|
-
- By Julia Duin - The Washington Times - 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.
Mr. Land told Baptist Press Monday that sitting judges, such
as Chief Justice Moore, should comply with the law as interpreted
by higher courts.
"Do evangelical Christians really want to say that this
United States government is no longer a legitimate government
and that we are no longer obligated to obey its courts when we
disagree with their rulings?" he asked. "If so, let
us understand it for what it is. It is insurrection. I want to
reform this government, not rebel against it as an illegitimate
government beyond repair."
Mr. Land repeated his support for the public display of the Ten
Commandments in public buildings, but said Christians must not
"support defiance of the law by officials sworn to uphold
the law." If they must defy the law, they should resign,
he said.
Other evangelicals, who say they personally admire the defiant
judge, call his legal strategy faulty.
"I would have recommended to keep the monument in place
through a [judicial] stay and litigate this thing all the way
to the Supreme Court of the United States," Mr. Sekulow
said Monday on his radio program "Jay Sekulow Live."
Chief Justice Moore's attorneys did apply for a stay, Mr. Sekulow
said, but only after the deadline had expired. "I've racked
my brain thinking of other legal things that could be done, but
short of a miracle at this point, that monument is going to have
to go."
On the same show, Mr. Robertson said Chief Justice Moore "didn't
frame this case in a way that was more calculated to win."
He said Chief Justice Moore should have pointed out to the courts
that the Ten Commandments are posted in the U.S. Supreme Court
and in the House of Representatives, then asked how the Alabama
monument differed.
"Then the Supreme Court would have had to deal with it,"
Mr. Robertson said. "As it is, he's faced with an impossible
situation and ... he's put himself in contempt of court."
David Lowenthal, a First Amendment scholar who formerly taught
political science at Boston College, says Christians unsympathetic
to Chief Justice Moore do not understand constitutional law.
"One of the things that has dismayed me is that many churches
have not spoken out on the matter," said Mr. Lowenthal,
who is Jewish. "Churches have been fed a dogma over the
past 50 years that the First Amendment calls for a wall between
church and state. But it does not."
"Belief in God is fundamental to the American political
system," he said. "It's not just a religious thing,
it's fundamental politically. The monument was done not to plug
the Jewish religion — where the Ten Commandments come from
— but to emphasize the commandments themselves and belief
in God. The Declaration of Independence, our most fundamental
political document, has four mentions of God."
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030827-121019-9379r.htm
|