MIAMI -- When the motto on dollar bills is "In God We Trust" and the nation is one "under God" in the pledge of allegiance to the flag, just what's so wrong with a judge displaying a monument marked with the Ten Commandments?

The dispute over a granite stone in Alabama's judicial building -- it was finally removed from public display on Wednesday -- was the latest flash point in a long debate over the place of God in public life in the United States, Reuters reported.

"It's the nature of our form of democracy. We're plural, and have been since our founding, we have religious founding, and we're also a very religious nation," Catharine Cookson, an expert on religious freedom at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk, Virginia, said on Thursday. "These disputes are bound to crop up."

Experts say the role of religion is a pressing issue in the United States in part because people are far more religious here than in other rich industrial nations. A Pew Research Center survey in December found 59 percent of Americans thought religion very important in their lives, compared to 27 percent in Italy, 21 percent in Germany and 11 percent in France.

Constitutional interpretation has been at the core of disputes over issues such as display of the Ten Commandments or prayer in schools that are often pushed by right-wing Christians, whose radical expression is found in popular preachers such as Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell. Such disputes often amount to "a power struggle over cultural symbols and who gets to set them up," said Robert Destro, an expert in law and religion at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.. The Constitution's First Amendment laid out both freedom to practice religion and freedom from government imposition of religion, saying, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." President Thomas Jefferson said in 1802 that the clauses built "a wall of separation between Church & State." --------------Freedom of, or From Religion?-----------

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who installed the commandments monument and then defied a federal court order to remove it, and his supporters believe they still have the right to acknowledge God or the Judeo-Christian traditions that shaped the United States in public places. "Too often, freedom of religion is confused with freedom from religion," said Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove in a statement lamenting the monument's removal. "The United States is a spiritual nation. Our faith and belief in our creator should not and cannot be separated from our sense of justice."

But critics believe displaying the commandments is a clear promotion of religion, especially since some of them, such as the one calling for observing the Sabbath, are related to an individual's relationship with God, rather than with society. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an activist movement, called the removal of the Alabama monument "a tremendous victory for the rule of law and respect for religious diversity." "Moore has shamelessly exploited the Ten Commandments as a platform for political grandstanding," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, the movement's executive director. "That is a disgraceful misuse of a religious code that many people regard as sacred."

There is far less controversy over generic references to God in the public arena. Lawsuits over the years on issues such as the "In God We Trust" motto on dollar bills have failed, largely because courts view such references as "cultural deism," more symbolic than a promotion of religion.

But a federal appeals court in San Francisco ventured into what some critics viewed as the excessive reaches of political correctness last year when it ruled that reciting the pledge of allegiance, a frequently used vow of loyalty to the country, in public schools was unconstitutional because the phrase "under God," inserted in 1954, violated the establishment clause. That ruling is under appeal.