Traveling monument

last updated 8 January 2015

Dayton, Tenn.

A veterans’ group began touring the nation this week with the Ten Commandments monument that was banished from the Alabama state courthouse. The first stop was the site of another heated battle over church and state: the Tennessee building where John Scopes was convicted, in 1925, of teaching about evolution instead of the biblical story of creation. The last stop will be Washington, D.C., in October. Former Alabama chief justice Roy Moore lost his job last year for defying a federal court order to remove the monument, which the court said was an unconstitutional endorsement of religion. Americans Standing for God and Country, a Texas veterans’ group, organized the tour to muster support for installing the 5,000-pound block of granite on Capitol Hill. Moore gave his blessing to the effort, saying Americans “need to be reminded of our moral foundation.”