Ruling divides evangelical Christians

Evangelical Christians are divided over whether Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore’s 5,280-pound granite monument bearing a replica of the Ten Commandments should remain in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building.

Those questioning the monument include televangelist Pat Robertson; Jay Sekulow, the chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice; and Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Proponents include James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, who wondered aloud during his Monday radio program “if Dr. Land and Jay Sekulow are supportive of the American Revolution, where we rebelled against the British tyranny.”

Chief Justice Moore is also supported by the Family Research Council.

At least 100 of Chief Justice Moore’s supporters are camped out in front of the state judicial building, hoping to block officials from removing the monument.

Chief Justice Moore’s eight associate justices on the Alabama Supreme Court overruled him last week and ordered the monument removed. One of the pro-Ten Commandments demonstrators labeled Associate Justice Gorman Houston a “Judas,” provoking a sharp response in the Montgomery Advertiser from Justice Houston’s pastor.

On Friday, Chief Justice Moore was suspended with pay pending an ethics inquiry by the state’s Judicial Inquiry Commission. A unanimous vote of the state Court of the Judiciary, a nine-member panel, could remove him from office.

The issue has inflamed evangelical Christian sentiment on both sides. Christianity Today, a magazine that caters to evangelicals, has dozens of articles for and against the defiant judge posted on its “Ten Commandments weblog” at its www.christianitytoday.com Web site.

Neither Christianity Today nor World magazine, an Asheville, N.C., publication geared toward evangelicals, took sides on the issue, although World did say Chief Justice Moore “deserves credit for putting himself in the line of fire.”

Students at the evangelical Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Va., are split down the middle over the matter, said Government Department Chairman Robert Stacey. Some of the Christians involved in the debate are “grandstanding” on the issue for personal gain, he said.

“What’s more important is that we restore the Ten Commandments as the foundation of the law rather than have a monument somewhere that people can ignore as they walk by,” he said.

But on Monday, Mr. Dobson suggested Christians travel to Montgomery, Ala., the site of the confrontation, and join in prayer rallies and vigils outside the judicial building.

“Be a participant,” he said. “Don’t sit on the sidelines while our basic freedoms are lost.”

Demonstrators have vowed to block removal of the monument, which remains in the rotunda until state officials figure out a way to remove it. A hearing set for today will hear the merits of a last-ditch lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Mobile that says removing the monument violates the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion.

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