Alabama Ten Commandments display opposed

Alabama Ten Commandments display opposed

WASHINGTON — The Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs (BJCPA) has filed a friend-of the-court brief opposing the display of the Ten Commandments in Alabama’s judicial building in Montgomery.

The 5,000-pound monument in the lobby of the building that houses the state Supreme Court violates the First Amendment clause prohibiting a government establishment of religion, the BJCPA brief contends. The BJCPA filed the brief in a suit brought in federal court in Montgomery against the display by Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the Alabama affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Roy Moore, chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, placed the monument in the building.

“Justice Moore has usurped the role of private individuals and faith communities in shaping their own religious views,” the BJCPA brief says “Governmental efforts to promote religion drain religious practices and beliefs of their spiritual significance, thereby depreciating, rather than revitalizing, religion.”

Twenty-one Alabama Baptists representing 17 different churches were among the more than 40 petitioners.