Groups Tout Ten Commandments Event

Are you one of the 135,000-plus people who were handed a free book about the Ten Commandments this week at a Washington Metro stop or street corner?

If so, you were part of a $3.2 million campaign by an Illinois-based radio and television ministry that calls itself a "mending broken people network." You also got a glimpse into what religious people across the spectrum are calling the Ten Commandments movement, a patchwork of groups who agree that America needs to focus on Old Testament morals -- but not much else.

The movement is a response to recent legislation and court rulings across the country relating to the display of the Ten Commandments, which appear in the Books of Exodus and Deuteronomy and are considered by some to be inappropriate for display on public property. The loose coalition includes evangelical Christian, Baptist and Pentecostal leaders, as well as Seventh-day Adventists and Jews, all of whom would like to see the Decalogue get a little more respect.

It also includes the Three Angels Broadcasting Network, the organization that started giving away 270,000 copies of the book "Ten Commandments Twice Removed" on Thursday. The ministry, a growing offshoot of the Adventist church, said it hoped to draw 10,000 people last night and today to "Ten Commandments Weekend," an event at the D.C. Armory featuring music and sermons about the commandments.

The books -- half of which had been handed out by late yesterday, a ministry spokesman said -- are among 5 million free copies the group has printed since March 1 to distribute nationwide.

The network timed the armory event to coincide with Ten Commandments Day, a separate campaign led by Ron Wexler, an Orthodox Jew, to protest the removal of Judeo-Christian symbols from public places.

According to Wexler, the observance of Ten Commandments Day tomorrow will consist mostly of a broadcast of speeches on dozens of radio and television stations. Although the group has called for clergy at churches and synagogues nationwide to preach tomorrow about the importance of the commandments, Wexler declined to name any participating congregations.

The weekend illustrates that although religious groups want to promote the values of the commandments, they often disagree on how to go about it.

The Three Angels network says on its Web site that it does not support the Wexler group's "political agenda." In its book, however, the network decries the "purging of the Ten Commandments from public institutions."

And although Three Angels' followers are primarily Seventh-day Adventists, a spokesman for the denomination said it would not be participating in the weekend events.

"Where I need the Ten Commandments is in my heart," Mark Kellner, assistant director of the Adventist News Network, said. "It does no good for me to have it sitting in the Montgomery County Courthouse."

Disagreements about the Ten Commandments are hardly new. There has long been debate among evangelical Christians, in particular, about how much emphasis to put on the Old Testament rules, as many believe that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus have supplanted everything else as the key to salvation, David Neff, editor of Christianity Today, said.

"I think all of us want to recognize that there is a place for religiously informed discussion of public policy," he said. "But the question is, can we single out for special government-endorsed approval the Ten Commandments above other sources of our legal tradition?"