On October 17, the Sumner County Commissioners in Tennessee voted to codify a new set of “Standing Rules and Procedures” to guide their meetings that references their allegiance to “Judeo-Christian values.”

The updated rules of conduct for a local government meeting wouldn’t be much interest to anyone outside the community—and arguably very little within the community—but one of the changes involved the addition of a preamble (on page 24). The paragraph is nothing more than hyped-up language promising that commissioners will do the job they were elected to do—which shouldn’t need to be stated at all—but the bigger problem is that it says their work must be “reflective of the Judeo-Christian values inherent in our nation’s founding.” ...