A Republican county commissioner in Scottsboro, Alabama wants to erect a monument to the Ten Commandments that would be featured alongside similar ones to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, AL.com reports.

Tim Guffey told AL.com that “I’m trying to…erect a monument of historical documents. It’s the Constitution, the Ten Commandments and the Declaration of Independence. I feel like that’s what this country was founded on. These documents helped America become the greatest country in history.”

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He said that the Ten Commandments were only included because of their historical value, arguing that their influence on the other documents is a matter of historical, not religious, import. “I just can’t see how you could explain a Constitution – why it was written the way it was written — without understanding why those men wrote it the way they wrote it,” he said. “I feel like taking that document out, if that document wasn’t there to guide them, then our Constitution wouldn’t be what it is today.”

“The Ten Commandments is a historical document and it has nothing to do with religion,” he continued. “It shows that these founders had great beliefs in God and the Ten Commandments and His Word and it helped them get to the point where they were. Their feeling was God helped them build the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. If you read all of the writings of John Adams, Patrick Henry, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay, they speak about how that was their foundation that helped them interpret and write a great Constitution.”

Guffey claimed that the monument is necessary because of the way in which the Bible has been systematically removed from education curricula. “They don’t teach this at school anymore and a person would have to go back and research and study each one of those men’s writings to find out that that’s what established them. That’s what gave them the inspiration to read the greatest Constitution this world has ever seen,” he said.

He then expressed admiration for state Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, who erected a monument to the Ten Commandments in 2001 that was taken down in 2003. However, he noted that “when Judge Moore did the monument, it was for the Ten Commandments. It was for religious purposes. And I commend him. He believed it was his right to put that up and he was going to stand on it.”

“This situation is not that situation,” Guffey insisted. “I’m trying to show people where [the historical documents] came from.”

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He also told AL.com that he began studying the Constitution after the election of President Barack Obama. “If you look at the current administration,” he said, “it’s more important now than ever to show people what the intent was in the Constitution, what’s in the Constitution. We’re trying to get people to start thinking again.”

[Image via Tim Guffey for Jackson County Commission District 1 on Facebook]