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Roy Moore criticizes Commandments display
You would think that suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore would be happy about his governor's new display of the Ten Commandments, which was installed Tuesday in the old Supreme Court library room in the Capitol. But he's not. Actually, it's the posting of the Magna Carta, the Mayflower Compact, and the Declaration of Independence along with the Ten Commandments that Moore is upset about.

"To put things around the Ten Commandments and secularize it is to deny the greatness of God," Moore told supporters at a banquet to raise money for his legal defense.

Still, if Moore's main point was that Alabama law is based upon the principles in the Ten Commandments, isn't it also based on those other documents as well? That's the idea, says Gov. Bob Riley. "Just as the Ten Commandments are exhibited in similar displays in the U.S. Supreme Court and in our nation's Capitol building, I feel it is important to display them in our Capitol, as well," he said. "Visitors to Montgomery can now read and learn about those historical documents upon which our system of laws rests."

In related news, Arkansas judge David Pake has changed the Ten Commandments display on his courtroom law, adding the Declaration of Independence, selections from the codes of Hammurabi and Justinian, and quotes from British legal scholar Sir William Blackstone. Polk County, Florida, yesterday installed a 7-foot granite monument that includes the Ten Commandments, along with 11 other documents. That monument is being unveiled today. Other commandments controversies around the country keep rolling along, too.

California forestry service drops firefighter chaplains
Faced with a lawsuit from six state firefighters, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has dropped its chaplain program. The complaining officers objected to the two-year-old program, saying chaplains should not be allowed to wear religious pins on their uniforms and should not be allowed to conduct Christian prayers at fire sites and graduation ceremonies.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection now agrees, and says firefighters may only conduct moments of silence. Religion must be left off duty, and firefighters cannot use their uniforms during any ministry activity. The department will also pay the six plaintiffs $45,500 to cover legal fees.

"We believe this is the way to go: to separate any appearance of sponsorship of religion in the department," department spokeswoman Karen Terrill told the Los Angeles Times. "We stress that we will not prevent religious discussions or exchanges, but it will not be done on CDF time."

Passion rhetoric heats up
The New Yorker isn't offering online Peter J. Boyer's article "The Jesus War," but some quotes from Mel Gibson in defense of his Passion film are making the rounds. The chief line is his defense of Anne Catherine Emmerich, the early 18th-century stigmatic and ecstatic nun whose The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ has apparently been so influential to the film.

"Why are they calling her a Nazi? Because modern secular Judaism wants to blame the Holocaust on the Catholic Church. And it's revisionism. And they've been working on that one for a while."

"To me, this [comment] is classic anti-Semitism," Anti-Defamation League head Abraham Foxman, one of the chief Jewish critics of the film, told the New York Daily News. "I think [Gibson] is on the fringes of anti-Semitism." (Is that better or worse than being in the mainstream of anti-Semitism? Does it make him an extreme anti-Semite? What's Foxman saying?)

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September (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47