“I didn’t come to my understanding of separation of church and state out of study or my intellectual ability, which is limited,” Moore told the attendees in the Severn church’s chapel. “I came through it out of experience.”
After being ejected from the top seat on the Alabama Supreme Court for stubbornly refusing to remove a hulking, granite Ten Commandments monument from the court’s rotunda, Roy Moore has been floundering a bit.
But following an unsuccessful run for the Alabama governorship, the former chief justice seems to be settling into a familiar role as a self-styled Religious Right martyr of sorts. He chairs a non-profit group called the Foundation for Moral Law and roams the country attending Religious Right gatherings, where he decries the nation as being morally adrift and the courts for improperly applying the separation of church and state.
Just before the Fourth of July, Moore found his way to Maryland, a state widely viewed as being consistently and fairly progressive, to continue his ongoing assault on church-state separation.
At an event dubbed the “God & Country Patriotic Celebration & Conference,” Moore joined a string of lesser-known Religious Right activists in claiming that Christianity must be infused in all parts of American life and blasting judges, lawyers and others who support the First Amendment principle of church-state separation.
Photo Credits: Jeremy Leaming
Roy Moore gazes upon replica of Ten Commandments monument at Gladway Farm near Severn, Md, at an event celebrating “God & Country.”
Most of the conference was conducted at the Severn Christian Church, not far from Baltimore, and Moore was its centerpiece. Indeed, on the conference’s final day, July 3, a field on Gladway Farm was dedicated to the former judge. A ceremony was held naming the location “Judge Roy Moore Field,” and unveiling a replica of the Commandments monument.
Before the dedication ceremony, which also featured a barbeque and soccer match between students from a local Christian school, Moore and his cohorts, including former U.S. Constitution Party candidate Michael Peroutka, Maryland Delegate Don Dwyer Jr. (R-Anne Arundel) and former Regent University Law School dean Herb Titus, prattled on and on about rescuing the nation from out-of-control judges and crazed secularists.
In a panel discussion on July 2 called “The Myth of Separation of Church and State,” Moore explained and defended his understanding of the First Amendment. He also claimed that “most lawyers in this country” do not understand the First Amendment.
“I didn’t come to my understanding of separation of church and state out of study or my intellectual ability, which is limited,” Moore told the attendees in the Severn church’s chapel. “I came through it out of experience.”
That experience centered on trying to convince federal courts that he was correct in displaying a Commandments plaque in his courtroom and later the Commandments monument at the Alabama Supreme Court. (Americans United for Separation of Church and State was one of the groups that won the legal challenge over the religious monument at the Alabama Supreme Court.)
“We’ve been indoctrinated in something that is not true,” claimed Moore.
Apparently referring to the courts and others, Moore observed, “They say God must be separated from life. As a Christian, God can’t be separate from your life. God has everything to do with law.”
Moore’s claims that the First Amendment have been wrongly interpreted by courts and influenced by secularists were echoed by the other conference speakers. The event’s emcee, Del. Dwyer, got especially heated over the topic on the conference’s last day, claiming that his only duty in the Maryland legislature was to enforce God’s law. Dwyer repeatedly said he knew his views were controversial and were likely offensive, but that he did not care.
Look for a more detailed account of the gathering in a forthcoming issue of Church & State. But for some pundits who believe that a moderate voice is arising among the Religious Right, the gathering in Severn is yet more proof that the Religious Right’s push for a nation based on biblical law is far from passé.
© 1947 - 2009