F ormer chief judge of the Alabama Supreme Court Roy Moore is now the Republican nominee for US senator from that state. He secured the nomination as the unofficial candidate of the state’s large evangelical community and in particular of its Southern Baptist cohort. Baptists are the most right-wing mainstream religious group with 60 percent of them calling themselves conservatives and Alabama has a higher percentage of Baptists than every state except Tennessee according to a 2014 Pew Research Center study.
Moore is a high-visibility combatant in America’s culture wars founding and leading something called the Foundation for Moral Law which promotes the defense of Christian values. In the past he has insisted that he did not take a “regular salary” from the group in order not to be a financial burden to it. But according to recent news reports there may be less to Moore than meets the eye.
These reports allege that the group’s internal documents show he received an annual salary of $180 000 for part-time work collecting a total of more than $1 million during his time as the group’s president. Perhaps Moore spoke the truth after all — a hundred-eighty grand is definitely not a “regular salary ” and certainly not for the dupes down in Alabama who supported his charity with donations from their meager incomes.
During his judicial tenure Moore achieved notoriety by being removed twice from the bench. In one instance the reason was his refusal to remove a monument to the Ten Commandments that he had installed on state property. It’s said that the Alabama Supreme Court building’s floor still bears scratches from the monument’s removal but if these latest reports are true there apparently are significant scratches on the judge’s soul too. This calls to mind the story told of an American industrialist who announced his intention to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land where he planned to ascend Mount Sinai with a flourish in order to reenact the giving of the Ten Commandments. When Mark Twain heard of the fellow’s plans his reaction was “Why doesn’t he just stay home and keep ’em?”
