Church leaders and clergy from Adams County, Ohio, traveled to Israel last week in order to dedicate a Ten Commandments monument they had previously shipped to Israel. The monument is to be erected in the Yesha (Judea, Samaria and Gaza) community of Barkan.
The monument is similar to ones removed by court order from four public schools in Adams County after a federal court ruled that having the monuments in the county’s high schools and middle schools violated the US Constitution's Establishment Clause.
Christians in Adams County facing the threat of a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union were surprised when their case aroused the sympathies of Jews living “halfway across the world, in Israel,” said Rev. Ken Johnson. Rev. Johnson is pastor of the Seaman United Methodist Church and is also the president of a group called Adams County for the Ten Commandments (ACTC).
Pinchas Gerber, director of the Shomron (Samaria) Development Fund in the town of Barkan, said he decided to make contact with the group when he saw a small picture in the paper of a bulldozer tearing a Ten Commandments monument out of an Adams County school.
Upon the Christian groups arrival in Barkan, Gerber told them, "I looked at it and said, 'I was born in Ohio. This doesn't sit right with me…It's not the way you want to have the Ten Commandments being treated."
Minutes after seeing the item in the paper, Gerber got the high school's telephone number off of the Internet and called the school's principal, who put him in contact with Johnson. Gerber introduced himself, explained the Jewish people's love for and connection to the Ten Commandments and suggested to Johnson that he send one of the monuments to Israel.
Johnson said he was amazed at how his rural river county of some 28,000 residents, with more than 100 churches, had made national and international headlines for its stand in support of the Ten Commandments, and he said hearing from Israel was a highlight.
"That was probably one of the greatest joys that I've ever had in my whole life, is when [Gerber] called...saying [he'd] like to have one of these monuments that were removed from the schools," said Johnson. "I was elated."
Because the Adams County legal appeal is still pending -- and due to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in a few weeks -- Johnson said the county did not want to part with one of its own monuments, which the committee hopes to be allowed to re-install. Nevertheless, the ACTC decided that the Israeli request was important enough to have a new, similar monument built and shipped to Barkan.
The 800-pound granite monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments was a gift from the ACTC and cost about $3,000. It now stands in front of the mayor's office of the Samaria Regional Council in Barkan, in the northern Shomron.
The only difference in the monuments, which both bear engravings of an American flag, is that the Israeli version bears an engraving of an Israeli flag in place of the America Eagle inscribed on the American monuments.
Tom Claibourne, senior pastor of Bethlehem Church of Christ in Winchester, Ohio, accompanied Johnson to Israel. Pastor Claibourne said he was happy to be involved with "bringing the Ten Commandments home, just to be a part of seeing them here in Israel again with the people God originally gave them to."
According to the Torah, God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses and the Jewish people. "The Ten Commandments are not only for the Jewish people but...are a moral compass for our society," Gerber said at the dedication ceremony. He also linked them to the rest of the Torah, which he said gives the Jewish people the "fortitude" to continue living in the Biblical land of Samaria.
The monument is similar to ones removed by court order from four public schools in Adams County after a federal court ruled that having the monuments in the county’s high schools and middle schools violated the US Constitution's Establishment Clause.
Christians in Adams County facing the threat of a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union were surprised when their case aroused the sympathies of Jews living “halfway across the world, in Israel,” said Rev. Ken Johnson. Rev. Johnson is pastor of the Seaman United Methodist Church and is also the president of a group called Adams County for the Ten Commandments (ACTC).
Pinchas Gerber, director of the Shomron (Samaria) Development Fund in the town of Barkan, said he decided to make contact with the group when he saw a small picture in the paper of a bulldozer tearing a Ten Commandments monument out of an Adams County school.
Upon the Christian groups arrival in Barkan, Gerber told them, "I looked at it and said, 'I was born in Ohio. This doesn't sit right with me…It's not the way you want to have the Ten Commandments being treated."
Minutes after seeing the item in the paper, Gerber got the high school's telephone number off of the Internet and called the school's principal, who put him in contact with Johnson. Gerber introduced himself, explained the Jewish people's love for and connection to the Ten Commandments and suggested to Johnson that he send one of the monuments to Israel.
Johnson said he was amazed at how his rural river county of some 28,000 residents, with more than 100 churches, had made national and international headlines for its stand in support of the Ten Commandments, and he said hearing from Israel was a highlight.
"That was probably one of the greatest joys that I've ever had in my whole life, is when [Gerber] called...saying [he'd] like to have one of these monuments that were removed from the schools," said Johnson. "I was elated."
Because the Adams County legal appeal is still pending -- and due to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in a few weeks -- Johnson said the county did not want to part with one of its own monuments, which the committee hopes to be allowed to re-install. Nevertheless, the ACTC decided that the Israeli request was important enough to have a new, similar monument built and shipped to Barkan.
The 800-pound granite monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments was a gift from the ACTC and cost about $3,000. It now stands in front of the mayor's office of the Samaria Regional Council in Barkan, in the northern Shomron.
The only difference in the monuments, which both bear engravings of an American flag, is that the Israeli version bears an engraving of an Israeli flag in place of the America Eagle inscribed on the American monuments.
Tom Claibourne, senior pastor of Bethlehem Church of Christ in Winchester, Ohio, accompanied Johnson to Israel. Pastor Claibourne said he was happy to be involved with "bringing the Ten Commandments home, just to be a part of seeing them here in Israel again with the people God originally gave them to."
According to the Torah, God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses and the Jewish people. "The Ten Commandments are not only for the Jewish people but...are a moral compass for our society," Gerber said at the dedication ceremony. He also linked them to the rest of the Torah, which he said gives the Jewish people the "fortitude" to continue living in the Biblical land of Samaria.