Roy Moore Appears This Week Before Alabama Court
by Allie Martin
November 10, 2003
(AgapePress) - Grassroots Christian activists are in the midst of a four-day tour through several Alabama cities to bring attention to suspended Chief Justice Roy Moore and his effort to publicly acknowledge God.The "Save the Commandments and Keep Chief Justice Moore Tour" kicked off last Sunday with events in Montgomery and Birmingham and will wrap up this Wednesday on the steps of the Alabama judicial building in Montgomery.
Wednesday is the day Judge Moore is to appear before the Alabama Court of the Judiciary to face charges that he neglected the duties of his office when he disobeyed a federal court order to remove a granite monument of the Ten Commandments from his office building. The currently suspended chief justice could be reprimanded or even removed from office at that hearing.
The monument was forcibly removed amid widespread protest, but Moore has stood firmly by his principles regarding the public acknowledgement of God, which he says the Alabama state constitution not only allows but mandates. According to Associated Press, the chief justice claims it is his right and his duty to acknowledge God, and "If [the trial judges] want me to acknowledge that I should have removed the monument, they are going to be waiting a long time."
The tour that winds up this week includes a series of rallies and prayer vigils in several Alabama cities, as well as pastor briefings and news conferences. Rev. Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, says the tour has several goals. Besides drawing attention to Wednesday's trial, he hopes the tour will also focus people on the ideals for which Moore has been struggling.
Schenck says it is important, while Moore is still in office, to "bring the principles at stake here into the public arena once again." The number-one issue, the minister explains, is whether the American people have the right "to acknowledge the sovereignty of God over our land."
The NCC spokesman, who also co-founded the outreach known as Faith and Action, believes Moore's case is symbolic of a larger battle to keep America from becoming a completely secularized society. "Secular nations have one thing in common -- mass graves," he says, "and the reason is that [such societies] believe the government is the final arbiter of right and wrong and good and evil."
According to Schenck, the people who established America as a nation recognized the danger in exalting the government over God. "Our founders told us in the founding documents that we would always have to rely on our Creator, the God of the Bible, to tell us what is absolutely right and what is absolutely wrong, or our republic would fail," he says.
Schenck contends that the biblical Ten Commandments express the moral claim God has on society. The minister says virtually every public expression of belief in God is at stake in Judge Moore's case.
