Jerry Newcombe
Roy Moore, a man for all seasons
FacebookTwitter
By Jerry Newcombe
February 25, 2015

In my career as a TV producer for D. James Kennedy Ministries, I've had the privilege of interviewing all sorts of movers and shakers within modern Christendom. I've seen them on camera and off camera.

One leading example of such is the Hon. Roy S. Moore, Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. From 1995 to 2003, I traveled to that state about ten times with a TV crew for Roy Moore-related cases. Now he's in trouble again – for sticking to his guns. I'll get to that in a moment.

When I first met Roy Moore in 1995 and interviewed him for television, he was a lowly circuit judge in a decrepit building in Gadsden, Alabama – kind of close to Birmingham.

He was being sued by the ACLU because he supposedly assaulted the First Amendment by having a plaque of the Ten Commandments hanging in his courtroom wall. It was surrounded by the Declaration of Independence and, as I recall, pictures of Washington and Lincoln.

Moore noted, "When I first put the Ten Commandments on the courtroom, I thought it was very fitting since it is the foundation of our laws, the foundation of our country. And I thought it also represented a return to the thing we need most in society, which is a return to morality."

He viewed this as obeying his mandate as a state official: "We do the very thing that the state of Alabama in its constitution says we are to do by invoking the 'favor and guidance of Almighty God.' In the beginning of this country, when they wrote the First Amendment, when they wrote the Constitution, they did not think that an acknowledgement of God was an establishment of religion."

The lawsuits against him were so ironic. As Judge Moore said way back in another interview I did with him in the late 1990s: "In my tenure as a circuit judge, I've handled all kind of violent crimes. I had one case where a mother drowned her child face up in a bathtub of water between her legs so that her father could not get custody. We've had terrible crimes and I seriously wonder why the ACLU is attacking me for posting of Commandments which read, 'Thou shall not kill.'"

In 2000, the voters of Alabama elected him Chief Justice of their state's highest court. Several months later, he had a beautiful granite monument installed in the foyer of that building. We filmed the monument being installed.

The monument had the Ten Commandments on the top, with quotes from American history all around the sides. Once again he was sued by those who were "offended" by seeing it. Regrettably, he lost that job in 2003 because he wouldn't remove the monument even though federal judges ruled against him.

Thankfully, Roy Moore was re-elected in 2012 as Chief Justice. But today he is again in trouble with the politically correct crowd. Why? Because in January, Federal Judge Callie Granade ruled null and void the Alabama amendment passed by the voters declaring that marriage in their state is between one man and one woman, and instead ordered local courts to begin issuing same-sex marriage licenses.

Advocates of same-sex marriage are using the courts left and right to trump such state amendments. Chief Justice Moore has drawn a line in the sand on this.

He's saying that since the U.S. Supreme Court has not ruled one way or another definitively on same-sex marriage as a constitutional issue, the federal judge is going beyond her authority, having no jurisdiction to order a state or local court to act in violation of Alabama's constitution.

He said about this case in reference to the Supreme Court: "If they had ruled on marriage, we wouldn't need to be going to the United States Supreme Court in April...There is no law right now that overcomes the Alabama Constitution."

It seems to me these days that to many liberals all that counts is getting power and wielding it, to promote their own agenda – one that has chilling effects on religious freedom, as Christian florists, bakers, photographers can testify.

Roy Moore is a hero because he is the same in season and out of season. He is indeed a man for all seasons. Since our lives are essentially ruled these days by our "robed masters" on the federal court, may God raise up more men and woman of Christian conviction like him – especially judges.

© Jerry Newcombe

 

The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)

Click to enlarge

Jerry Newcombe

Jerry Newcombe, D.Min., is the executive director of the Providence Forum, an outreach of D. James Kennedy Ministries, where Jerry also serves as senior producer and an on-air host. He has written/co-written 33 books, including George Washington's Sacred Fire (with Providence Forum founder Peter Lillback, Ph.D.) and What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? (with D. James Kennedy, Ph.D.). www.djkm.org @newcombejerry www.jerrynewcombe.com

Subscribe

Receive future articles by Jerry Newcombe: Click here

More by this author

 

Stephen Stone
The most egregious lies Evan McMullin and the media have told about Sen. Mike Lee

Siena Hoefling
Protect the Children: Update with VIDEO

Stephen Stone
Flashback: Dems' fake claim that Trump and Utah congressional hopeful Burgess Owens want 'renewed nuclear testing' blows up when examined

Linda Goudsmit
Chapter 10: Objective reality is required for a free society

Michael Bresciani
Gay is OK, but trans for kids is on the skids – Have Americans now become judges of evil thoughts?

Linda Kimball
Nihilism…all that exists is matter and energy: The worldview that caused the collapse of Christendom and Protestant Amer

Peter Lemiska
China doesn’t need a Trojan Horse – It has Joe Biden

Rev. Mark H. Creech
Revelation Chapter 22: Getting beyond doubt, Billy Graham’s example

Paul A. Byrne, M.D.
2024 International Gift of Life Walk – NYC

Cliff Kincaid
Biden’s bloody revolution for America

Victor Sharpe
Senator Schumer enters the annals of Shame

Linda Kimball
Prayer against evil, insane Babylon

Steve A. Stone
Letter to President Trump

Curtis Dahlgren
'There are a few good Swedes' (many forms of bias)

Jerry Newcombe
Bribing future generations for Marx?
  More columns

Cartoons


Click for full cartoon
More cartoons

Columnists

Matt C. Abbott
Chris Adamo
Russ J. Alan
Bonnie Alba
Chuck Baldwin
Kevin J. Banet
J. Matt Barber
Fr. Tom Bartolomeo
. . .
[See more]

Sister sites