August 26, 2003 - It is a chunk of granite, an example of the stone carvers’ art like many that grace the cemeteries festooned with plastic flowers on Memorial Day. It is not a tombstone for it sits heavily in the rotunda of the building that houses the highest court of the State of Alabama. It is not an old memorial nor is it an ancient monument for it was crafted and placed just two years ago. It is neither particularly attractive nor a specimen of soaring art. It is a chunk of rock topped with an open book inscribed with one Alabamian’s paraphrase of a Protestant English translation of a passage of a Latin translation of a Greek translation of an Aramaic rendering of an ancient Hebrew text of obscure origin. It is, of course, suspended Chief Justice Roy Moore’s altar where he, in his self appointed capacity as Chief Priest of the secular religion of state imposed fundamentalist orthodoxy, leads the faithful in daily worship of his only God, his own ego.

The Alabama Supreme Court Rotunda is not God’s house. It belongs to Caesar. God has plenty of housing available to him in Montgomery. There are a host of edifices sprinkled around the city, some richly appointed and some more humble, each claiming to be the one true House of God. Moore seems never to have read that passage of scripture that advises Christians to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to render unto God that which is God’s. The men who crafted the seminal scripture of our secular political religion, the Bill of Rights, did read that verse as they erected the First Amendment wall between the power of the State and the fabric of the Church.

But then the wave of controversy that Judge Roy Moore surfed to the Alabama Supreme Court has never been about God. Nor has it been about the proper display of the Ten Commandments along with the Code of Hammurabi, the Justinian Code, the Dooms of Otho and the Magna Carta to illustrate the heritage of American Law. No, the controversy is not about that. It is about ambition, opportunism and demagoguery.

Moore and his sycophants stand in the Courthouse Door renewing the defiant political practice of an Alabama that existed 40 years ago. We hoped that it had died but it had only entered a period of dormancy. It has emerged from the shadows and stands in the light. Light purifies and whether the light comes from God or emanates from the informed will of the electorate pernicious doctrines exposed to the light wither and die.

We must not let Moore’s altar become a tombstone for the Bill of Rights. He has no need for altars there for when man seeks justice God smiles.