Religious Moderation Killed by Nuclear Option

The argument over judicial nominations and the filibuster is killing religious and political moderation. First, the religious right claimed that opposing the move was against people of faith.

Frist is trying to win support for a ban on the use of the filibuster, a technique to delay Senate business, to block votes on judicial nominees. He has agreed to give a videotaped speech Sunday for Justice Sunday: Stop the Filibuster Against People of Faith.

My question to Focus on the Family is how either position on procedures is against people of faith? Not to be undone, the  Democratic Senator Ken Salazar returned in kind.

Washington - Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar angrily denounced the influential Christian conservative organization Focus on the Family on Wednesday as "unchristian."

In response, the Colorado Springs group accused the lifelong Roman Catholic of taking an "anti-Catholic" stance.

The war of words was prompted by Focus on the Family's advertising campaign attacking Salazar's position on President Bush's judicial nominations. Democrat Salazar opposes Republican efforts to eliminate the filibuster - a procedural hurdle Democrats use to block votes on certain nominees.

Salazar said the ads include "flat-out lies" about his record.

"Focus on the Family has been hijacking Christianity and has become a wing of the Republican Party," Salazar said after a news conference. "They're using Christianity and religion in a very unprincipled way."

I guess you can expect political parties and lobbying groups would try to appropriate religion to defend their political positions. What I find even more disturbing is when churches get drawn into the fray. I find offensive the call for a so-called Justice Sunday appropriating the pulpits of conservative churches. It is one thing to have sermons supporting life and opposing abortion. It is quite another thing to have a procedural vote to become the warp and woof of Christianity. As far as I know, the conservative churches have not yet taken the bait. The liberal churches have.

 

The moderator of the PCUSA chastised Majority Leader, Bill Frist.

Among those scheduled to speak in the conference call is the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, a top official of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A., in which Dr. Frist is an active member.

"One of the hallmarks of our denomination is that we are an ecumenical church," Mr. Kirkpatrick said in an interview on Thursday. He also said, "Elected officials should not be portraying public policies as being for or against people of faith."

A spokesman for Dr. Frist said his remarks, which are not yet available, would be consistent with previous statements about fair treatment for judicial nominees. "I would hope that he would read Dr. Frist's remarks," the spokesman, Bob Stevenson, said of Mr. Kirkpatrick.

I don't get the ecumenism reference. Frist was trying to get support for his proposal amongst religious conservatives. It was Focus and other religious right  groups and not Senator Frist that were making the outrageous claims. On the other hand, I suspect Rev. Kilpatrick was trying to influence the vote the other way. Pot say hello to kettle. Note the following is part of the PCUSA's Constitution (Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter XXXI):

IV. Synods and councils are to handle, or conclude nothing, but that which is ecclesiastical: and are not to intermeddle with civil affairs which concern the commonwealth, unless by way of humble petition in cases extraordinary; or, by way of advice, for satisfaction of conscience, if they be thereunto required by the civil magistrate.

When the more conservative Presbyterian Church in America considered the proposed marriage amendment to the constitution last Summer. They declared it to be none of their business.

So what is causing all this shouting and name-calling on all sides? Columnist David Brooks nails it.

Justice Harry Blackmun did more inadvertent damage to our democracy than any other 20th-century American. When he and his Supreme Court colleagues issued the Roe v. Wade decision, they set off a cycle of political viciousness and counter-viciousness that has poisoned public life ever since, and now threatens to destroy the Senate as we know it.

Brooks doesn't go far enough. The nuclear option will not only blow up the Senate but civil discourse in general. Judicial activism not only causes rulings that I believe are wrong but also has horrific effects on both politics and religion. The nuclear option may produce more judges that are less judicially active but at a terrible cost.

Brooks concludes:

The fact is, the entire country is trapped. Harry Blackmun and his colleagues suppressed that democratic abortion debate the nation needs to have. The poisons have been building ever since. You can complain about the incivility of politics, but you can't stop the escalation of conflict in the middle. You have to kill it at the root. Unless Roe v. Wade is overturned, politics will never get better.

I'm even less sanguine than Brooks. Even with overturning Roe v. Wade, neither politics or religion will get better. Until people of faith on both the left and right start showing some more good will, our country will be stuck in an intractable civil war. We need to be part of the answer rather than part of the problem.

 

Comments

[mynym]

Consider a separation of Church and State in history, I think if there is a sort of oligarchy growing in power that has a proto-Nazi tendency of disdain for text, then Scripturalists are right to oppose them politically. The reason the Founders established a separation of Church and State was utterly different from the Nazi form of it. They did so based on a religous rationales inherent in Christianity and Deism. In their view the Church was to be left free as the Conscience of the nation, just as the mind must be left free from indoctrination and emotional conditioning to be the conscience of the individual. This is so it informs the body, just as the Church must be left free to inform the body politic.

Suffice it to say, it is an entirely different form of separation than the atheistic or socialist tendency to use "separation" as an excuse to extirpate religion as it is just the opiate of the masses, etc.

[Rich]

I very much want the Church to be the conscience of the nation. Just being religious should not bar you from public service. For example, Senator Wayne Allard is a member of my local church. That being said, note what my pastor said this morning when he alluded to the current political conflict.

"On the right, we have politicians calling judges tools of the devil. How is that respecting those in authority? On the left, I saw a murderous bumber sticker calling for the death of the President. How is that not hate speech?"

He went on to discuss how integrity in speech did not merely advance an agenda through political rhetoric but was concerned with the truth.

As Christians, we are to have integrity and honor. Empty political rhetoric dillutes the authority of the church. Politicians will seek our votes and court us for their polical agendas. I have no problem with that. In fact, I happen to agree with Senator Frist on this particular issue. But, when the rhetoric gets so red hot that it poisons the public discourse, we need to take notice and do something to lower the temperature.

[lyle schulman]

as a christian on the right i think de lay is right and we should kill the non christian judges and like our majority leader said we will kill any dem or non christian that vots against us...

[Rich]

Bloody trolls. *Sigh*

On a positive note, at least what Senator Frist said last night wasn't inflammatory. Nevertheless, the context was.

[Fred]

Moderation in America today, per the main stream media, is anyone who May agree with the Democrats but hasn't said so yet.

I belong to no church, and I believe the requirement for a simple Majority for Court appointments is what should happen.

No mushroom clouds, the republic will survive, trust me. The Democrats may not, but that isn't a problem. There will be another liberal party to take their place.

I have been "accused" of siding with the religious crazies. My response was that they, the Communist/Democrat/Socialist/Liberal sided with Al Qaida during the presidential election. The CDSL's will insist that's not true. No kidding. Neither am I siding with the religious crazies, just the folks who won the election. They lost, and still can't handle it.

They will learn. Unfortunately it will take many lessons like this.

Oh, and don't blame the non-Catholic conservatives for the selection of the new Conservative POPE.

Just the direction history is moving. The Cancer of Socialism has hopefully run it's deadly course. It is time for true Democracy and liberty to take over.

Fred