Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, hero and martyr for those who like their religion red, white and blue, is coming to metro Atlanta this weekend.

He will speak at the annual joint Freedom Celebration at First Baptist Church, Newnan, and Flat Creek Baptist Church in Fayetteville Saturday and Sunday.

Moore said the theme of his speeches will be "Our American Birthright."

"Basically, it's about what our country was founded upon, and how our morality is being taken from us."

Moore became the public face of the tussle over religion in the public square in 2001.

As a newly elected Alabama chief justice, Moore commissioned and placed a 5,280-pound Vermont granite monument with the Ten Commandments carved into it in the Alabama Supreme Court rotunda.

A handful of public interest groups sued to remove it, claiming "Roy's Rock" crushed the line of separation between state and state-established religion.

Moore lost the case and refused a federal order to remove the monument. A state judicial ethics panel removed him from his seat in 2003 and launched Moore into a new career as a freelance lawyer on religion cases and speaker at conservative religious events.

"I'd like to think [my popularity] is because of my good looks and charm," the affable former judge joked by phone.

"But it's not, because I'm not that good-looking and charming."

What attracts crowds of listeners are his heartfelt and patriotic speeches about the links between religion and the founding of the nation, complete with extensive, memorized quotes from the founders' writings.

He throws in some videotape of his testimony during the court case and tells those who come out that the federal decision was all about not allowing him to "acknowledge God."

Not everyone agrees with that interpretation of the trial.

Randall Balmer, a Columbia University professor of American religious history, says the case has nothing to do with Moore personally acknowledging God and everything to do with Moore using the state to establish his ideas of God's role in government.

Balmer testified during the trial.

Moore could have defused the issue at any time by removing the monument or by adding to the rotunda other historical displays of lawgiving, he said.

Moore admitted that he placed the monument to provoke the trial, thinking he would win.

Balmer said, "What I object to as a person of faith is that his grandstanding is, I think, detrimental to the faith.

"I think the beauty of the First Amendment in American history ... is that religion has flourished precisely because government has stayed out of the religion business. Once you conflate the church and the state, it is ultimately the faith that is compromised."

Balmer and Moore remain on friendly terms, despite their differences.

Lee Chitwood, music minister at First Baptist Church, Newnan, said the church invited Moore after considering having a church member read one of Moore's poems during the coming service.

"And someone said, 'I wonder if [Moore] does public speaking?' " Chitwood recalled.

Moore now heads the Foundation for Moral Law in Montgomery. A phone call from the church was all it took.

"We are very excited," Chitwood said.

"The Freedom Celebration is a God and country presentation. He brings that aspect."