The federal court-ordered removal of Judge Moore's two-and-a-
half-ton Ten Commandments monument from the lobby of the Alabama
Supreme Court has become, in the eyes of many, a symbol of the
"anti-religious" or "secular" bias of modern American life. This
is unfortunate, because to read this incident in this manner
reflects a disturbing forgetfulness of the principles that have
made the United States the leading light of freedom, including
religious freedom, in the world. At the time when the United
States was established, only one of the original 13 states,
Pennsylvania, still guaranteed freedom of religion. Maryland,
originally founded in 1632 as a refuge for English Catholics,
lost its freedom of religion in 1654 due to an influx of
Puritans - the same kind of Christians who had forced Roger
Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, from Massachusetts in
1635 because of his advocacy of complete freedom of religion.
Haunted by this history of intolerance, our founding fathers
knew that in forming a single nation