Moore's Next Move

The significance of the case of the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore, does not lie in his transgression in disobeying a court order. Greater men and institutions than he have disobeyed the courts and the law for worthy and unworthy causes. Rather, Mr. Moore is a symbol of the clash between religious and secular society in America. In pursuit of something called "separation of church and state," a phrase that appears nowhere in the Constitution, some in this country have gone to ridiculous lengths to ban almost any symbol connected to religion from the public square.

It is certainly an open question whether Justice Moore's monument to the Ten Commandments is an appropriate display — but it would seem a long shot to cross the constitutional line that enjoins Congress to make no law respecting an establishment of religion, let alone prohibiting the free exercise thereof. No one can dispute that the Ten Commandments are fundamental to Alabama's and our nation's law and government. Robert Jackson consciously chose a courtroom with the Ten Commandments to conduct the Nuremberg Trials. The Supreme Court itself has a ceiling frieze with a depiction of the tablets brought down by Moses. Only yesterday the judges who ride the 10th United States Circuit affirmed the right of Texas to maintain a 6-foot-tall granite monument to the Ten Commandments on the grounds of its capitol.

Nor was American liberalism served by the failure of the Supreme Court to hear Justice Moore's appeal. The court would have done the country a service by using the case to illuminate how the secular sphere can coexist with the religious. Nor will the First Amendment be served by stripping government of the authority to acknowledge religion. Mr. Moore was an elected official, put in office on a platform that centered around installing his monument. The Alabama "ethics" committee has done little but set up Mr. Moore's next move.