The Christian Century

Incumbent governor Bob Riley breezed past one of the best-known figures in Alabama politics—“Ten Commandments Judge” Roy Moore—to win the Republican nomination for governor.

Riley routed Moore by a double-digit margin in the June 6 Republican gubernatorial primary. Lieutenant Governor Lucy Baxley won the Democratic nomination.

Following in the footsteps of deposed Alabama Supreme Court head Roy Moore, another judge in that state has raised controversy with a public tribute to the Ten Commandments—this time on his robe.

A national tour of former Alabama judge Roy Moore’s granite monument to the Ten Commandments hit its first snag when atheist protesters confronted it on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., last month.

The graven image of the Ten Commandments, as well as the name of its sponsor, Judge Roy Moore, will a) fade into history or b) get enshrined somewhere in Alabama. But the debates prompted by Moore’s placement of this icon in the Alabama Supreme Court building may continue.

The case of Judge Roy S. Moore, chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, has become the cause célèbre of the Christian right. He has refused to obey an order from a U.S. district judge to remove a display of the Ten Commandments from the rotunda of the state judicial building. Two years ago Moore took it upon himself to install the 5,300-pound granite monument.