Views » May 2, 2005

Christian Restorationists

By Joel Bleifuss

Jim Wallis, Sojourners editor and evangelical progressive, has rightly characterized Republican plans to dismantle the filibuster as “a declaration of religious war.”

But the central issue in this war between the Christian right and the rest of America is not the ultimate confirmation of a handful of reactionary judges. What’s at stake is ownership of the U.S. Constitution: Who controls this 218-year old document and to what end?

Two basic schools of thought exist as to how to interpret the Constitution. One holds that we are ruled by a “living constitution”—one in which legal scholar Ronald Dworkin says “key constitutional provisions, as a matter of their original meaning, set out abstract principles rather than concrete or dated rules.” The second school applies a “strict constructionist” approach that maintains the Constitution provides a “rule of law” that is to be interpreted literally. As one strict constructionist justice put it: “The constitution that I, Antonin Scalia, interpret and apply is not living, but dead.”

Historically, interpreting the Constitution has been the provenance of judges appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. But despite the fact that the majority of federal judges are Republican appointees, the Christian right has deemed the federal courts a bastion of the ungodly. Or, as House Majority Leader Tom DeLay dubbed them, the “left’s last legislative body.”

For DeLay and the Christian right, denaturing the filibuster is the first step toward theocracy. The second is passing the Constitution Restoration Act of 2005, which is being sponsored by six senators and 30 representatives.

The act does three things. First, it prohibits the Supreme Court from ruling against any government official or government body whose actions acknowledge “God as the sovereign source of law, liberty or government.” In other words, enshrine the Ten Commandments in public places. Second, it prohibits federal judges from citing the laws or judicial policies “of any foreign state or international organization or agency.” This is aimed at the likes of Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Anthony M. Kennedy, who have all cited international judicial norms in their rulings. Third, the act provides that any judge who rules in either of these two ways “may be removed upon impeachment and conviction.”

In introducing the act, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said it was needed to counter the “growing trend in our federal courts … to secularize our system of government and divest morality from our rule of law.”

To sell the idea to the public, the Christian right has gathered under the banner of the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration. The group’s April 7–8 conference, “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith,” highlighted a number of Christian right luminaries and elected officials. (DeLay had to bow out to attend the pope’s funeral.)

At the conference, Phyllis Schlafly said Justice Kennedy’s citation of international legal standards in his opinion against executing juveniles was “a good ground for impeachment.”

Christian legal scholar Edwin Vieira disagreed. He said Kennedy should be impeached because his opinion striking down Texas’ sodomy statute “upholds Marxist, Leninist, Satanic principles drawn from foreign law.”

Why stop with impeachment? Vieira invoked Joseph Stalin’s infamous line: “Death solves all problems: no man, no problem.” “It worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty,” Vieira said.

In late April, Janice Rogers Brown, the U.S. Court of Appeals nominee up again after being rejected via filibuster in 2003, told a crowd at a Darien, Conn. country club that at no time since the Civil War has the country been “so bitterly divided.” “It’s not a shooting war, but it is a war,” said Brown. “These are perilous times for people of faith, not in the sense that we are going to lose our lives.”

No, just our Constitution.

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• Reader Comments

  Doctrine on Peace:

  http://www.catholicpeacefellowship.org/nextpage.asp?m=1000

  http://www.comunione-liberazione.org/articoli/eng/1/nowar.html

  http://blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/007891.html

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  Your Holiness:

  Please be assured of our prayers on your behalf as you take on the responsibilities of the Petrine Office.

  Jesus of Nazareth calls all men and women, in all times, and especially in these challenging days, to take up their Cross and follow Him. [Matt. X: 38; XVI: 24; Mark VIII: 34; Luke XIX: 23; XIV: 27].

  We witness today prominent men who flippantly call on the Holy Name [Ex. XX: 7] to bless and sanction their criminal acts and take unto themselves the title “Christian”. Yet, the Lord Himself warns that “not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” [Matt. VII: 21.]

  “Blessed are the peacemakers”, He assures us, “for they shall be called the children of God. [Matt. V: 9.]

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  St. Paul admonishes us: “Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.” [Eph. V: 11].

  We respectfully urge you to consider the state of the world today, in the light of Sacred Scripture and the Apostolic Tradition, in particular the prophesies of Daniel, Paul and John and to expose and repudiate George W. Bush as the “Man of Sin” [II Thess. II: 3], the “Beast” [Apocalypse XI: 7] and the very Antichrist [I John II: 18].

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  “My father was one who, with unfailing clairvoyance, saw that a victory of Hitler’s would not be a victory for Germany but rather a victory of the Antichrist that would surely usher in apocalyptic times for all believers, and not only for them.” ~ Benedict XVI

  Posted by Sensum Fidelium on May 2, 2005 at 11:08 AM

  “Christian” legal scholar Edwin Vieira needs to remember that the Bible is also entirely Foreign Law.  Not one word or even punctuation mark was written in the United States.  And all those who talk about “Activist Judges” being the problem, isn’t it the job of the judges to make impartial decisions, especially when those decisions are in favor of a minority.  When was the last time that the majority said that they were wrong not to grant equality to a minority, without the courts leading the way?  The independent judiciary is all that separates us from a totalitarian state.  Without its constitutional power to stop abuses from the executive or the legislative branches, the U.S. would plummet into Fascism.  I think that this is the true agenda of the “Christian Right”.

  Posted by A. Miller on May 2, 2005 at 12:07 PM

  We are already in free-fall, A. Miller.  Fascism is already here in its infant form.  Go to <sojo.net> and read the article by Jim Wallis re: Social Security.  This is what REAL Christians believe.  Those that drape themselves in a self-righteous mantle and disregard the teachings of the Bible for the $ from the Corporation are bastardizing our faith.  Groups like Sojourners are endeavoring to take it back. 

  But let it be clearly understood, if we do not succeed, Libertarian judges like Janice Rogers Brown will begin to dismantle the Constitution, all under the guise of being a “person of faith”.  It is all a disception that is being perpetrated on the American people, and they are gobbling it up.  We must stop this trend, or the United States as we know it will be gone within the next 5-10 years, at most.

  Posted by Margaret on May 2, 2005 at 12:19 PM

  At least the US does not have a church tax, as does much of Europe!

  Funny, when you consider that the average person in the US is much more religious than the average European.

  I see nothing wrong in acknowledging God. We in the US do it with our money (in God we trust). We are a country founded by believers. Part of the whole inalienable rights thing.

  Why should/would we let a small minority throw out religion?

  Posted by Paul on May 2, 2005 at 3:52 PM

  Scary stuff guys. Some of you guys seem determined to fetishize a man made document-the US Constitution-the way ancient Incas did with their founding myths.

  Oh and by the way, do any of you so called christians know understand or care that many of your reverred founding fathers were either atheists, agnostics, or had a form of christianity that the Christian right in the uS today would not recognise. I just cannot understand how the wealthiest country in the world could have fallen to such a pitiable state, where people can argue straight faced that a story (the bible) open to imterpretation since the year dot, should or ever could be, the basic foundation of a democratic polity based on the reason of human beings. Truly, it is a recipe for the dead to rule the living. It is truly scary. Is it something in the water over there?

  Posted by Jane Doe on May 2, 2005 at 4:08 PM

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