It's a little hard to reconcile the in-person Roy Moore with the Roy Moore of contemporary myth.
The reviled-by-some, adored-by-others "Ten Commandments judge" is personable to the max. His smile is broad and toothy; his face, at 59, still has echoes of the "aw, shucks" mischievous boy from Alabama's boondocks. Urbane, erudite, honorable, he's got charisma of rock-star proportions.
And then he starts preaching. Waving a book at me called Our Legal Heritage, he transforms himself into a self-appointed latter-day prophet thundering the will and wrath of the Lord.
"What changed my life," intones Moore, wielding the little book like a sword, "is when I went back and reviewed the history of the law in Western Civilization. … It was all based upon God. … There has to be some foundation, and it's always God. … Law and scripture went hand and hand historically."
Given a chance, Moore intends to irrevocably rejoin those hands — ripped asunder, he says, by the evil forces of secularism.
And he has picked a helluva date for the reuniting ceremony: June 6, 2006. It's a portentous day for more than one reason. June 6 is the date of the primary election in which Moore will try to unseat a Republican incumbent governor, Bob Riley, a dull moderate who's managed to anger the state's conservative base over taxation.
The date has another, sulfuric-smelling meaning for those who, like Moore, chart their life's course with the Bible — or, at least, with their interpretation of scripture. Election Day is on the decidedly demonic 6/6/06. (If you don't get it, see Revelations 13:18.)
"That's a good thing," Moore muses at the beginning of a nearly day-long interview. Moore's spokesman, former talk-radio host J. Holland, adds: "To me, it's going to bear testament to a great day in Alabama politics when we elect a godly man who is very much Christ-like instead of anti-Christ, like a lot of the world is."
So, there we have it: Armageddon is just two months away, at least in Alabama. A vote for Moore is an endorsement of Jesus; a vote for Riley (or for one of the Democrats, an under-federal-indictment former governor, Don Siegelman; and Lucy Baxley, the lackluster current lieutenant governor) is a ballot cast for Old Scratch.
Right now, Riley has, depending on the poll, as much as a 2-to-1 lead over Moore. That's a reversal from a year ago, when Moore led. A February poll conducted for the Mobile Register gave Riley a landslide edge of 56 percent to 28 percent for Moore. The poll also predicted Riley trouncing either Democrat.
The media seem relieved at the thought of Moore taking a shellacking. The New York Times, in an article last month, declared Riley "handily in the lead."
But Moore is just swinging into action. He knows how to galvanize public attention — and he knows how to turn defeat into victory. Moreover, like other candidates whose base is the religious right — Ralph Reed, Christian Coalition sparkplug turned Georgia lieutenant governor aspirant, for example — Moore doesn't pay much attention to polls or the mainstream press. He told me over lunch at a Montgomery Mexican restaurant: "I go to the people. I go to them directly."
Interpreted, that means he relies on churches and on religious media to reach his bedrock constituency of fundamentalists. "There are more than enough people in Alabama who want a nation that goes back to our Christian roots to elect me," he says. The mainstream media "doesn't see these people."
And Alabama is not the only state facing a holy crusade. In Ohio, Ken Blackwell, the secretary of state accused by Democrats of rigging the 2004 election for George Bush, is another Christian soldier marching on a governor's mansion. In Tampa, county commissioners Ronda Storms and Brian Blair march in lockstep to the same anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-secularism tune that Moore whistles (see "Holy Rollover" sidebar).
Meanwhile, Christian Exodus, a group with ties to the racist League of the South, has developed a novel campaign strategy: It is encouraging the God-fearing to move multitudes of believers to South Carolina to stage a religious coup d'etat.
But Moore will be this year's headliner in the election holy wars. And his candidacy isn't just a 'Bama thang. It's part of a call to mix religion and government that's being heard throughout the South.
Moore began posting Ten Commandments in courtrooms in the early 1990s as a lower court judge. The American Civil Liberties Union sued him, and with the popularity gained from the litigation, Moore won the top seat on the Alabama Supreme Court.
He was ousted in November 2003 as chief justice after he issued a challenge designed to infuriate church-state separatists. On July 31, 2001, in the middle of the night — but with video cameras recording the event — he had his massive Ten Commandments memorial placed in the central rotunda of the state's Supreme Court building. It was a religious second Fort Sumter, signaling to the faithful the commencement of an ecclesiastical civil war.
"The chief justice placed himself above the law," declared William Thompson, the judge who presided over the judicial panel that followed.
Thirty-six other judges, many of them staunch, conservative, religious Republicans, agreed, ordering the memorial removed and booting Moore from Alabama's highest court.
But rather than being chastened by this loss to fellow jurists, Moore emerged as a national hero to fundamentalist Christians.
During the Ten Commandments battle, he ascended to high-octane celebrity status. Scores of supporters chanted and waved Bibles outside of courtrooms where judges deliberated Moore's fate. Many threw themselves to the ground, weeping and wailing; others were arrested. It was a show of zealotry unmatched until Terry Schiavo galvanized believers with her protracted death.
Moore tells me about the "great cost" of waging the Ten Commandments fight. His spokesman, Holland, speaks about all that Moore has given up — his $170,000 salary, the second highest for a state judge in the nation. But that sacrifice purchased Moore a political foundation, a juggernaut of Christian activists who envision a nation where the church isn't subject to the state, but where the state is most certainly a vassal of the church.
The eyes of the South, and the nation, should be closely watching Moore. His message is a fault line dividing the nation on core issues — the role of religion in government, the rights of gays and the re-emergence in the South of neo-Confederate thinking.
The Ten Commandment fight symbolizes those flashpoints. Not only, says Moore, was it his right to make the commandments his marquee, but it was an action required by the tradition, documents and founders of this nation. He totes an old, worn black briefcase stuffed with books and documents backing his position — an impressive arsenal.
Traveling the nation, Moore preaches what he asserts is a return to America's historic religious roots — quoting scripture, historic documents and Founding Fathers' statements with an ease that is awesome and just a little eerie. His critics say he is trumpeting theocracy, but Moore knows how to play the crowd, speaking daily to churches and civic clubs. He has even ventured into the lion's den — academia — to find an audience. He lectured to a political science class last November at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, where, Moore says, "a lot of professors were leading them (students) down the path to destruction."
Should Moore win the gubernatorial race, there will be considerable clamor for him to seek the Republican's 2008 presidential nomination. He flirted with a 2004 presidential run on the ticket of the Constitution Party. That outfit was founded by those in the unabashedly theocratic Christian Reconstruction movement, which thunders that the prescription for America's ills is embracing Old Testament laws: mass executions of gays, blasphemers and other sinners; and reserving participation in government for the "faithful."
Asked if he is an aspiring theocrat, Moore says, "That's crazy." But he makes clear that it is the duty of officials to proclaim God as the font of law. He calls Myron Thompson, the federal judge who ordered removal of Moore's Ten Commandments memorial, "apostate … one judge who put himself above the rule of law."
As he chastises the three-dozen judges who backed Thompson's ruling — "they upheld the rule of man, that's all they did" — he hands me a much marked-up 1931 U.S. Supreme Court decision in which one justice wrote: "The essence of religion is a belief in a relation to God involving duties superior to those arising from any human relation."
For Moore, freedom of religion is not necessarily the freedom from religion. When asked how he would apply his religious views to such issues as abortion and homosexuality, Moore declines specifics and instead responds:
"Define religion. It is defined as our forefathers define it as the duties you owe to God and the manner discharging it. How you do your duty — Catholic, Protestant, Methodist or whatever — has nothing to do [with government]. What you must in government do, though, is recognize that God which gives you that freedom."
And, he makes clear, while there may be slight variations on how politicians do their duty, there's no dispute that duty to God is required.
One of Moore's former colleagues on the Alabama Supreme Court, Douglas Johnstone, said during the commandments struggle: "While I believe in God, I oppose the movement to govern in the name of God. People who govern in the name of God attribute their own personal preferences to God and therefore recognize no limits in imposing those preferences on other people."
Moore sees politics in no-shades-of-gray terms. He portrays himself as God's champion. Frederick Clarkson, a writer and leading expert on the Christian right, says Moore subscribes to the "doctrine of the lower magistrate," which holds that lower officials have the duty to foment revolution if government has fallen away from God.
A martyred saint to the faithful who want to stamp their religion on government, and a devilish threat to the secular, Moore is indisputably a force. And he's actually emboldened by the freefall plunge the Republican establishment is taking in opinion polls. "The Republican Party has taken on socialist airs," Moore says. "We're not a party of socialism."
Moore's platform is what you might call religious libertarianism — opposition to gay marriage, term limits for legislators and vigorous anti-taxation policies.
He's keenly aware of popular sentiments that energize his candidacy. A survey released last November by the Anti-Defamation League shows that 64 percent of Americans feel "religion is under attack." About 80 percent of those who describe themselves as evangelical or fundamentalist agree with the statement. In Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and the rest of the South, those numbers are pumped up by the region's religious fervor.
After a day with Moore, I'm having an uncomfortable feeling. I like the guy. He's got humor and intelligence. He wears a wickedly starched white shirt and his clothes are impeccable creased — reflecting his West Point education. His intensity is palpable — but he's quick to smile. I warm up to his stories about growing up in rural Alabama, in a house with no toilet, about how he could never have afforded college except for his West Point appointment.
"The mules we plowed with were our neighbors," he recalls. "The cows we milked were our neighbors."
With deep sincerity, Moore says he has never traveled far from his roots. "I like to lay rock" for construction, he says, adding that he built his own home in rural Gallant.
Moore has compared himself to Martin Luther King Jr. — while at the same time winking at the South's neo-confederates. In 2004, Moore opposed a referendum that would have struck unenforceable segregationist language from the Alabama constitution. Voters rejected the measure by a slim 1,850 majority, a victory for Moore and a clear signal to the many unrepentant segregationists in the Heart of Dixie.
Moore sends other signs to the folks with Confederate flags on their car bumpers. One of Moore's legal advisers is John Eidsmoe, who has embraced the racist Concerned Citizens Council, a reincarnation of the "uptown Klan" White Citizens Councils of 50 years ago.
And Moore's affection for theocratic Christian Reconstruction has not-so-subtle appeal to many white Southerners. The religious movement was founded by theologian R.J. Rushdoony, who endorsed slavery and segregation because they were part of Old Testament society. In April, Moore was the headliner at a "Restore America" rally in Atlanta sponsored by a leading Christian Reconstruction organizer, Gary DeMar. Literature at the event, much of it published by DeMar, praised the antebellum South as a "God-directed" society and touted the "benefits" slavery provided blacks — primarily that it brought Africans in touch with Christianity.
"I like a lot of what he says," Moore opines about DeMar.
Moore wouldn't say what actions he'd take against gays and abortion clinics. His platform declares opposition to "pornography" and "same-sex marriage." He says a 2002 opinion he wrote in a child custody battle between two lesbians is often taken out of context to pin the hate label on him. That opinion states that homosexuality is "a crime against nature" and that the state "carries the power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit [gay] conduct with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution" in order to keep children from the "subversion" of the lifestyle.
In the interview, Moore says there's "no basis in the Constitution … to strike down sodomy laws," and judges "are finding rights that do not exist." Our nation's founders "believed in penalties for sin," he says.
Even if you disagree vigorously with Moore, he puts points on the board in one category. His simple candor contrasts sharply with most politicians in this era of hyperbolic spin. Indeed, not even his fiercest foes question his sincerity.
"With George Wallace, people said he just manipulated. Racism was just politics, it wasn't in his heart," says Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose ultra-modern Montgomery headquarters is a 180-degree contrast, in architecture and mission, to Moore's nearby Foundation for Moral Law, housed in a historic bank building. "With Moore, what he says does reflect his heart. We've never doubted his sincerity. I don't think his zeal should be questioned. He's a giant rock in an age of turmoil."
Cohen pauses, smiles and adds: "Roy has earned the title of 'Ayatollah of Alabama.'"
Senior Editor John Sugg's blog is at www.johnsugg.com.
Also see Holy Rollover
This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2006.