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Judge Moore's letter to President Bush

February 14, 2006


The Honorable George W. Bush
President, The United States of America
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

As a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and a veteran of the Vietnam war, I am greatly disturbed by reports that chaplains of the United States are being refused the right to pray according to the dictates of their conscience. Specifically, military chaplains have been told that they cannot pray in the name of Jesus Christ.

As Chairman of the Foundation for Moral Law in Montgomery, Alabama, and as the former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, I am distressed at the abandonment of our religious heritage and at the voluntary relinquishment of a right for which our forefathers fought and died.

When petitions were made before Congress in 1853 to abolish the office of Chaplain appointed for the Army and Navy, Congress immediately and resolutely denied such petitions. The United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary reported that,

“We are Christians, not because the law demands it, not to gain exclusive benefits, or to avoid legal disabilities, but from choice and education; and in a land thus universally Christian, what is to be expected, what desired, but that we shall pay a due regard to Christianity, and have a reasonable respect for its ministers and religious solemnities?”

The House Committee on the Judiciary to which similar petitions had been referred, responded with equal fervor:

“Had the people, during the Revolution, had a suspicion of any attempt to war against Christianity, that Revolution would have been strangled in its cradle.” “At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the Amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged. . . . In this age there can be no substitute for Christianity; . . . that was the religion of the founders of the republic, and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants.”

Even the United States Supreme Court as late as 1931 in the majority decision of United States v. Macintosh in discussing the origin and source of our religious freedom, concluded that,

“We are a Christian people according to one another the equal right of religious freedom, and acknowledging with reverence the duty of obedience to the will of God.”

At a time when the ACLU and other organizations dedicated to the removal of the knowledge of God from our land have joined forces with liberal federal court judges to interfere with our God-given inalienable right to worship according to the dictates of our conscience, it is the duty of the President of the United States to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Religious freedom and liberty of conscience is the greatest gift of God to mankind. There is a grave and prevalent error on this subject by those who assume that religious freedom is given by man. To recognize the true source of our freedom is not to deny, but to secure it for all of us.

I call upon you, as our President and Commander-in-Chief, to exercise that constitutional authority given you over our military forces to stop this unwarranted and unlawful attack on military chaplains. As we lead the world in our quest for freedom and liberty, we can ill afford to deny that freedom to valiant military chaplains dedicated to the service of our Country and the God upon Whom that Country was founded.

May God be with you to guide you in this matter.

Respectfully,

Roy S. Moore
Chairman, Foundation for Moral Law


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Roy S. Moore's bio is available online at: http://www.morallaw.org/roymoore.htm
To interview Roy Moore contact Rich Hobson, President, Foundation for Moral Law, 334-262-1245

Posted by Editor at February 16, 2006 02:21 PM