The United States is not a Christian nation. It seems sensible to begin there, since it’s the crux of the dispute.

Yes, the men who invented the nation were mostly Christians. Yes, too, Christianity is the nation’s majority religion.

But the point is, this is not a theocracy, not a nation where the rulings of holy men carry official weight. The framers made that impossible when they wrote a First Amendment forbidding the government from endorsing any religion.

If you want to know why this is a good thing, you have only to recall how tenderly the Taliban once ruled Afghanistan. Or look to Nigeria, where religious leaders are debating whether an adulterous woman should be stoned to death. To consider those sadsack nations is to be convinced that separating the functions of church and state was one of the brighter things the founders ever did.

This is not complicated stuff. To the contrary, it is the stuff of eighth-grade civics.

Roy Moore evidently skipped class that day. If a new Gallup poll is to be believed, many of us did. Moore, as you surely know, is the now-suspended chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court who, two years ago, surreptitiously installed a granite monument to the Ten Commandments into the rotunda of the state judicial building. In so doing, Moore sparked a church-state standoff that climaxed this week with Christians praying and protesting on the steps of the building while a work crew carried out a federal court order to remove the statue.

According to the aforementioned poll, 77 percent of us disapprove of that court order. Supporters of “Roy’s rock” seem united in their belief that, in removing the monument, the government demonstrates again its hostility toward believers and belief.

I find myself wondering where they got the building permit for that persecution complex. Are we talking about the same federal government whose legislative bodies begin their sessions with prayer? Whose money carries the legend, “In God we trust?” Whose official calendar recognizes neither Yom Kippur nor Ramadan, but gives a day off with pay for Christmas?

The fact is, government has traditionally interpreted with equal doses of liberality and practicality the religious restrictions placed upon it by the First Amendment. It has not ignored the primacy of faith in modern life or its central role in our history. Rather, it has sought to walk a fine line between that which is constitutionally permissible and that which is not. Between acknowledging faith and advocating it.

The problem here is not that government hates Christians but that some Christians hate that line. They are the same folks who have never forgiven the Supreme Court for ruling that school children cannot be forced to begin their day with prayer. Now they see – or think they see – another instance of government stomping their beliefs.

One wonders how they’d feel if a Judge Muhammad had snuck in one night to install a monument carrying a few choice words from the Koran. Might they not be offended that he was pushing upon them an alien religion?

Judge Moore’s supporters will say, of course, that it’s not the same because this is a “Christian” nation founded on “Christian” principles. In other words, what he did was OK because it’s “our” country.

But the Constitution doesn’t just protect church from state and vice versa. It was also designed to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority – from the indifference with which the majority sometimes wields power.

Because the majority doesn’t always see how others might be affected. To tell the truth, it doesn’t always care.

From where I sit, Roy Moore isn’t fit to judge a dog show. He is a zealot cynically manipulating a powerful mixture of grievance and faith. It’s frightening to know that 77 percent of the people support him.

Thank goodness the Constitution does not.

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald. His e-mail address is: [email protected].