Political Appointments

I want to rant today about a couple things relating to politics in general and Supreme Court nominations in particular and how they relate to the Christian community.

Of course, anything having to do with anything political has always been an opportunity for the politics of extremes to have a field day. Judicial appointments have always been seen as an opportunity for the majority party to tilt things toward its current proclivities. That alone is fine. That is how politics operates. Political people find ways to achieve majorities so that they can further the issues that enabled them to be elected in the first place. I have no problem with that. Politics is politics. Do or say whatever is necessary to get elected and re-elected while trying to get more like-minded people elected instead of the people of a different mindset.

What upsets me and has caused this rant today is twofold. Starting with the unsuccessful nomination of Robert Bork back in the 80's, the attacks on court nominations have left the realm of principled opposition and have become an opportunity to forecast apocalyptic results with each subsequent nominee. The left screeches that any nominee presented by the right will result in poor people being denied the right to vote, women forced to endure "back-alley abortions done with coat hangers" and a hateful disregard for the disadvantaged. Equally shrill come the charges by the right about the nominees presented by the left. Those charges are predictable, regardless of the nominee. They forcecast that the nominee will re-write the constitution from the bench, will cause the doors of our prisons to be opened up and give more rights to criminals than to law-abiding citizens, and will strip away the foundations of our American values.

In the past twenty plus years, it hasn't mattered who the nominee was, the charges remained constant. The minority party is portrayed as obstructionist for challenging the nomination, and we are supposed to forget that the majority party did the same thing when they were in the minority. So, the first thing that I want to rant about is that politicians of every stripe think that I am stupid and have no memory of previous justices that have been seated and what was said of them during their nominations. When a nomination occurs and the charges begin to fly I am supposed to be offended in one of two ways: If I am aligned with the majority party I am supposed to be offended that such a fine jurist is being attacked so unjustly. If I am aligned with the minority party I am supposed to be deeply offended that the other guys have nominated someone who will undermine the very foundations of what we hold dear. Regardless of which party I am aligned with, I am supposed to forget that we acted the same way last time. I am just supposed to write letters, and most importantly, send money.

The second thing that makes me mad about all of this is that the Christian community has become such visible and predictable participants in all of this. Immediately upon the nomination, I know the content of the e-mails that will be forwarded to me. If the nominee is presented by the conservatives, the e-mails will tell of the deep spiritual walk of the nominee, and how we need to pray that the evil forces of the left will not be able to overturn this nomination. If the nomination comes from the left, the messages tell of the dark, sinister nature of previous rulings by the nominee and that we need to pray that this person will not be able to destroy our "Christian Heritage". And we respond predictably. We see everything as black & white, good vs. evil, and light vs. darkness.

What we forget is that America never gave us freedom of religion and no law passed will ever take it away. America has laws that say that no one will be punished for the practice of a religion and those laws could be overturned someday. But we have freedom of religion just as every person in the world does. The personal cost is much higher to practice your religion in many other countries. It may cause you to die. But the free practice of your religious beliefs is not legislated. It is an individual choice made internally. If every lawmaker and every justice was fully Christian and even if they were practicing Pentecostals; and if every law passed was in complete agreement with the King James Version of the Bible, we would still be a nation of sinners. Laws establish penalties for behaviors we want to discourage, but they don't change hearts.

So, are Supreme Court nominations important? Of course they are important. As Christians who are citizens, we have an obligation to be the best Christian citizens we can be. But please realize that no political party fully encompasses the teachings of Christ. Only Christianity does. Have political opinions. Vote your values. But never forget that neither laws nor lawmakers have a say in our relationship with and our responsibilities to Christ.