Randall Murphree
AFA Journal editor
May 1997 – “No matter what happens to me,” Roy Moore says with calm resolve, “I want to know that my four children can look back and say their daddy never did deny God.”
No chance of that. His stand as Etowah County (Alabama) Circuit Judge has catapulted Moore into a national debate that proves him a man with the spirit and boldness of our founding fathers. He refuses to buckle under to intimidation by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), or to orders by another court to remove the Ten Commandments from his courtroom wall.
Judge Charles Price, a Montgomery County (Alabama) federal judge, favored an ACLU suit, ruling that the Ten Commandments in Moore’s courtroom were a violation of the First Amendment principle of “separation of church and state” – a phrase, incidentally, not found in the First Amendment or anywhere else in the U. S. Constitution. Moore is taken aback that such an order should issue from a judiciary based upon the Ten Commandments, the very law it now would suppress.
“It’s embarrassing to fight somebody over this,” Moore muses. He cites countless documents in which drafters of the U. S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights made it crystal clear that acknowledgement of God in the public arena was never considered a violation of the First Amendment.
Clearly bewildered by the sudden spotlight of national media scrutiny, Moore is nonetheless confident in his stand, and direct in his response. With patience he quotes the founding fathers for reporters who have never studied their writings. With passion he defends the public display of the Ten Commandments, calling them the foundation of Western civilization and American law.
Journey to judgeship
“I’ve always had a strong belief in God,” Moore states, “but having gone through military academy, and then Vietnam, I had a warped conception of the relationship between government and God. It’s only been in the last few years, during the course of this controversy, that I’ve found the true meaning of our country.”
Moore was an idealistic young deputy district attorney in Etowah, his native county, when he ran for circuit judge in a close 1982 contest. Disillusioned with politics, and charged with campaign ethics violations (ruled without merit by the Alabama Supreme Court), Moore took a long break, studied martial arts, then traveled to Texas to work in construction, and later to Austrailia where he worked as a cowhand.
He returned to his Etowah County home in 1985, and married soon thereafter. In 1992, he was appointed to fill the unexpired term of a deceased predecessor, and in the fall of 1994, he was elected to the bench on his own merit.
“The ACLU was just waiting to sue me,” Moore says. “They did not bring suit earlier so that they would not help me in the election. They wanted to see if I’d get beat and the problem would go away.” They already had their sites set on Moore, and had hired a court reporter to record prayers in his court. In fact, while Moore completed his appointed term, the ACLU wrote to the Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court, threatening to sue Alabama judges who invite clergy to pray at the beginning of sessions.
The ACLU went into action soon after Judge Moore began serving – in January, 1995 – the term to which he was elected. In March, they first filed suit against Moore on behalf of two residents who objected to the plaque bearing the Ten Commandments in Moore’s courtroom and to the opening of court with prayer. It was the first of a series of events that brought the issue to a head this spring.
Morality of the man
In November, 1996, Montgomery (Alabama) Federal Judge Charles Price ordered Moore to cease inviting clergy to open court with prayer, but allowed the Ten Commandments to remain on the courtroom wall, because other historical documents also appeared there. Both sides appealed the split ruling.
Judge Moore responded promptly, stating with clarity and confidence that he was right, and he would not back down. His reaction angered some. “I made public statements,” he explains, “that the plaque was not there as a historical document, it was not there as a secular document, it was there as an acknowledgement of God.” The ACLU then asked for a reconsideration, and the legal volleying began.
Alabama Gov. Fob James told a Southern Baptist prayer luncheon in February that he would use the Alabama National Guard and state troopers if necessary to protect the Ten Commandments plaque. Two days later, the Alabama Supreme Court granted a stay on Price’s prayer ban, in effect allowing prayer to continue until the Court hears the appeal.
Price responded with a visit to Moore’s courtroom, and this time said the Ten Commandments must come down because they are not literally surrounded by other historical documents. He gave Moore 10 days to change the arrangement of his courtroom displays, or remove the Ten Commandments. Again, the State Supreme Court intervened with a voice of reason, granting a stay until appeal. The State High Court is expected to rule on the appeal this summer. Until then at least, the plaque remains legally displayed.
“I have a problem,” Moore declares, “with the federal government and its three branches all acknowledging God, then telling the states they can’t acknowledge God.” The United States Supreme Court opens each session with a prayer – “God save the United States and this honorable court.” Congress opens with a prayer to God by chaplains paid with public funds. The President is sworn in with an oath, “So help me God,” administered by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Moore says the principle of “separation of church and state” has been grossly distorted and misrepresented to the people. The real issue, he says, is this: Is the acknowledgement of God by a public official in his office or his capacity as a public servant a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution? “It is so clear in history, it’s so clear in law, it’s so clear in logic that [the answer] is no!” Moore contends.
Eloquent in his own right, Moore often turns to the founding fathers and other past national leaders to illustrate the freedom of religion thread that runs through the nation’s history. In this case, he quotes Joseph Story, 34 years a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court: “The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance, Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or Infidelity by prostrating Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which would give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of a national government.”
He cites Chief Justice William Renquist as having said, “The wall of separation of church and state is a metaphor, a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor that has proved useless as a guide to judging, and a metaphor that should frankly and explicitly be abandoned. But the greatest injury of the wall is this mischievous diversion of the judges from the actual intentions of the drafters of the Bill of Rights.
Boldness of the believer
Moore says one of the saddest results of this diversion is that it has, in effect, relegated God to a religion. He says the Supreme Court has “taken God and confined Him to that little circle where religion is, by saying that religion is anything that you believe. They say religion is anything that you believe, anything on which you have an ultimate dependency. If religion is so defined, then God is religion.”
Humanism, he points out, has also been called a religion by the High Court. Then why, he asks, does the Court respect Secular Humanism, yet remain neutral on other religions. “It’s an absolute violation of the First Amendment!” he insists. “Nobody’s brave enough to stand up and tell them they’re wrong. No lawyer wants to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. If you’re going to define God as religion, then Secular Humanism is, too.’”
The Judge grows more pensive as he focuses on another aspect of the troubling drama, quoting Romans 1:21-25, beginning with “…although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.…”
“We are fulfilling the Scriptures in so many ways,” he speaks soberly. “We are worshiping and serving the creature. We have put Secular Humanism above God. We have changed our God and said that we can worship God because government gave us the liberty. We’ve warped completely the meaning of the Declaration of Independence – ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’”
He pauses, then proceeds: “It wasn’t government that gave us those things, it was God! Now, how can you lose something God gave you like this, and not acknowledge it? We must choose in this nation today as Joshua told Israel – ‘Choose you this day whom you will serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ We must choose whether we are a nation that acknowledges a higher law, the laws of nature and nature’s God, or a nation that chooses man over those laws. There is no neutrality on this position.”
Even the U. S. House of Representatives agrees with Judge Moore, evidenced in their passage of House Resolution 31 which affirms (by a vote of 295-125) that the Ten Commandments may be displayed in government offices and courthouses.
Perseverance of the patriot
Moore talks candidly about the stress his sudden notoriety has imposed on his family. The two older children worry that Dad may be arrested or jailed. Thinking of his own children, he contrasts their trying times with his own boyhood. Young Roy Moore led a simple – sometimes, austere – life, mostly in rural Etowah County. He and four siblings grew up in numerous renter houses as their dad, a construction worker, struggled to provide for his family, an endeavor that took the family to Texas and Pennsylvania, but always back to Alabama. Of necessity, they learned early to take responsibility for household chores, gardening, plowing the fields, and other farm tasks.
By the time he entered school, his parents were already teaching him not only a healthy work ethic, but other critical life lessons as well – honesty, integrity, and Christian truths about Christ and the love of God. He was a first grader in 1954 when Congress added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. Flag. Bible reading and prayer were a daily classroom routine. In short, the same principles his parents taught at home were reinforced in the public schools.
Through four years of high school, Moore cleaned lunchroom tables in exchange for his meals. Still, he distinguished himself by being elected student body president and earning appointment to West Point Military Academy. He served active duty in Germany and Vietnam.
Cast as unwilling lead in this morality play, Moore says he is yet obliged to stand for truth. He sees the nation wandering in a maze, searching for a lost morality. “That’s where we are,” he concludes. “We don’t have a distinction between right and wrong. That’s why I see before my court kids committing murder. That’s why I see politicians ripping off the public. That’s why I see education standards plummeting – we’ve lost morality. We’ve lost a sense of right and wrong. We’ve lost a relationship with God.”
The lessons of his youth have served Roy Moore well. Certain of the truth for which he stands, he is unabashedly bold, unflappably firm in his resolve to preserve our republic as one nation under God. 
Judge Roy Moore, Legal Defense Fund, P.O. Box 8222, Gadsden, AL 35902
