Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore says he will announce next week how he will respond to a federal judge's order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of his state's judicial building. Appearing on Sean Hannity's radio show Thursday evening, Moore explained that refusing to obey the ruling could result in fines of $5,000 a day, or worse. [See earlier story]

Moore said he has no fear of the consequences. "If I go to jail, I go to jail," he told Hannity, "but I've got to do my duty. I took an oath." The chief justice said he swore to uphold the state and federal constitutions, but that the U.S. Constitution has been misinterpreted by courts to forbid acknowledgment of God -- an acknowledgment that he says Alabama's constitution requires.

Moore said biblical law undergirds all of American law. "In this case, we don't beat around the bush," he said. "We don't say the Ten Commandments are there just as an historical document. We say the Ten Commandments [are there] acknowledging the moral foundation of our law -- and to do that you've got to acknowledge the God of the holy scriptures from which that moral law comes."

In an Associated Press interview, Joe Conn of Americans United for the Separation of Church of State -- a plaintiff in the lawsuit seeking the monument's removal -- says it is "disgraceful" that Moore has not already removed the monument.

"He seems to think that this is a good way to keep his popularity with the voters in Alabama, and he doesn't seem to respect the federal court," Conn says. "He seems to think that the decisions of the federal courts are voluntary, that they're something that he doesn't have to obey."

Conn said Judge Moore's actions remind him of another Alabama official who defied federal authority.

"George Wallace tried to stand in the schoolhouse door to keep racial minorities out, thus exploiting race as a political issue," he says. "I think Judge Moore is standing in the courthouse door to keep religious minorities in their place -- so he's doing the same thing that Governor Wallace did but with a different topic. I don't think it's going to work this time either."

An appeals court has ruled the 5,300-pound monument, installed at the direction of Judge Moore, violates the separation of church and state.

Rally on the 16th
A call for Christians to take action to defend the monument has been issued by several groups. Rev. Pat Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition, says that his group and many other national ministries have issued a national call for people to travel to Montgomery to participate in a rally on August 16.

"[We are calling] Christians and people who cherish freedom, the First Amendment, and religious expression in the public square to come to peacefully intervene and kneel around the court [building] to ensure that the commandments are not removed."

Mahoney says Christians must make a stand. "A line in the sand is being drawn in Montgomery, Alabama, to speak out against the erosion of religious expression -- but also against this unbridled judicial power."

Vision America, a Texas-based group that attempts to mobilize pastors to civic action, is another of the groups sounding the cry for the rally on the steps of the judicial building in Alabama's capital city. The group has established a website in support of Judge Roy Moore, who Vision American president Rick Scarborough describes as a "modern-day Daniel."

And a Mississippi-based pro-family group, the American Family Association, has launched an online petition encouraging Congress to enact legislation that would remove federal jurisdiction in cases involving the Pledge of Allegiance, the national motto -- "In God We Trust" -- and public display of the Ten Commandments. According to that website, such an act would require only a simple majority in both houses of Congress and the president's signature to become law.