Commandments fray goes beyond Alabama

Jesse Truax, wearing a crown of thorns, is grimacing from the prickle as sweat wends down his cheeks in the sweltering heat. After a daylong bus ride, he's here all the way from Eustis, Fla., with a group of 33 from his Baptist church, vowing to "stay as long as it takes" to keep the sacred Ten Commandments monument here in the rotunda of the judicial building. Though the legal scales keep tilting toward the tablets' removal, Mr. Truax is unfazed, and that crown is planted firmly on his head.

The battle is unfolding on the street where Jefferson Davis declared war in 1861, where George Wallace fought for segregation and where Martin Luther King Jr. marched to end it. Now it's a onetime Sunday school teacher who has risen to prominence for his stand on the Bible in the courtroom - and drawn a crowd of staunch defenders, opportunists, and media to his stand of pious rebellion. [Editor's note: The original version of this article misstated the year when Jefferson Davis declared war.]

But as the frenzy continues and Judge Moore staunchly refuses to have his monument moved, the legacy of "Roy's Rock" is fluid: Will it go down in history as one man's small-time politico-religious circus? Or is it a nascent national movement, the catalyst for a galvanized Christian right that will ripple more broadly - and rancorously - through the American justice system?

"To people who have strong religious convictions, these things become very tangible symbols of what's wrong with the country," says John Green, a political analyst at the University of Akron and director of the Bliss Institute. "This could indeed spark a renewal of activism. But more importantly, it could bring a fresh supply of activists."

In fact, Moore's monument parallels moves under way by a group called Faith and Action, which has had about 400 marble slabs and carved tables installed in public places political offices. Lawsuits, of course, have followed, and in most cases, courts have ruled against the displays.

Experts warn the issue itself - stone tablets in public - is narrow and perishable. To compare Moore's stand on the courthouse steps to a historical moment such as Wallace's stand in the schoolhouse door before thousands is "ludicrous," says Dean Culpepper Clark of the University of Alabama College of Communication, author of a book on Wallace. "Judge Moore claims to represent people who are in no way oppressed," Mr. Clark says.

Most educated Alabamians consider Moore a zealot out of touch with mainstream Christianity, says Clark, who suspects they'll abandon Moore as he flouts the system and defies judges.

Still, he adds, the galvanization of the Christian right "could ripple out a good bit."

The crowd's devotion, says Clark, is somewhat baffling: Moore's followers have braved the heat on marble stairs, even slept there for several nights, when conservative Christian Republicans control the White House, both houses of Congress, the Alabama governor's mansion, the state Legislature, and the state Supreme Court. But many of the faithful feel besieged all the same - in part by rulings such as the Texas sodomy case. That unease helps make this a galvanizing time for the Christian right.

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