Reprinted with permission from Falwell Confidential.

Because of the near worship of the "separation of church and state" - the shadowy phrase culled from a letter written by President Thomas Jefferson to a group of Baptists - our nation is racing headlong toward existence in a Godless public square.

The lovers of secularism celebrated Wednesday when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block a district judge's order to remove the now famous Ten Commandments monument erected by Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore in his judicial building. U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson, who ruled against the monument, has threatened to fine the state up to $5,000 a day if the monument was not removed by the end of the day Wednesday.

The countdown to the Commandments' potential removal began at midnight.

I was in Montgomery last Saturday, speaking at a rally for the Commandments and Justice Moore. While there, I got to spend some time with this exceptional man who is at the vortex of this critical religious freedom battle. A lesser man would have walked away from this legal mockery long ago; but Roy Moore is a valiant warrior. After being routinely pilloried by leftists who despise public expressions of faith, Judge Moore was very pleased to be surrounded by about 20,000 supporters who understand the religious heritage of our nation.

Justice Moore argues that he should be permitted to "establish justice by acknowledging the guidance and favor of Almighty God, placed upon him by his oath of office and the Constitution of Alabama." He says the Ten Commandments are - quite obviously - a primary foundation of the American legal system and should be revered as such. (In addition to the Commandments, the monument bears quotes from the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, the Alabama Constitution and other historic documents.)

One of the groups that brought suit against the Commandments monument is the D.C.-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Its leader, Barry Lynn, has admitted to me that he wants all civic references to the Almighty - including "In God We Trust" on our nation's currency - permanently exterminated.

That's not religious freedom; that's religious genocide.

Anyone who knows American history knows that America was built on the Judeo-Christian ethic - the principles found in the Old and New Testaments, particularly the Ten Commandments. But hatred of this fact runs so deep that the purveyors of secularism willfully garble the truth of our nation's founding in order to sanction their own sinister vision of America. And in a nation that accepts a president who doesn't know what "is" is, it's really no wonder that the disciples of secularism have achieved such success.

I find it disquietingly ironic that the justices at the U.S. Supreme Court - who sit under a depiction of the Ten Commandments in their courtroom and weigh justice in a building bearing a mammoth frieze of Moses, holding the Ten Commandments - had the audacity to timidly walk away from this battle.

The Federalist Chronicle recently wrote, "We have a foundational question all constitutional constructionists should be asking: On what legitimate constitutional grounds does Judge Thompson lodge demands, punishments and fines against the chief judicial officer of a different sovereign? Or is he merely assuming that the states are now nothing more than administrative agencies of the central government - rather than federally separated governments subject to their own constitutions?"

That's the key question. And unless the High Court ultimately decides to enter this legal fray, judges who see the Constitution as a document needing to be altered to mirror the ever-changing social attitudes of a few will continue to hack away at our once sacred religious freedoms. This judicial activism is an increasingly powerful tool of the left to limit our religious liberties and rewrite our nation's history.

If this battle is lost, the terrible specter of secularism will cast a larger and more ominous shadow over our nation. And if the Ten Commandments are actually ripped away from Justice Moore's courthouse, the cavity remaining where the monument once rested will serve as a dark metaphor for the ripping away of the people's right to publicly beseech God in the way our Forefathers intended and practiced.