Judge

It is altogether proper for people to recognize a sovereign God.

But today, government is taking those rights from us, pretending that it gives us our rights. Indeed, those rights come from God, and it was recognized throughout our history as such.

The Constitution was about a limitation on power.

It can have a secular purpose and have a relationship to God because God was presumed to be both over the state and the church, and separation of church and state was never meant to separate God from government.

The Ten Commandments are the divinely revealed law.

The Church's role should be separated from the state's role.

And government's only role is to secure our rights for us.

They might object to some of my opinions, but they don't object to my behavior as a judge.

To do my duty, I must obey God.

Well, I think that we have to continue to fight for what we believe.

It would bother me if a judge told me how I had to believe.

If God gives you rights, no man and no government can take them away from you.

Well, that's the - the removal from office and removal of the Ten Commandments were two different issues.

I was asked three times directly in the hearing before the board of the judiciary whether or not I would continue to acknowledge God if I were to resume my position as chief justice. And I said I would.

They don't want to be reminded that there is an authority higher than the authority of the state.

But in the long term, I think it is improper to limit your future.

The point is that knowledge of God is not prohibited under the First Amendment.

Indeed, the acknowledgement of God is not synonymous with religion.

Power's not what the Constitution was about.

The forefathers, including James Madison, felt very strongly that the duties that we owe to God were outside of government's prerogative, that government had no business interfering with the way we worship God.