'So Help Me God'

Roy Moore, the former chief justice of Alabama, believes that the Ten Commandments are the moral foundation of the U.S. judicial system, and that led him to take a stance that cost him his job.

He is considered a hero by some and a rebel by others. But either way, Moore is refusing to give up.

On Nov. 14, 2003, Moore became the fourth chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court to be removed from office. His removal took place after years of controversy surrounding a 2-1/2-ton granite monument to the Ten Commandments that Moore placed in the rotunda of the Alabama judicial building in 2001.

A little more than a year later, Moore is releasing a book about his experience called, "So Help Me God: The Ten Commandments, Judicial Tyranny, And The Battle for Religious Freedom." Read an excerpt.

He tells The Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm, "It was a particular God identifiable with this nation which gave us freedom of conscience without which we would have no prohibition against government interference."

And that is very important, he says, in order to uphold the constitution of the United States.

Moore explains, "You can acknowledge God in many different ways, but this monument, the Ten Commandments is a particularly God. God is for what this nation was founded and it is very necessary to identify that God because it is this God that gives us freedom of conscience."

In the book, Moore also details his struggle through life describing his service in Vietnam and how he worked his way through school, washing tables in the lunchroom. How he sat at the highest judicial office in Alabama, and how he lost his job.

"I lost my job," Moore says, "But I did not lose the oath in office, and the rule of law, and that's what I'm proudest of."