Roy Moore’s Presidential Ambitions and “Biblical Law”

Former Alabama Judge Roy “Ten Commandments” Moore has set up a presidential exploratory committee and has been making appearances in Iowa. A hero to some segments of the religious right, he’s also been active in the Tea Party movement; earlier this year, was awarded the “All American Award” by the Central Texas Tea Party.

Moore’s underlying philosophy of law is that only God and the Bible can be the source of moral authority.

Moore has long been involved with the work of the Christian Reconstructionist group Vision Forum, including serving as one of the speakers for its Witherspoon School of Law. The occasional four-day seminar on biblical law (open only to men, by the way) is “designed to equip students, attorneys, lawmakers, pastors, and fathers with a Reformation understanding of the Scriptures as the source book for law and liberty and the only sure foundation for addressing the challenging ethical questions of the twenty-first century.”

The school includes a lecture by host (and Vision Forum founder) Doug Phillips on epistemology, drawn from Rushdoony and framed by the very title of Rushdoony’s book: By What Standard?

Maybe Moore will make his announcement when he speaks at the Christian Reconstructionists Institute on the Constitution this Friday. Though when he spoke before the same group in 2007, he sat with Reconstructionists Herb Titus and John Lofton (Sarah has written about them here and here), under a version of the Confederate flag. That might not be a good setting for a campaign kick-off.