NEWS STORY: Workers Remove Alabama’s Ten Commandments Monument

c. 2003 Religion News Service (UNDATED) The controversial Ten Commandments monument was moved from the rotunda of Alabama’s judicial building Wednesday (Aug. 27), two years after suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore had it placed there. The 5,300-pound granite monument has been the source of much legal debate but its move had been expected after […]

c. 2003 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The controversial Ten Commandments monument was moved from the rotunda of Alabama’s judicial building Wednesday (Aug. 27), two years after suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore had it placed there.

The 5,300-pound granite monument has been the source of much legal debate but its move had been expected after the eight state associate justices overruled Moore and said a court order to remove it had to be followed. A federal judge ruled in November that the monument was unconstitutional.


On Wednesday morning, workers wheeled the monument out of public view.

The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the removal “a tremendous victory for religious freedom and for the rule of law.” Protesters outside the judicial building vowed to continue to fight for Moore’s right to publicly display the monument.

In a statement, Moore voiced his regrets over the movement of the monument.

“It is a sad day in our country when the moral foundation of our law and the acknowledgement of God has to be hidden from public view to appease a federal judge,” said Moore, who was suspended with pay when the state Judicial Inquiry Commission filed charges against him for refusing to obey a court order to remove the monument.

“I am profoundly disappointed with our governor, our attorney general and the associate justices of the Alabama Supreme Court who have allowed the basis of our justice system to be undermined by a federal judge who says that we cannot acknowledge God.”

But Lynn, who directs one of the groups that sued for the monument’s removal, was glad it could no longer be seen in the judicial building’s rotunda.

“I think that real religious freedom won today and that the rule of law prevailed and that’s always a good and moral thing to happen,” he said in an interview.

Moore’s supporters do not consider their work to be done.

“We don’t view this as a defeat at all,” the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Washington-based Christian Defense Coalition, told CNN.

“We’re disappointed but we’re not discouraged. … This battle has just been engaged.”

Officials of the Christian Coalition of America, who are among Moore’s supporters, hope they still have legal recourse in the matter.


“Congress needs to step in as soon as they get back from summer recess and make sure that federal judges below the Supreme Court level cannot remove the Ten Commandments from the public square,” said Jim Backlin, director of legislative affairs for the Christian Coalition, in an interview.

The U.S. Supreme Court last week refused Moore’s request to delay the district judge’s order to remove the monument. Moore said he will appeal to the high court again.

Two Alabama residents, a pastor and a Christian radio show host, filed suit in federal court in Mobile, Ala., Monday, hoping to keep the monument in place, but a hearing in that case scheduled for Wednesday was canceled.

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