Conservatives should be wary of Roy Moore's fundamentalism
By Jeremy Beaman
Aug 14, 2017, 12:01 AM

Roy Moore, former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and candidate for U.S. Senate in Alabama in next week's primary election, is an ardent defender of the second amendment and wants to see Obamacare repealed. He frequently quotes from the Constitution and Declaration of Independence during interviews and debates. He strongly advocates for federalism and for returning to a more original understanding and application of the separation of powers principle.

There's a lot there for conservatives to like. That doesn't mean conservatives should support him or his brand of politico-religious fundamentalism, an aspect of his politics that overshadows everything else. Moore uses God to oversimplify complex political realities.

That's not to say Moore's critique of American politics isn't compatible with the arguments many other conservatives make. He recently released Abuse of Power, his opinion on the Supreme Court's 2015 Obergefell decision, which outlines the dissents of Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, and calls the decision an imposition of "personal policy preferences [of the Justices] upon the Constitution that have no basis whatsoever in its text…" National Review took a similar position, using cases like Obergefell and Roe as examples of legislation by the judiciary. And it's possible to hold that view without embracing Moore's view of the founding as a quasi-religious event, or that increased religious belief can fix difficult national issues like magic.

"I'm all for President Trump and his agenda to make America great again," Moore has said. "I believe we can and I believe we will. But before we make America great, we've got to make America good. And how do you make America good? You return to the acknowledgment of the foundation of morality, which is in God."

This is a good message – from a pulpit. It's not a persuasive political message. The acknowledgement of God can certainly win some people's votes for a politician like Moore, but it's not at all what we elect politicians to do.

Moore's ardent hope is to rekindle a common national morality centered around God. "The Supreme Court, and the federal district courts, have no authority to deny God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, and government," Moore said in one of his campaign videos.

His religious goal might be noble. But it is far outside the scope of the office Moore is seeking now.

This is not at all to say religion doesn't belong in the public square, or that it shouldn't inform policy positions or legislation. The problem is specifically the way Moore uses it.

Moore has been arguing for a public acknowledgement of God since at least 2001, when he had a monument of the Ten Commandments placed in the rotunda of Alabama's main court building and famously refused to take it down when ordered to do so by a federal judge. Alabama's judicial ethics board eventually voted unanimously to remove Moore from office for obstructing the order.

Neither the Republican governor nor Bill Pryor, the Republican attorney general who was at the time of Moore's removal awaiting approval to a federal judgeship, supported Moore's refusal to comply, though Pryor did support his position.

"At the end of the day, when the courts resolve those controversies, we respect their decision," Pryor said of the judge's order. "That does not mean that we always agree with their decision."
Moore came out of it all looking less like a pious champion of the Constitution and the powers it vests in the judiciary, and more like someone who didn't understand his place and did actually seek an establishment of religion, in one form or another.

Moore has also said, "Violence, greed, corruption, immorality, idolatry, hatred for our fellow man have become a way of life. And only God can change that." Many conservatives likely agree with Moore that God can change the hearts of men. But it isn't possible to legislate God. And herein lies the problem with Moore: He draws no distinction between the City of God and the City of Man. He perceives the American Founding as a decidedly Christian event. But the founders did not establish this republic in order to acknowledge God, but rather to ensure the freedom of its people to do so. To say otherwise is a misrepresentation, or at least an oversimplification.

Ross Douthat, columnist for the New York Times, discusses this in his book Bad Religion. "Whether you are Protestant or Catholic, lukewarm or zealous," he writes, "believers inevitably find themselves pressured to join the side they are on instead of trying to do justice to the complexities of political life in the City of Man."

Moore does little justice to that complexity, which involves finding ways to coexist with those who don't acknowledge your God, solving complex moral problems that affect every kind of American, and defining the proper intersection between religion and politics. Solving political problems requires more than simply acknowledging God.

Jeremy Beaman is a writer based in Alabama and a former Student Free Press Association summer journalism fellow with the Examiner.

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