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If the U.S. Supreme Court prohibits public displays of the Ten Commandments nationwide, all heck may break loose.

Religious conservatives predict the resulting furor would be greater than the reaction when a California court ruled "under God" did not belong in the Pledge of Allegiance.

The high court heard oral arguments yesterday on two Ten Commandments cases, and a decision isn't expected for months. But some are already anticipating defiance if the court rules that Ten Commandments displays must come down nationwide.

Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., has sent President Bush a letter urging him to defy the court by not sending U.S. marshals to remove a Ten Commandments display in his home district.

"As you know, the federal judiciary has no constitutional or statutory means by which to enforce its own opinion," the congressman's letter said.

Robert Boston, spokesman for the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the letter "astounding."

"It reminds me of the segregationist movement in the 1960s. And you see how that turned out. It's not a good idea to encourage people to do these things," Boston said.

The United States is in the middle of a "culture war," said Kelly Shackelford, chief counsel of the Liberty Legal Institute, and coach for the lawyers arguing on behalf of the monuments in the Texas and Kentucky cases.

"It comes to a deeper problem. This country was founded by religious people and there's a lot of religious culture and there's monuments everywhere in the country that reflect that," Shackelford said. If the displays are struck down, "it would start a process of religious cleansing around the country of our monuments and I think it's going to open a Pandora's box."

Nobody is sure how many religious displays appear on public land nationwide, but the number is in the thousands, Shackelford said. The image of those displays being bulldozed would shock Americans, he said.

But Boston says public outcry over the removal won't be as immense as some predict. "There will be some grumbling. Jerry Falwell will mail out fund-raising letters. People will go on Fox News and huff and puff," Boston said. "But the country will survive."

Boston said talk of bulldozers is "intentionally lurid to frighten people."

"There are ways to deal with this that don't involve the physical destruction of the monument," he said. "They don't have to bulldoze anything. Taking a sledgehammer to the monument was never really on the table."

The bigger danger to society would be if the monuments were allowed on public land, putting a huge crack in the wall between church and state, say opposition groups. "Our concern is that they would start increasing and the religious right would start marking places," said Christopher Arntzen, chair of the Gay and Lesbian Atheists and Humanists. "There's a danger to civil liberties. A lot of the religious right is directed against non-believers."

Arntzen and church-state separation groups rallied next to Christians who prayed and sang hymns outside the Supreme Court building Wednesday. While the lawyers hashed out the legal nuances inside the warmth of the courtroom, passionate citizens from all over the country braved freezing temperatures to hold their own debates.

A woman holding a Bible calmly challenged a man holding a sign for atheism. Some wore hats that read, "In reason we trust" and carried signs with slogans such as "America. It's not just for fundamentalists anymore." Others carried signs with the Ten Commandments written on them.

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March (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49