” and “Love thy neighbor.”

“We’re not trying to make a statement or create a controversy,” said Richard Morton, the mall’s general manager. He added that the monuments are meant to show the mall owner’s “belief system, and he is not afraid to share it.”

Owner John Bushman has a small empire of hotels and restaurants around Texas, Colorado and New Mexico. Several of them contain similar odes to the tablets of Moses.

Bushman has said he wants the mall to be “a community space.” Because it is privately owned, it is not subject to laws upholding the separation of church and state.

Contact Ari Feldman at feldman@forward.com or on Twitter @aefeldman

Ari Feldman is a staff writer at the Forward. He covers Jewish religious organizations, synagogue life, anti-Semitism and the Orthodox world. If you have any tips, you can email him at feldman@forward.com. Follow him on Twitter @aefeldman.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO