Posted on 11/07/2004 12:31:25 PM PST by TomDoniphon68
Roy Moore, the Alabama judge who lost his job for defying a court order, spoke recently to a group with a similar history of confronting government in the name of religion.
Moore, who is traveling the country telling the story of his Ten Commandments monument, was a featured speaker in Indiana at an event organized in part by people who disregarded tax laws and had their church seized by the government. Moore was photographed during the appearance with a Texas man who publicly endorses racial segregation. A spokeswoman for Moore said his speeches are never an endorsement of the host organization's positions, and he does not screen people who ask to have their pictures taken with him.
"Most places where he speaks, people get pictures," Jessica Atteberry said. "It doesn't mean he knows their life story or endorses them. It just means they come to hear him speak and get a picture."
Moore spoke in Greenwood, Ind., to the 20th Annual Unregistered Baptist Fellowship Conference, an association of pastors, evangelists, missionaries and laymen.
The conference was hosted by leaders of the Indianapolis Baptist Temple, which the government seized in 2001 because of a $6 million tax debt. The debt accumulated over several years when the church challenged the authority of the Internal Revenue Service and stopped withholding federal income and Social Security taxes from employee paychecks.
News reports at the time quoted the pastor emeritus of the church as saying that taxing church employees violates the principle of keeping church and state separate.
The spokeswoman said Moore would not be available for an interview about the Indiana event.
"He takes invitations from all kinds of groups from every possible walk of life that will hear his story," Atteberry said. "He doesn't endorse every group where he's traveled to speak. He's an invited guest to tell his story, not to endorse their effort."
`Extremist events':
A director with the Southern Poverty Law Center said there is a pattern to Moore's appearances.
"It would be believable if Moore showed up at just one or two of these events, but the fact is he's been to a string of extremist events around the country for the better part of a year now," said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery. The center also considers the Constitution Party, a political party with which Moore has appeared before, a "patriot" organization.
he Intelligence Project monitors hate groups and extremist movements around the country and lists the Indianapolis Baptist Temple as a patriot group, one with strong anti-government views.
Photos taken during Moore's appearance at the Unregistered Baptist Fellowship meeting include one of Moore posing with the Rev. W.N. Otwell. Otwell is with Heritage Baptist Church and the affiliated God Said Ministries in Texas.
In 1998, Otwell told the Forth Worth Star-Telegram that the Bible teaches that whites are superior to blacks and that he thinks "God uses the white race as leaders." He said he was not a racist but a segregationist. He also said the Oklahoma City bombing was "God's payback" for the deadly fire at the Branch Davidian religious compound in Waco, Texas.
"I don't know what this man's view is, nor would I suspect the chief justice knows what this man's view is," Atteberry said.
Otwell was one of 22 people arrested in Montgomery in August 2003 while supporting Moore's decision to disobey a federal court order to remove the Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building.
Moore, the former chief justice of Alabama, recently campaigned against an amendment to the Alabama Constitution that would have removed outdated segregation-era language. He said the amendment might open the way for a tax increase.
On the same weekend as the speech to the Unregistered Baptist Fellowship, Moore was reunited with the granite monument to the Ten Commandments, which he signed over to a veterans group to tour the country. Moore saw it while it was on a flatbed truck in a parking lot near Interstate 65 in Greenwood, according to the Indianapolis Star.
His speech drew more than 400 people, and Moore was the guest of Indianapolis Baptist Temple. Tickets cost $10, and there was a $100-per-person reception for him.
When I read the headline, I thought "Wow, Michael Moore is already out there trying to convince Evangelicals that the left is religious..unreal!!"
LOL
I started out thinking the guy had some points- on principle...but the more I learned about him, the more I wondered about his stability and common sense.
Yeah, Roy Moore is a good example of what's wrong with the religious right.
Meanwhile, McCain speaks before La Raza and nobody bats an eye.
The IRS case against them was not as cut-and-dried as this article leads you to believe. The IRS actually received all of the taxes due from these people, but individually as independent contractors instead of from the church as employees.
I never understood why they poked a stick in Uncle's eye over the issue and continued the fight to the point where their property was seized.
Regardless of one's opinion of Roy Moore and his Ten Commandments stand, and his speech audiences since, it's a nonsensical leap to characterize him as representative of the "religious right." Your comment seems to be a good example of the disdain directed toward people who are both very devout followers of Christ and who are also very politically conservative. If those two identifying traits are, in your opinion, what's wrong with the religious right, then I happily accept your criticism.
Some folks need the external "enemy " to help keep the sheep in line. Other folks just need to be "persecuted" so that they feel important.
The loons at "Southern Poverty Law Center" by comparison make the likes of Michael Moore and Nancy Pelosi look normal.
Amazing how you were able to glean all that information from my one sentance. But, you hit the nail on the head. It was Moores stance on the ten commandments monument that lost him his judgeship, not his devout religious beliefs. If he had used used his beliefs as guidance instead of a megaphone, all would have been fine.
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