ALWAYS BET ON RED

How judge's stand resonates in Bible Belt (Noel C. Paul, 8/25/03, The Christian Science Monitor)

Come sundown, an endless forest of pine trees casts long, spindly shadows on the highways in this town that, locals like to say, has more churches per capita than any other on the face of the earth.

The scent of pine pervades every block here in DeRidder, where 76 churches minister to a population of 9,000. Mixed with the smell of smoke from trash burnings, there is a brooding, mystical air to the town, as if hermits and knights might pop out of the woods any moment and walk casually into J.C. Penney's.

On this stage where the Christian faith pervades daily life as thoroughly as sunshine and human speech, and pride in old Southern heroes is undimmed, the attention of pastors, churchgoers, children, and even the unbaptized was fixed last week on one man, Roy Moore.

The Alabama judge's highly visible crusade to keep a Ten Commandments monument in the rotunda of the state judicial building appears to have won the admiration of almost everyone in town. "I think the judge is doing a good thing," says Gregory Jones, pastor of the Church of God In Christ, a Pentecostal denomination. "The Ten Commandments are the basis of our good judgment and belong in the courts."

Although the monument's removal as ordered by a federal judge now appears likely, and Judge Moore has been suspended, his determination has energized many Christians far and near, especially in the so-called Bible Belt of the South.

The variety of responses here to Moore's crusade, say experts, indicates a growing complexity in passion and point of view among conservative Christians across the country, even at a moment when many believe their values are being challenged more than ever before. What remains to be seen is whether the "last stand" of Judge Moore's monument will galvanize renewed efforts by conservative Christians to affirm the Ten Commandments' role in national life.

You'd have to think that we could be headed to the point where the divide between Red and Blue America isn't much narrower than that between America and Europe. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 24, 2003 6:16 PM