Ten Commandments Looms Large in Alabama Elections

Judge Roy Moore may be out of office, but he is not out of the spotlight and his influence has not disappeared from Alabama. Across the state, his supporters are running for one congressional district and all three state Supreme Court seats currently up for election.

The State reports:

"The public is tired of politicians professing certain beliefs and not acting on those beliefs," said Tom Parker, Moore's former legal adviser, who now is trying to unseat Associate Justice Jean Brown in the Republican primary. "They want elected officials who have the moral courage to do what they will say they will do when they're running for election," he said. ... "I have to think that the Moore acolytes are better organized" than their opponents, Grafton said. "In the primaries, where the turnout is so low, intensity of feeling and organization often trumps numbers on the other side."

"If the Moore faction wins three or four of those seats ... I think the perception will be ... that the church faction of the Republican Party is now more powerful at the ballot box in Alabama than the business faction of the Republican Party," said Jess Brown, a government professor at Athens State University. But if all four lose, Brown said, "I think you're going to have to conclude that Chief Justice Moore has more political baggage than political advantage, and that his political fortunes in Alabama might not be too good."

The Republican primaries are, then, an important battle for the future of the Republican party there — and it may have implications for the Republican party elsewhere as well. If the Christian Right wins decisively, then the “busyness right” will languish and won’t have as much of a voice in Alabama. Republicans elsewhere are watching and will learn from this.

Read More:

• Fundamentalism
• Religious Right
• Christian Extremism
• Christian Nationalism
• Religious Intolerance & Bigotry
• Evangelicalism