Welcome to Witherspoon on the Web       

News and networking for progressive Presbyterians

Home page

Ordination concerns

Immigrant rights

War on Iraq

Search Archive
2006 General Assembly Global & Social concerns Election 2008 Israel & Palestine About us Just for fun

News of the PC(USA)

Torture --
It's time to resist!
Other churches, other faiths War on Iran?? Join us! Notes from your WebWeaver

What's Where

Our reports about the
2008 General Assembly

You'll find much more on the GA at JustPresbys -- the shared website of 6 progressive Presbyterian organizations.

ABOUT US

The Summer 2008 issue of
Network News
is posted here
- in Adobe PDF format.

Click here for earlier issues
Adobe PDF  Click here to download (free!) Adobe Reader software to view this and all PDF files.

News of the Society
How to join us
Witherspoon's
Global Engagement Initiative
Dancing with God -- reports from the 2005 Witherspoon conference on mission for peace and justice

SEARCH

CONNECTIONS

Coming events calendar 

Do you want to announce an event?
Please send a note!
Food for the spirit
Book notes

Go to  Amazon.com

LINKS

NEWS of the Presbyterian Church

Got news??
Send us a note!
Women's Concerns
Social and global concerns
The Middle East conflict
The War in Iraq
Hurricane Katrina
U. S. Politics
Election 2008
Economic justice
Fair Food Campaign
Sexual justice
Peacemaking & international concerns
Caring for the environment
Immigrant rights
Racial concerns
Church & State
The death penalty
The media
OTHER CHURCHES, OTHER FAITHS
Do you want regular e-mail updates when stories are added to our web site?
Just send a note!
The WebWeaver's Space
ARCHIVES
JUST FOR FUN
Want books?
Search Now:

 

Religious tests for judges: 
Part II on Sen. Frist and theocracy

Kentucky Baptist Steelworker didn't say 'amen' to 'Justice Sunday' telecast

Jeff Wiggins is a Southern Baptist, a Democrat and a Steelworker.  He has a message for Christian conservatives who say Democrats are "against people of faith." "The Bible says, Judge not, lest ye be judged," warned Wiggins, president of the Paducah-based Western Kentucky Area Council, AFL-CIO.   [4-27-05]                   Read the story >>

Jesus Was No GOP Lobbyist

A tortured version of his message is being marketed for political gain.
[4-27-05]

Jack Hitt, writing in the Commentary section of the LA Times, ponders the question, "What would Jesus filibuster? The question is bizarre, of course, but the fact that many prominent religious and political leaders believe that there is an answer surely marks our time as pretty strange."

He adds:

The Jesus who speaks in the Gospels is nothing like the fuming Republican Jesus I see on TV now. Jesus was a leader who understood that ambiguity and doubt are not to be feared but are, simply, facts of life that a great teacher exploits to guide his followers on their own paths toward conviction and belief.

Here is a quote from Jesus that you almost never hear: "What do you think?" It's right there in the Bible. Jesus asks this question all the time.

Read this in the LA Times, or on TruthOut.org

Holy War Sunday

Here are a few reports and comments on the simulcast/rally/revival (or whatever you choose to call it) held in Louisville on Sunday, April 24, with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist as the star speaker, appealing to Christians to defeat efforts by anti-Christian liberals to defend the right of US senators to speak their minds – at length if necessary – as an exercise of resistance against "the tyranny of the majority."    [4-25-05]


"Holy War Sunday" is what the Courier-Journal in the host city of Louisville called the religio-political rally in an editorial which said that instead of "Justice Sunday: Stop the filibuster against people of faith," the event should have been called, "Injustice Sunday: Demean the holy and foment schism for partisan gain."

Read the editorial in the Courier-Journal, or on TruthOut.org

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Evangelical leaders use a simulcast to churches around the country to support conservative judges. Other groups fear a 'religious war.'"

So read the headline on the LA Times report, which noted that Sen. Frist "shied away from the fiery oratory offered by evangelical leaders," but nevertheless stuck by his threat to use the "nuclear option," forcing an end to the use of filibusters to delay and perhaps scuttle votes on some of the court nominees considered most objectionable by Democrats.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Civil rights coalition using radio ads to warn of the "nuclear option" as a threat to civil rights


On Tuesday, April 26, radio ads spotlighting Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's threatened "nuclear option" to arbitrarily cut off debate in the U.S. Senate will begin airing in nearly a dozen U.S. cities.


"We are calling on the Senate to reject this politically divisive nuclear option and put acrimonious partisanship aside. The Senate must get to work on solving some of our nation's most pressing problems - creating more jobs, educating our children, providing and improving healthcare and, reducing the deficit," said Wade Henderson, Executive Director of LCCR, the nation's oldest and largest civil and human rights organization.

More >>      [This report provides links to the audio ads themselves.]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A High-Tech Lynching in Prime Time


That was the term used to describe the event in a New York Times opinion piece by Frank Rich

Read it in the Times, or on TruthOut.org.



http://www.tompaine.com/articles/faith_and_the_filibuster_fight.php?dateid=20050425


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Faith and the Filibuster Fight


Melissa Rogers, a Baptist professor of religion writes a thoughtful and strong critique of the Sunday rally.

She begins:

I am a church-going, Bible-believing Baptist, but I recently learned that I'm not a Christian. Indeed, I've not only learned that I'm not a Christian, I've also learned that I'm anti-Christian and hostile to religion. Why? Because I dare to disagree with a certain political and legal agenda.

She goes on to offer a remarkable notion:

It's time to tell the truth.

There is no "filibuster against people of faith." Religious people are on both sides of the debate about the filibuster and certain Bush-nominated judges. And it's wrong for one of the country's foremost political leaders to lend legitimacy to a contrary notion. Just as no one should have to pass a religious test in order to hold political office, no one should have to pass a political test in order to claim religion or morality.

Further, the Senate has already confirmed the overwhelming majority of President Bush's judicial nominees, and there is every reason to assume that most of these judges are religious people. Many of these judges presumably share the president's views on abortion and same-sex marriage.

She concludes:

When I hear attempts to manipulate people in the pews, I always think of one of my grandmother's favorite Bible verses: "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7). May people of all faiths and political stripes reject a spirit of fear and speak the truth, with power and with love.

Read the rest >>


Stated Clerk calls on Frist to avoid condemning people of faith
[4-22-05]

Clifton Kirkpatrick, Stated Clerk of the PC(USA), will join with other religious leaders in a conference call with journalists today to criticize the participation of Senate Republican leader (and Presbyterian) Bill Frist in a teleconference scheduled for Sunday that will depict Democrats as "against people of faith."

In an interview on Thursday, April 21, Kirkpatrick said that "one of the hallmarks of our denomination is that we are an ecumenical church. ... Elected officials should not be portraying public policies as being for or against people of faith."

Read the story in the New York Times or on TruthOut.org

Legal views of Frist's "nuclear option"

Gene TeSelle, Witherspoon's Issues Analyst, sent this on Thursday, April 21, 2005

[Posted here 4-22-05]

Today I attended a forum at Vanderbilt's Law School concerning the so-called "nuclear option" for the Senate, under which a parliamentary maneuver would bypass the Senate's cloture rule and allow a majority vote on the President's judicial nominees. The panel included two law professors and an African-American minister. They gave lots of helpful background, which also helped to clarify the foreground of the issue.

They pointed out that Orrin Hatch as chair of the Judiciary Committee during the Clinton years simply bottled up nominations in committee, not letting them get to the floor B a seemingly less "democratic" approach, since it foreclosed both debate and a registered vote.

They commented that the current system, by requiring sixty votes to close debate, encourages dialogue and negotiation in the Senate. With the current party ratio, persuasion of five Democrats can unlock debate -- and persuasion of five Republicans can make the vote go the other way. Both have happened frequently.

They also reminded us that seven of the current judicial appointments being opposed by the Democrats are re-nominations; these are people who were rejected in the last Congress for being too extreme or too ideological. Clearly the President's strategy is to keep insisting on his way and precipitate a crisis.

Now to the really interesting part. The "nuclear" scenario is one in which the President of the Senate, Vice-President Cheney, would be asked to rule on a point of order. If he were to rule that the cloture rule does not apply to judicial appointments, his ruling would be challenged. And although it takes two thirds of the Senate to change its rules, it takes only a majority vote to uphold a ruling from the chair.

Asked whether such an action could be challenged in the courts, the professors said that the Constitution allows the Senate to make its own rules. This might make an appeal difficult. And yet such an action would be a breach of the Senate's own rules. Thus there might be an opening for court challenge.

Several dimensions of this strategy were pointed out.

1. It is clearly a politicization of the confirmation process, drawing lines and whipping up passions by talking about "activist judges" who are making wrong, indeed immoral and unreligious rulings. They would be replaced by other "activist judges" who, some hope, will link church and state, inject religion into public schools and public places, repeal reproductive rights, and ban legal rights for gays and lesbians.

2. It is a disturbing kind of strategic planning (some might call it conspiracy), under which the President of the Senate, who is supposed to make parliamentary rulings impartially, would participate in a scenario written in advance. This is what has several Republicans in the Senate worried. It is also the reason many Republicans tell pollsters that they are against it.

3. If it is still a possibility that the Republicans will "go nuclear," Senator Bill Frist has already "gone ballistic." He has promised to appear, on April 24, on a "Justice Sunday" telecast sponsored by the Family Research Council. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, thinks that the courts are trying to "rob us of our Christian heritage and religious freedoms."

This, a panelist pointed out, amounts to giving religious sanction to a political power play that breaks the agreed rules of the Senate. It is a "teleological suspension of the ethical" in which religious people, in effect, are telling the Senators to do evil so that grace might abound. In holy war, after all, what is normally prohibited becomes possible, even justifiable.

Theologians have loved to debate whether God has the right C or the kind of character C to suspend God's own commands. But most people would be reluctant to give that right to human beings, even when they are religious leaders. Those who are not reluctant to do so are likely to be theocrats, claiming that God rules through human intermediaries who are to be obeyed because they have divine sanction.

The argument that is trotted out sooner or later is that religion is an "absolute commitment" C as though this makes it exempt from the rules of normal political behavior, and even confers the privilege of defining those rules.

The difficulty, of course, is that many competing groups can claim the right to carry their "absolute commitments" into public discourse, and this promotes intolerance and eventually open religious warfare.

Let's stifle the theocratic urge before it gets to that point.

 

 

If you like what you find here,
we hope you'll help us keep this website going ... and growing!

Please consider making a special contribution -- large or small -- to help us continue and improve this service.

Click here to send a gift online, using your credit card, through PayPal.

Or send your check, made out to "Witherspoon Society" and marked "web site," to our Witherspoon  Bookkeeper:

Susan Robertson  
9650 Clover Circle
Eden Prairie, MN  55347

 

An index of our reports from

 

 

 

BECOMING NEIGHBORS:
An Invitation
to Global Discipleship

A Witherspoon conference
on global mission and justice

September 16 - 19, 2007
Louisville, Kentucky

 

Check out our report from the Conference
on
Terror, Torture,
and Security

 

To top

© 2007 by The Witherspoon Society.  All material on this site is the responsibility of the WebWeaver unless other sources are acknowledged.  Unless otherwise noted, material on this site may be copied for personal use and sharing in small groups.  For permission to reproduce material for wider publication, please contact the WebWeaver, Doug King.  Any material reached by links on this site is outside the control and responsibility of the WebWeaver and The Witherspoon Society.  Questions or comments?  Please send a note!