A Vietnam veteran and West Point graduate and Baptist, Judge Roy Moore has become a lightening rod figure for the Christian Nationalism movement, after being losing his position for refusing to remove the 10 Commandments.

"Since September 11, we have been at war. I submit to you there is another war raging - a war between good and evil, between right and wrong. For 40 years we have wandered like the children of Israel. In homes and schools across our land, it's time for Christians to take a stand. This is not a nation established on the principles of Buddha or Hinduism. Our faith is not Islam. What we follow is not the Koran but the Bible. This is a Christian nation," Moore told Evangelicals at a 2002 meeting in Tennessee.

In the mid-1990s Moore had a wooden display of the Ten Commandments in his courtroom, which he also opened with prayer. The American Civil Liberties Union took legal action to stop him.

Alabama Governor Fob James Jr. threatened to send in the National Guard if federal authorities tried to remove the Ten Commandments from Moore's courtroom, and the US House of Representatives voted 295-125 to support the right of public officials to display copies of the Ten Commandments.

Moore was elected Chief Justice of the Alabama state Supreme Court in 2000, and then at his own expense had a 5,280-pound granite monument of the Ten Commandments installed in the rotunda of the state Judicial Center.

"Together with the Southern Poverty Law Center and Alabama ACLU, Americans United took Moore to federal court, where they won both at trial and on appeal. The federal judges had no problem seeing the monument as an attempt by a state official to promote his particular religious beliefs in direct violation of the First Amendment and its prohibition against any establishment of religion," reported Steve Weissman in "America's Religious Right - Saints or Subversives?" "District Court Judge Myron Thompson then ordered Moore to remove the monument, and - true to his cause - Moore refused."

"Moore launched several more legal appeals, including to the US Supreme Court, which refused to hear his case. "God is sovereign," he replied, "and shall remain so despite what the Supreme Court and federal district courts of this land say," wrote Weissman, "Finally ousted from office for refusing to obey a federal court order, Moore now leads in public opinion polls as the favorite among GOP voters to become Alabama's next governor. And he has turned the Ten Commandments into a potent battle flag, as he and his fellow evangelicals launch a new offensive against the independence of federal judges and the separation of church and state."