I took more heat for my last column (defending Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore yet concluding he should obey the federal court order) than any other. It’s a good sign when your political opponents disagree, but much of this criticism was from fellow conservatives.

There is no way I could answer the hundreds of emails I received, so this column is an attempt to clarify and expand on the previous one.

I believe passionately in religious freedom and that our society is selectively discriminating against Christians and suppressing our religious freedom – so passionately that I’ve just completed a book on the subject, titled "Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity", that will be released in September.

To reiterate, I believe that nothing in the federal Constitution prevents Judge Moore from displaying the Ten Commandments monument. The First Amendment Establishment Clause prohibits Congress from establishing a national church. It also prohibits Congress from interfering with the right of individual states to establish their own churches if they choose (between seven and nine colonies had established churches at the time of the founding) – not that any would consider it today.

I also believe that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment was never intended to incorporate the Establishment Clause as a prohibition against state governments. Incorporation is a regrettable legal fiction.

I further believe that the other religion clause of the First Amendment, the Free Exercise Clause, has been consistently eroded and often ignored by judicial misinterpretations. I also believe that nothing in the Constitution, or any of its Amendments, gives the courts the power of judicial review. But since 1803, the United States Supreme Court has been exercising that right – having established itself, by its own bootstraps, as the final arbiter of what the Constitution means. In 1824, the Court further declared that state courts are bound to honor Supreme Court decisions.

In my last column I essentially said that although Judge Moore is correct and the federal courts are wrong, he should not disobey the federal courts’ order once all of his legal appeals and other remedies have been exhausted. That, I feared, could result in a breakdown of the rule of law. (It’s still possible, though not likely, that the Supreme Court could decide to hear his case on the merits. It would be wonderful if it did and if it ruled, correctly, in his favor.)

Critics protest that we have no obligation to follow unconstitutional, unlawful or unjust laws. And Christians, especially, they say, must honor God above any man-made laws. Specifically, they say that Justice Moore had no duty to obey the federal order because it was itself unconstitutional, without jurisdiction and void. It is the federal courts, they say, not Judge Moore, that have undermined the rule of law.

I agree that the Courts have often undermined the rule of law through our history by judicially legislating and following their own dictates instead of the Constitution. And I believe there is a point at which people should disobey laws or orders. The American Revolution is an example.

The question is: When is enough enough? When is it time that we quit trying to work within the system and galvanize toward another revolution? Many of my e-mail critics seem to be implying that we should take the matter in our own hands. Let me explain my reservations about this.

By all means Christians should honor God’s laws. But it is very easy for anyone people simply to assert that he is following God’s laws. So easy, in fact, that every judge in every state, including closet Atheists and Agnostics, could make that claim. Then where would we be?

Of course our system of law is built on and derives its authority from God’s law. But it is a system. We simply cannot have a system of law where everyone gets to decide whether he should obey the law based on his assertion that he’s following God, or his interpretation of the Constitution. It’s not Justice Moore that bothers me – I believe he is trying to follow God’s law and I agree with his interpretation of the Constitution.

But what about charlatans? What happens when they invoke the same authority?

Well, you say, the deceivers will quickly be seen as the deceivers. Maybe by you, maybe by me, maybe by all with discernment. But it is the nature of deceit to fool people.

It’s one thing for a person to exercise civil disobedience – (I realize Moore argues that technically he is not engaging in civil disobedience). And I’m personally glad Justice Moore has brought attention to the religious freedom issue. If you critics are merely saying he should exercise civil disobedience and stop there, I have no major problem with that. But are you further saying that federal and state authorities should do nothing then to enforce the law?

If so, then any judge would be free to ignore precedent, indeed to ignore the law altogether. The entire system could break down. Without order, freedom is impossible.

In other words, there has to be an enforcement mechanism in a legal system for that system to establish any order at all, which is a condition to freedom. If higher judges usurp their authority – and they have, in abundance – people and even government officials can choose to disobey. If they do, the system, to retain any semblance of integrity, must then act in its enforcement capacity.

That is, it must unless you are willing to draw the line and say the system has been so abused by activist judges, among others, that it is no longer worth preserving. Are you really ready for a revolution?

Why do I say this? These things haven’t happened overnight. This is not a case of first impression. Our system – the way it has worked for the last 200 years at least, includes a process by which the constitutionality of laws is determined. Since Marbury v. Madison in 1803, the Courts have decided what the Constitution means in cases where its meaning is in dispute.

Since 1947, the courts have been applying the Establishment Clause against the states as well. And in the last few decades they have been greatly expanding its application way beyond the original intent of the Framers – just as they have other clauses, such as the Interstate Commerce Clause. There is no way the Framers (or the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment) intended that the Establishment Clause prohibit many of the innocuous things it has prohibited, such as the displays of the Ten Commandments in state courthouses, or voluntary school prayer. Continued...