When I arrived in Washington in 1994, the tensions around questions of American morality that had begun in the 1970s had reached their zenith—or nadir, depending on your point of view. Shortly after I stepped away from the National Community Church, I was up on the Hill, talking to a senior congressional staff member about my concern over the deteriorating spiritual condition of our country. Our conversation became more and more frustrating. The more I talked about what I considered the most pressing problems, the more impassive his expression became, as if he could neither hear nor understand what I was saying. This was obviously not the first time I had spoken to someone who was secular, but it did make me realize just how entrenched this nonreligious worldview was in official Washington, D.C., and I wanted to do something about it. It also impressed on me how our divide was not just religious but, in a sense, linguistic: he spoke the language of secularism, and I spoke the idiom of deism, and from that difference all else followed—a cascade of misunderstanding and miscommunication—which I felt was deleterious to the moral fabric of our country.
I returned to my office to pray over and ponder what I had just experienced. Even though the congressional aide and I were roughly the same age, came from the same part of the country, and shared an intense interest in politics, the gap between us seemed virtually unbridgeable. Could there possibly be a common point of reference? Was there any place to begin a conversation?
Impatient for answers and looking for a sign, I pulled a magazine out from under a stack of papers, the Biblical Archaeological Review, a journal on modern-day discoveries of artifacts supporting the Bible story. As I scanned the pages, my eyes caught a small ad for imitation marble carvings of the Ten Commandments with a painfully amateurish photo. And yet, even as I flipped the pages forward, I kept going back. The ad was for Covenant Marble and Granite Works, located in Roaring River, North Carolina. Suddenly I felt the surge of adrenaline. I thought, Maybe this is where to start the conversation, at the very beginning, with the Ten Commandments.
The purpose of the Ten Commandments is to offer instruction on sin and righteousness, to lay out starkly the difference between right and wrong, to hold us accountable and force us to face ourselves in the mirror. The “Great Words of Sinai,” as I had called them in many a sermon, can also be a locus of tension between my evangelical community and the outside secular-dominated world. But I also thought most people probably had a memory of the Commandments from their younger days in either Sunday school or catechism—or they at least had a rudimentary knowledge of them passed down from parents or grandparents—and that familiarity would facilitate conversation. The Commandments also had a kind of universal status, recognized not just by Christians and Jews but by Muslims and many other religions. I figured it would be pretty hard for politicians to turn away from such a widely recognized moral code.
I called the 800 number and spoke to a young woman who sounded as if she were in her kitchen. Her husband made the die-cast plates of the Ten Commandments, which came in small, medium, and large sizes and could be mounted in frames. As she carefully explained stone polymer construction, felt backings, color variations, and volume discounts, a vision played in my head: these tablets hanging in offices all around Capitol Hill, testifying to God’s basic moral requirements for humankind, and sparking just the right kind of conversation about good and evil, right and wrong, sin and salvation. She would send me some samples.
Using the Ten Commandments to introduce the concept of transcendent moral truths—a universal standard to which every human being and institution is held accountable—would make it possible to return the Word of God to the halls of government and to the national conversation. Like Johnny Appleseed, I would distribute the plaques as seeds of righteousness to elected and appointed officials in Washington. I did know that ethics rules would make it difficult to give works of art, no matter how low-grade, to congresspeople. I would need to get around that problem and it didn’t take me long to come up with a solution. While gifts to congressional members and other officials were prohibited, because they could be construed as bribes, awards were not. I would mount the tablets on wood frames and apply an inscribed plate announcing it as the “Ten Commandments Leadership Award.”
Before talking to my ministry team about this new tack, I did a little research on how the Ten Commandments were positioned in society. Did people indeed identify with them in any way? Were they being referenced anywhere outside the religious world? That’s when I discovered Roy Moore, a county judge in Alabama who was making national news after he hung a small, hand-carved plaque of the Commandments on his courtroom wall. The ACLU had sued for its removal, but the judge prevailed when the state supreme court ruled the plaintiffs had no legal standing. I invited the “Ten Commandments Judge,” as he was being called by his supporters, to Washington for his first national news conference, during which we officially launched the “Ten Commandments Project.”
Republicans in both houses had just passed a resolution applauding Moore for his stand and calling for the public display of the Commandments, something I helped to bring across the finish line by recruiting last-minute votes. I would go on to forge a tight relationship with Moore, staying as a guest in his home, traveling the country with him speaking to enthusiastic audiences, and, eventually, campaigning for him when he ran for chief justice of the supreme court of Alabama. I was with him when he installed a highly controversial monument of the Commandments in the Alabama Judicial Building, where the Alabama Supreme Court convenes, and I went to jail in support of his action after federal marshals were ordered to remove it. He was ultimately removed from the bench for his defiance of a federal court order, but ten years later would reclaim that post in a landslide election. I stuck with him through it all. The notoriety helped us not only to launch the effort but also to raise substantial amounts of money to keep it going.
Back in Washington, I always expected the plaques would be well received, especially if offered through the National Clergy Council and presented by a delegation of ministers and other religious officials who would provide the gravitas cherished by the denizens of Capitol Hill. Plus politicians know the value of a good photo op, and we would offer it. In return, our delegation would demonstrate that we wielded enough influence to bring important people together. It would be a winning strategy to announce to a member of Congress, a cabinet secretary, a judge, or even a president that a delegation of religious leaders wanted to present an award. My hunch proved right. Prospects, all of them Republicans, almost always said yes.
The Ten Commandments became a kind of calling card for me. The project expanded my identity on the Hill. I was not just the “pro-life reverend” anymore. What I missed at that early stage was the divisiveness of even this nearly universal symbol. While a wide spectrum of religious believers revered the Commandments, it was also true that they divided believers from nonbelievers, moral traditionalists from social progressives, and westerners from easterners. It didn’t take long for me to jettison my intentions of bringing people together and instead to use this universal symbol of moral behavior to leverage the divisions. In retrospect the painful irony is obvious; at the time it wasn’t. Implicit in my message when awarding one lawmaker the Ten Commandments was that there were others who did not deserve them. Emphasizing the point, sometimes I would ask for suggestions for nominees for those who broke the most commandments. That line was not only an easy laugh, it also created a conspiratorial bond between us that further solidified our connection.
As I took up the Ten Commandments crusade, my anti-abortion efforts aligned perfectly with the new message. In fact, when discussing abortion with reporters, I was always careful to point out that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” is displayed in an image of Moses bearing the tablets that was situated just over the heads of the Supreme Court justices as they sit on their lofty bench. I suggested it was a perennial reminder to them that Roe v. Wade and every other abortion decision was an affront to the universal moral code, and the justices would eventually need to grapple with that fact.
That moment came for us on March 19, 1996, when we learned the high court agreed to hear Paul’s case from back in 1990, when he and I handed out literature in front of the Buffalo clinic and were accused of breaching the fifteen-foot zone. Of some seven thousand cases to choose from during each year, the Supreme Court accepts only seventy to eighty, and ours would be one of them; we were, in the language of the court, granted cert. It was a very big deal for us and for the pro-life movement. The basic question boiled down to whether judges can establish so-called buffer zones to prevent demonstrators from obstructing clinics. At issue was the fifteen-foot no-protest zones and whether they unnecessarily burdened free speech.
On October 16, 1996, Paul and Becky and their two oldest kids, Leah and Ari; Cheryl and I, and Anna and Matthew; and my father, Hank, stood outside the marbled Temple of Justice, with its august columns and grand staircase. Although I had been to the court a number of times, to be a litigant was an otherworldly experience for me. We arrived at the crack of dawn, because, unlike lower appellate courts, where parties to the case have special standing and are virtually guaranteed entrance, this does not happen for petitioners before the highest court in the land. Our legal team was so large, it filled every reserved seat in the court available to our side. Paul and I and our family members could only hope to be among the first fifty public observers allowed in for the entire argument.
We achieved our objective and were ushered into church-like pews in the front of the ornate courtroom. Everyone stood as the justices filed in. With a single rap of the gavel, Chief Justice William Rehnquist announced: “We’ll hear argument first this morning in Number 95–1065, Reverend Paul Schenck and Dwight Saunders versus Pro-Choice Network of Western New York.” Paul and I winked at each other, knowing we had made history with that “Reverend” in his name. It had been a minor victory when we persuaded the court that “Rev.” should remain before Paul’s name, even though we had been told repeatedly that legal briefs never included such titles. Paul knew that even if the justices didn’t see it that way, our supporters and opponents needed to. “Reverend Paul Schenck” ensured we could cast the conflict as a religious liberty case and not one about blockading clinics.
Sitting in front of Paul and Becky were Pat Robertson with Ralph Reed. Beverly LaHaye, the founder of the largest conservative Christian women’s organization, Concerned Women for America, sat behind me. Our most vicious opponents were also there: Eleanor Smeal of the National Organization for Women, Kate Michelman of the National Abortion Rights Action League, and Gloria Feldt of Planned Parenthood. More than six years of searing conflict would culminate here, in a civilized argument before the justices.
When our legal team leader, chief counsel Jay Sekulow, was invited to the podium, he sprang up and began so loudly that the Chief Justice chastised him and told him to tone it down. It was a rough start to what was otherwise a masterful presentation. No successful advocate before the most demanding tribunal in the country does it without exhaustive preparation, and Jay was no exception. He and his team had spent months combing through documents, interviewing principals, consulting with top legal experts, drafting briefs, and staging moot courts, in which law professors and retired judges playing the justices peppered Jay with endless questions.
One hour was allotted for the argument with each side given thirty minutes to make their case. Jay argued for us. On the other side was our old enemy, the abortion rights activist law professor from the University of Buffalo, Lucinda Finley. Any sitting president may ask special permission of the court for the solicitor general, the country’s top civil attorney, to take a short amount of time to present the government’s point of view in the controversy. Clinton had sent Walter Dellinger III to present the administration’s opinion that the fifteen-foot no-speech zone was consistent with the First Amendment.
The arguments progressed in rapid fire, with justices interrupting attorneys, sometimes before they could finish a sentence. Toward the end, when the solicitor general discussed Judge Arcara’s finding that Paul and I had physically obstructed women entering the clinic, he asked rhetorically, “What’s a trial judge supposed to do in the face of that kind of finding?” Justice Anthony Kennedy leaned forward and retorted, “Well, one of the things he’s supposed to do is read the First Amendment.” Paul turned and whispered to me, “We just won the case.”
As I reflected on what my brother had just said, my eyes wandered around the magnificent chamber, with its towering, gilded ceiling; dappled marble walls; impressive columns; and famous friezes on the four walls, with a pylon symbolizing the Bill of Rights on the frieze above the justices’ bench. One of the figures on the frieze on the south wall especially distracted me: that image of Moses holding the tablets of the Ten Commandments written in Hebrew. The folds of his robe obscured most of the words, but the only ones clearly legible were Lo Tirtzach—No taking of innocent life. I thought of how many times I had referenced it in news conferences, but I was seeing the real thing for the first time. At that moment, it left me thinking we had been right all along.
After what seemed like sixty of the longest minutes of my life, the Chief Justice struck the gavel and ended the session. We all paraded outside to watch Jay as he addressed reporters gathered on the plaza. Standing there, looking at the gaggle of lawyers, I thought of how much hung on the outcome of this case: the rights of pro-lifers all over the country, the future of the rescue movement and its nonviolent direct action, the parameters of free speech, and religious expression—not to mention the Schenck name—and, of course, the lives of innocent unborn children. It didn’t occur to me at the time that I had prioritized those concerns in precisely the wrong order.
There is no rule when it comes to how or when the Supreme Court must render its final opinion in a case. It could take days, weeks, months, or even years. Advance notice of a decision is never given. The parties learn their fate only after the case is suddenly and unexpectedly read from the bench by the author of the majority opinion. The long and agonizing wait began. Six months would pass before we would hear anything.