Death Threats for Moore's Opponent

Monday August 25, 2003

Although there has been a great deal of media attention on the trials and travails of Roy Moore in his effort to retain a massive Ten Commandments monument in the Alabama state court house, what about those who have challenged Moore in the courts? There has been little to no media attention on their fates, although you can be sure that Moore's supporters have not ignored them.

Eleanor Clift writes for MSNBC:

Just as Wallace built a political career on the disaffection of white voters, Moore is exploiting the fears of Christians who believe they are a persecuted minority whose symbols are being destroyed, when in reality the religious right rules in Alabama, and in the White House.

Judge Moore says he takes his cues from God. He says the U.S. judicial system is founded upon acknowledging God and that to remove the monument would be “a disacknowledgment of God.” He likens himself to Martin Luther King Jr. in sanctioning civil protest to overturn an unjust law. But unlike Dr. King, who counseled his supporters to turn the other cheek, Moore and his followers don’t treat their opponents with Christian charity.

Maddox was ostracized and lost her practice. She received death threats. But she’s not backing down. “I have no problem with God anywhere else but in government buildings,” she says. “If he wants to move that monument across the street and buy a little piece of land and put it on it, and privately fund it, that’s fine. But the Constitution says that government will not establish a state religion, and by sanctioning Protestant Christianity as Alabama’s religion, he’s left everybody else out of the loop.”

When the case went to trial in October 2001, Maddox came home to 72 messages on her answering machine. “They were about how I should be run out of town and didn’t deserve to live with decent, God-fearing people,” she says. “There were calls to my mom and dad about how they should be ashamed for raising a heathen.”

So, is this the nature of Christianity in Alabama? Chasing people out as "heathens" simply because they don't agree with Roy Moore's religious self-indulgences? That's certainly the nature of Christian Nationalism - and we can see exactly where it is leading. It is leading us to divide America between Patriotic American Christians and everyone else - and the "everyone else" had better be afraid, because the former group is willing to use threats to get their way.

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