{"id":358,"date":"2003-07-15T16:00:01","date_gmt":"2003-07-15T21:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=358"},"modified":"2003-07-15T16:00:01","modified_gmt":"2003-07-15T21:00:01","slug":"religion-and-american-life-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/?p=358","title":{"rendered":"Religion and American Life? (I)"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’ve been following various secular<\/a> and Christian<\/a> media outlets, you’ve probably seen the news that Pat Robertson is launching Operation Supreme Court Freedom<\/a>, which is a 21-day prayer offensive to make 3 justices of the Supreme Court retire so that conservative ones can be appointed in their place. Ummm… isn’t this just a little presumptious? I mean… he’s presuming that he is a.) correct in all of this and b.) that the Lord Almighty didn’t place these judges in power. I mean… they were put on the bench legally<\/i><\/b>. That’s more than we can say for our President. (Sorry… I really couldn’t resist that. Really. I couldn’t.)<\/p>\n

Let’s look at Pat’s little manifesto. And for those who want to accuse me of prooftexting it and quoting out of context, you can go to the linked portions and read them yourself. Oh yes… and send any and all hatemail here<\/a>. (Remove the NOSPAM from the address.) For those who want to fisk me thoroughly, do so in your own journals and leave the link in my comments. Having covered all the hate mail and comment procedures, let’s start…<\/p>\n

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote:<\/p>\n

“You seem to think that the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of constitutional interpretation, a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one that would place us under the tyranny of an oligarchy.”<\/i><\/p>\n

How wise Jefferson was. Yet even Jefferson could not have foreseen what the Supreme Court has done to the Constitution of the United States since 1962. Just think what five unelected judges have done to our nations moral framework.<\/a><\/p>\n

Yes Pat, let’s quote a deist president who insisted on including the 1st Amendment to the Bill of Rights so that people could have the freedom to worship as they please. Even better, let’s quote someone whose choice of Bible version was one that edited out all the stuff about Jesus. Yeah Pat… you’re real credible there.<\/p>\n

So let’s look at the supposed mayhem wreaked by the Supreme Court:<\/p>\n

-In 1962, they ruled prayer out of the public schools.<\/a><\/p>\n

Actually, prayer still exists in school — it just cannot be compulsory. When I was going to school in California (which most in this country view as a state of tofu and avocado eating hippie freaks who worship trees), we were never told not to pray before tests. I had teachers who even gave us a moment of silence before we began to use for prayer or to focus. We were never told we couldn’t pray over lunch — I did all through high school and Christian clubs were allowed in every public school — as long as membership wasn’t compulsory. <\/p>\n


\n-In 1963, they ruled the Bible out of public schools.<\/a><\/p>\n

Yeah… this would so explain why we read the Psalms in 8th grade during a poetry unit and read Genesis, Exodus, Matthew, and Luke for junior and senior honors English classes at my nice liberal, atheistic public high school. You actually need to understand part of Genesis to read East of Eden<\/u>, which is currently on Oprah’s book club list. It would benefit people to know the life of Christ so that when they read Billy Budd<\/u>, they understand the Christ figure significance. You can read the book — you just can’t tell people that they have to believe it.<\/p>\n

Believe me, we debated this issue on my first day of junior honors English. We were tested on the stories. The only downside to this was that I had an English teacher that year who had favorites and decided to halve the value of the Bible test when her little pets (who probably would have passed it if they’d taken two hours to read the assigned chapters) failed the test.<\/p>\n

-In 1973, they applied a “right of privacy” not found in the Constitution as the basis for opening the door to the slaughter of more than 43,000,000 innocent unborn children.<\/a><\/p>\n

And Mr. Robertson has an M.D. degree and knows the workings of my individual body to the point that he can tell me exactly what I should and shouldn’t do with it? Uh yeah. I really think he knows what Crohn’s disease is and how exactly I’m supposed to carry a kid to full-term. And I suppose he supports sex education classes that actually teach kids about birth control and STD’s and how NOT to get pregnant so that a lot of those abortions could be prevented?<\/p>\n

-Subsequent federal courts have ruled the Ten Commandments were illegal in schools, that statues of Jesus were illegal in public parks, that prayers on a map in North Carolina were illegal, and that it was illegal for little elementary school children to give thanks over their milk and cookies at snack time.<\/a><\/p>\n

The first three are ACLU battles which I thought were pretty lame on the part of the ACLU. (I am not a huge fan of the ACLU because my viewpoint counts for just as much as the Hindus, Buddhists, and Jews that they claim to be arguing for.) For the last one, kids cannot lead each other in prayer at snack time… because that would make prayer compulsory.<\/p>\n

-Now, the Supreme Court has declared a constitutional right to consensual sodomy and, by the language in its decision, has opened the door to homosexual marriages, bigamy, legalized prostitution, and even incest.<\/a><\/p>\n

Actually, it hasn’t opened the door to any of that. All it did was make sodomy legal so that the police can’t break down the door and arrest two gay men having sex in the privacy of their home. Only Vermont and Hawaii have blessed homosexual unions (and this is BEFORE the SCOTUS ruling) and prostitution is only legal in specific areas of specific states. Bigamy and incest are both still illegal and will remain so.<\/p>\n

The framers of our Constitution never intended anything like this to take place in our land. Yet we seem to be helpless to do anything about it. Why? Because we are under the tyranny of a nonelected oligarchy. Just think, five unelected men and women who serve for life can change the moral fabric of our nation and take away the protections which our elected legislators have wisely put in place.<\/a><\/p>\n

Actually, the First Amendment being included in the Bill of Rights means that the framers did have a good idea that the first two “assaults on the Constitution” could legally happen. The fourth one had parts that could be OK’ed by our framers (given that we’re talking Enlightenment values here) and the third and fifth ones are societal mores, not specific laws.<\/p>\n

But there is a higher tribunal than the United States Supreme Court. There is the Judge of all the earth. We must earnestly come before Him now and cry out for redress of our grievances. He loves America as much as we do, and He does not wish to destroy it. But no culture has ever endured which has turned openly to homosexuality. And no society has ever been spared the wrath of God which has been guilty of slaughtering tens of millions of the innocent.<\/a><\/p>\n

All who think that our country is a theocracy, raise your hands. *looks around and doesn’t see any raised hands* Sorry Pat… we’re a democratic republic<\/b> and we have the freedom of religion guaranteed to us by the Bill of Rights. We are not a Christian country. (Anyone who dares to quote the Trinity decision should probably re-read it because it pertains to the bringing of aliens and foreign nationals to this country, not the establishment of a state religion.) Are many citizens of this country Christians? Yes. Is our society a morally Christian one? Depends on where you are.<\/p>\n

And for the record, Greece and Rome (both of which practiced homosexuality and infanticide) survived for about 1000 years each and eventually blended into one another.<\/p>\n

In short, by its distorted reading of the religion clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and its “discovery” of emanations from the 14th Amendment called “penumbras,” the Supreme Court is bringing upon this nation the wrath of God when the precious liberties that we love so much may be taken away from all of us.<\/a><\/p>\n

You’re whining about the removal of civil liberties and you support Bush, whose Patriot Act only passed because of 9\/11? Can you spell H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E? Your people would remove more of my civil liberties than would re-instate them. And you expect me to support your little tirade?<\/p>\n

Would you join with me and many others in crying out to our Lord to change the Court? If we fast and pray and earnestly seek God’s face, then He will hear our prayer and give us relief.<\/a><\/p>\n

You’re clearly forgetting that your prayers aren’t going to magically put people on the Supreme Court. Nominees have to be approved by the Senate. Senators have to approve by a 2\/3 majority and believe me, the Democrats are *VERY* good at filibustering. We learned it from your cronies during Clinton’s administration.<\/p>\n

One justice is 83 years old, another has cancer, and another has a heart condition. Would it not be possible for God to put it in the minds of these three judges that the time has come to retire? With their retirement and the appointment of conservative judges, a massive change in federal jurisprudence can take place.<\/a><\/p>\n

Why don’t you openly just pray for these justices to die, Pat? I mean… what you’re doing is the same thing. Why don’t you also just say who you want to retire. It’s pretty easy to figure out who two of the three are.<\/p>\n

You also seem to really misunderstand the legislative process for choosing the justices because you are clearly forgetting that the Senate has to approve the people on the high court. Your prayers would be better spent praying for the senators to have constituents who want your bigoted nominees than praying for people to retire.<\/p>\n

We can have a court that no longer legislates from the bench the wishes of The New York Times and The Washington Post, but which will earnestly seek to interpret the Constitution as it is written and to give meaning to the centuries of moral standards which have undergirded this wonderful country called the United States of America.<\/a><\/p>\n

I seriously doubt that the New York Times and Washington Post heartily support every action of the court. I mean… if they were really pandering to the wishes of the papers, they would have ruled the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policy legal (since most agree that the brat who filed it wouldn’t have gotten in even with the affirmative action stuff thrown out) and Indiana wouldn’t have the 24-hour wait law validated. (Yes… they made abortion legal, but they’re not making it easy to get one.)<\/p>\n

For those who think that Robertson is in the right and are completely incensed that I would dare to question him, deal with it. The guy is a moron and a crackpot and for someone who has a law degree from Yale knows very little about legal procedures… unless he choses to ignore the obvious flaws in this plan.<\/p>\n

And remember, if you want to fisk me, leave the URL in my journal. I will delete comments over two paragraphs. If you have hatemail for me, send it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’ve been following various secular and Christian media outlets, you’ve probably seen the news that Pat Robertson is launching Operation Supreme Court Freedom, which is a 21-day prayer offensive to make 3 justices of the Supreme Court retire so … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p38xoO-5M","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}