By Rev. Mark H. Creech
August 18, 2003

(AgapePress) - In his book, America's Christian Heritage, Gary Demar tells about a national campaign that started in 1946. According to Demar, St. Cloud, Minnesota, juvenile court Justice E.J. Ruegemer addressed a wayward teenager accused of stealing a car and causing an accident. Judge Ruegemer reportedly asked the youngster if he realized he had broken the Ten Commandments. The boy responded he knew nothing about the Ten Commandments. Dismayed at the boy's ignorance, Judge Ruegemer gave the young man a Bible and sentenced him to learn and obey the Ten Commandments.

The situation prompted Judge Ruegemer to mount a massive campaign to place prints of the Decalogue in courthouses across the nation. Help came from the Fraternal Order of Eagles, which became inundated with orders from around the country. A decade later, Cecil B. De Mille got in on the campaign by making his own contribution with the release of The Ten Commandments – a movie classic featuring Charlton Heston as Moses. De Mille promoted the movie by placing granite slabs of the commandments in parks, state capital lawns, and courthouses around the country. DeMar says, "Counts vary, but it's estimated that 4,000 Ten Commandments monuments are displayed in U.S. cities."

Today, however, groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State vigorously oppose such monuments, arguing in court they violate the U.S. Constitution's separation of church and state. Their contention is that government displays of the Ten Commandments are "fundamentally religious and the endorsement of religion in general and Christianity in particular."

So when Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore placed a 5,280-pound granite of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the state judicial building two years ago, it became the center of a debate that has garnered national attention. In a brief ceremony celebrating the monument's placement, Moore said: "May this day mark the beginning of the restoration of the moral foundation of law to our people and a return to the knowledge of God in our land."

As expected, liberal and godless forces were livid at Moore's actions and hauled him into court. Unfortunately, U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson agreed with their position and ordered Moore to remove the monument. In an appeal, Moore's lawyers argued that Thompson's ruling should be overturned because it violated the State's right to acknowledge God. But the 11^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Judge Thompson's decision. Judge Ed Carnes, who ruled against Moore, said: "If Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore's Ten Commandments monument were allowed to stand, it would mean a massive revision of how the courts have interpreted the First Amendment for years."

Indeed, Judge Carnes was right -- and that's the crux of the issue. Our founding fathers never intended the First Amendment to mean that religious dogma should have no influence on our system of government. This has always been the understanding up until recent years when "activists" judges started ruling otherwise. In fact, the Declaration of Independence refers to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God"; the National Motto says "In God We Trust"; the Pledge of Allegiance admonishes "One Nation Under God," and the Judicial Oath is "So Help Me God." Moreover, all of these are noted on the display of the Ten Commandments that Moore placed in the State Judicial Building in Montgomery.

In the book The Story of Law and the Men Who Made It – From the Earliest Times to the Present, author Rene Wormser writes: "The law of Moses has ... played a direct and vital part in the creation of our own legal system. Some of our early colonial communities were ruled under the exact and precise law of the Old Testament; moreover, the law of the Jews became one of the chief root sources of both the law of the Continent of Europe and the English law upon which ours is directly based."

No doubt, this is why Chief Justice Roy Moore -- in an act of civil disobedience -- is now defying the rulings of both Judge Myron Thompson and the 11^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. At a rally held in support of Moore on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol on Saturday, Moore spoke before a crowd of about 6,000 and said to obey the order to remove the monument would not only be a violation of his oath, but also "an act of disloyalty toward the majesty of heaven." He added, "For the past 40 years, the courts have been taking away the knowledge of God by saying that we could acknowledge God as long as we really don't mean it -- which puts us in the position of violating the Third Commandment, 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.'"

Judge Myron Thompson says he will begin to levy fines on Moore of up to $5,000 a day if he doesn't remove the monument by August 20. Nevertheless, in the same tradition of the great patriots of yesteryear, Moore says he's willing to personally sacrifice everything to secure the state's inalienable right to acknowledge Almighty God.

The case of Judge Roy Moore is a watershed issue for the nation. If Moore's cause, which ought to be the cause of all Americans, does not succeed; then our nation will be destined to live within the boundaries of legal relativism. There will be no definitive and final legal standard of appeal to justify moral decisions on governmental levels. One judge's opinion, whether good or bad, will be just as valid as another. And so the great horror will begin -- no longer will we be governed by the laws of God, but by the laws of men -- no longer will there be freedom, but tyranny!