Roy Moore: 'We Have No Morality Without an Acknowledgment of God' | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Roy Moore: 'We Have No Morality Without an Acknowledgment of God'

As the Supreme Court decides how to rule after hearing arguments over the Ten Commandments, the former chief justice of Alabama's highest court says removing government religious monuments are like getting a ticket for driving 50 mph in a 55 zone.

After being removed from his post as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to remove a six-ton granite monument of the Ten Commandments, Roy Moore has taken his fight across the country. He says not only are monuments of the Ten Commandments constitutional, but some acknowledgment of God is necessary for the survival of the constitution. CT online assistant editor Rob Moll spoke with Moore the day after the Supreme Court heard arguments over two Ten Commandment cases, in Texas and Kentucky.

You had representatives attending the oral arguments on Wednesday. Do you have any initial thoughts about the case?

Both of the defendants in these cases, defending the Ten Commandments, are doing so with secular humanism, with our own history, arguing that the Ten Commandments are not relevant today. It's in a museum setting. It's the smallest of the monuments. They make every effort to distance themselves from God, and that is the danger that people do not realize. I hope people will wake up to this.

What we've got to watch here is not what they do, but what they say. If they leave the Ten Commandments or if they take the Ten Commandments and they base their ruling on secular humanism, that is a devastating precedent. It's basically saying you can do something as long as you don't profess it, as long as you don't believe it. That is the danger.

The Court refused my case because we said the monument acknowledges the sovereign God, which is permissible under the First Amendment. They then take these two cases that are argued on the basis of a denial of God's sovereignty, that it's a matter of history. The people that are arguing that position think they're doing right, but I would submit to you that it's a very wrong thing to do because you're bowing down to government.

That is the argument in other cases, that as long as the Ten Commandments or "under God" doesn't mean anything religious, then it's permissible.

One of the most offensive arguments that I've found was in one of the briefs said that any reasonable observer would recognize that this monument is in the town where Madalyn Murray O'Hair lived. During all that controversy, it was a hotbed of litigation, and it was never contested. That argument says that because the prime atheist in our country didn't protest, it should be okay. And that's terrible.

Because so many Christians make historical arguments for the Ten Commandments or other monuments, it may seem strange to hear you say that the government must acknowledge God. What is the legal basis for your argument?

It's the very purpose of the First Amendment. It's what we have the First Amendment for. That is still the right we have, to acknowledge God. It protected us from federal government interference. And that's exactly what's happening. The federal courts are saying we cannot acknowledge God. But they have no jurisdiction. It's the fundamental organic law of our country. God. God's law was the basis which entitles us to have a Constitution and a country.

The court is not even interpreting the First Amendment properly, despite the fact that they have no jurisdiction. When they do have jurisdiction they rule by their feelings, not by law. To properly interpret a law you have to interpret the words in the statute or constitutional amendment. That is "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," being the first part of the First Amendment. The courts are not even trying to do that. They're ignoring the words of the statute and ruling by their own feelings and predilections with meaningless tests that have no relationship to law—the coercion test, the endorsement test, and the historical analysis test.