NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–If anyone is waiting for former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore to apologize for refusing to remove his Ten Commandments monument, don’t count on it.
After being removed from office in the fall of 2003, Moore continues to travel and speak publicly on the state’s right to acknowledge God. He remains convinced that the United States must reclaim what it has always been meant to be — a nation under God.
“America is going through an identity crisis,” Moore said in a recent phone interview with Baptist Press. “If you lose your identity, then you don’t know where you stand or where you are going or how to return.”
Moore shares his heart for the nation, along with his past frustrations, triumphs and battles in his first book, “So Help Me God: The Ten Commandments, Judicial Tyranny, and the Battle for Religious Freedom.” It is published by Broadman & Holman, a division of LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.
So Help Me God follows Moore throughout his career — his days as a soldier in Vietnam and as an aggressive deputy district attorney, as well as his victory against the ACLU in 1997 and his removal as chief justice. Moore’s unwillingness to compromise his faith and core values has earned him many supporters — and opponents.
Moore shares in the book how he believes a battle for religious freedom continues to rage on in America. Moral issues, such as abortion, “gay marriage” and the removal of public prayer from schools are all signs of the country’s need to return to its biblical foundation, he said.
The book is being released as the U.S. Supreme Court considers two cases concerning the public display of the Ten Commandments.
Moore hopes So Help Me God will educate the Christian community on the issue. Society has become too concerned with being politically correct and must know the truth about the state’s right to acknowledge God, he said.
The freedom to worship God was a right “given by God and secured by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Moore writes in the book. It is the duty of believers to uphold this foundation, he asserts.
“The United States was founded on principles of the revealed, divine law of God recorded in the Holy Scriptures,” Moore writes. “Upon that firm foundation, our nation had grown to be the brightest beacon of civil and religious freedom ever known.”
By refusing to remove the Ten Commandments monument, Moore believes he held firm to what God had called him to do.
“I don’t know what it might mean to my future,” Moore writes, quoting himself from a past press conference. “I know that it means my children may look back someday and say their daddy didn’t give up the acknowledgment of God. That’s enough for me.”
Moore’s public battle, he writes, has been a positive step toward educating the public on the state’s right to acknowledge God. Because of that, he says he plans on continuing the fight to help turn America back toward God.
“I could not — and never will — deny Him,” Moore wrote. “And certainly not just to keep a job.”
The Christian community needs to understand the impact of the Ten Commandments issue and how it concerns more than just the glitz and glam of the media frenzy, Moore said.
“This isn’t about me or about a monument or about religion,” he told BP. “The issue is about whether the state could acknowledge the sovereignty of God…. The Christian community has been deceived into thinking this is wrong.”
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“So Help Me God” is available at LifeWay Christian Stores and online at www.lifewaystores.com
