In Their Own Words: Justice Sunday II: A Promise to "Bring the Rule and Reign of the Cross"

“Number one, it's a new day.
Number two, liberalism is dead.
Number three, the majority of Americans are conservative.
Number four, you can count on us showing up and speaking out.
And number five, let the church rise.”

— Jerry Sutton, pastor of Two Rivers Baptist Church, site of “Justice Sunday II”
[Watch the Video]

At Justice Sunday II, political and religious leaders vow to use courts to “bring the rule and reign of the cross”

On August 14, some of the most prominent leaders on the religious right, including Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Ted Haggard of the National Association of Evangelicals, and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, gathered at Two Rivers Baptist Church in Nashville for “Justice Sunday II: God Save the United States and This Honorable Court.” Other right wing luminaries such as Judge Robert Bork, Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, and Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family joined the telecast by video.

While the first “Justice Sunday” event rallied its audience in support of the right wing's agenda to destroy the Senate filibuster rule by using the “nuclear option”, the speakers at Justice Sunday II mentioned Bush's Supreme Court nominee “only in passing.” While most of the speakers have unequivocally voiced their support for John Roberts in recent weeks, their support for him was made quite clear by the prominent display of his portrait as speakers discussed the need for “strict constructionists.”

The combination church meeting and political rally returned to the overarching conservative themes of a so-called “activist” judiciary that is trying to “silence” people of faith. This preposterous idea is based on the false premise that conservative Christians are somehow being persecuted, or treated as “second-class citizens.” Of course, nobody is trying to prevent the religious right from speaking out. It is their efforts to “manipulate religious faith for political purposes,” that should sound a warning call to those who are really at risk of being intimidated into silence.

“Persecution” complex

Supposedly “silenced” leaders reach 79 million homes

Conservative Christians have control of the White House, the Congress, and a substantial part of the federal courts. Religious right-wing figures like Tony Perkins and James Dobson are featured almost daily in news media and through their own media empires. And, like all Americans who enjoy the protections of the First Amendment, they freely worship and speak their minds. Yet, against all indications, they maintain the claim that somebody, somehow is oppressing them.

Jim Daly, the new president of Focus on the Family, said, “although they try to intimidate us, Christians are not second-class citizens who need to keep their thoughts to themselves.” But where is the evidence for this so-called “intimidation” of Christians? In contrast, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, said outright that he intends through his participation in Justice Sunday II to “intimidate the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

James Dobson from Focus on the Family also attempted to advance this myth of persecution by saying, “But it doesn't matter what we think. The debate is over - the court ruled. Just shut up and knuckle under. That's the choice that we're given.” Tony Perkins claimed the court has “chipped away at our religious liberties, whether it was silencing the voices of children praying in our schools, or whether it was casting the Ten Commandments out of the public square. The court, as Justice Scalia said in his dissent in that Ten Commandments case... has ratcheted up its hostility to religion.”

Former Democratic Senator Zell Miller (GA) stated wildly, “[The court] has removed prayer and the Bible from schools. Each Christmas it kidnaps the baby Jesus, halo, manger, and all, from the city square. It has legalized the barbaric killing of unborn babies, and is ready to discard like an outdated hula hoop the universal institution of marriage between a man and a woman. It will even put you in jail if you dare to put up a copy of the Ten Commandments in a public place. . .”

Donohue, in an outrageous attempt to analogize religious right-wingers to minorities who suffered discrimination and fought in the civil rights movement, said, “Well, we know who's been driving the bus - it hasn't been us. As a matter of fact, the Left who's been driving the bus, they're so sweet they allow us to sit in the back of the bus, that's how tolerant they are.... I'm tired of being told that somehow if you have a religious [sic] informed conscience, that somehow you're a second class citizen, … It's not a matter of our trying to shove our idea down somebody's throat. It's a matter of us saying that we want to stand up and we want to be counted and we're tired of being second class citizens to these people and we're not going to take it any longer.” [Watch the Video]

On so-called “Judicial Activism” and “Judicial Tyranny”

Many of us might think that some of the greatest threats we face today may come from terrorists, or roll backs of consumer and worker protections, or lack of adequate health care, or even a spiraling, out-of-control national debt. But according to the religious right, we would be wrong. As the Eagle Forum's Phyllis Schlafly put it, “The biggest threat facing America today is the out-of-control judges who are banning our acknowledgement of God in schools and public places, overturning marriage and morality, and imposing their social views on us.” She continued, “I call these judges supremacists,” while others call them “liberal activist judges” or practitioners of “judicial autocracy.” In reality, what they disparage as judicial “activism” is often judges doing their job by constitutionally protecting our civil rights and liberties.

Tony Perkins dramatically exclaimed, “The Court has expanded the Constitution to include the right to kill unborn children. They've expanded the plate so that they can find this right to homosexual sodomy... And they've said our children don't even have a right to pray.”

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) contributed to the right-wing specter of “out-of-control” courts saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, all wisdom does not reside in nine persons in robes, black robes. Rights are invented out of whole cloth. Longstanding traditions are found to be unconstitutional... Activist courts, in turn, impose new policies on our nation without passing a single bill through a single house of a single legislature. That's not judicial independence - that's judicial supremacy, judicial autocracy. It has no basis in the Constitution, but merely in the frustrated imagination of an out-of-touch political movement whose world view the American people simply will not endorse.”

Expressing his displeasure, James Dobson said that the Court is now frequently “drawing their inspiration from leftist influences in Western Europe.” Zell Miller ended his interpretive history of America with, “And so it was down through our glorious Godly history, until in the 1960s, when the hostile enemies of religion found that they could win battles with appointed judges that they could not win with elected representatives. And then, with that, the original intent of the United States Constitution was hauled off in a garbage truck.”

The Right Wing Agenda: “Bring the rule and reign of the cross to America”

If there was any ambiguity to the message of hosting Justice Sunday's cast of right-wing leaders at a church, and simulcasting it to other churches around the nation, Bishop Harry Jackson cleared that up. “I believe that what God is doing today is calling for the black church to team with the white evangelical church and the Catholic Church and people of moral conscience. And in this season, we need to be able to tell both [political] parties, 'listen, it's our way or the highway.' We're not just going to sit back,” he said. “You and I can bring the rule and reign of the Cross to America and we can change America on our watch, together.” [Watch the Video]

James Dobson gave his take on “what's at stake” in the confirmation of John Roberts, by saying, “Consider this: In the next few months, and certainly in the next few years, the Supreme Court is going to be issuing rulings on a variety of extremely important issues, including the very definition of marriage. The family itself is at stake here.... They're also going to consider even more religious liberties issues, going back 42 years to the assault on religious freedom beginning in 1962 with the elimination of Bible reading and prayer in the schools. And then they're going to consider the ban on the horrible procedure known as partial-birth abortion, and physician-assisted suicide, and parental notification on behalf of minors seeking abortions, and the 'Don't ask, don't tell' policy for military personnel.”

Disagreeing with the constitutionality of a woman's right to choose and other types of reproductive freedoms, Bill Donohue said, “They come up with [the] idea in 1965 of a constitutional right to privacy. And then in 1973 they come up with the idea that somehow it's okay to kill the kids, that this is somehow reproductive rights. This is a man-made kind of situation, people. . . That is simply made up by the judges. Equal protection before the laws was written in 1868 so you couldn't have one law for whites and one law for blacks. How did they go from that to the idea that two guys can get married?”

Referring to the looming Supreme Court battle, Cathy Cleaver Ruse of the Family Research Council saw “new hope for change” in a successful confirmation of John Roberts. “After decades of watching religion being stripped from the public square, of watching pornographers being praised as First Amendment heroes, and watching abortion and homosexual activity enshrined as constitutional rights... It is very possible that the Supreme Court will once again rule on partial-birth abortion... [S]oon the court may have the chance to revisit the issue again. We will hope and pray that they will see what we know, that there is no right in the Constitution to kill a partially born child.”

Through their hysterical cries of religious persecution, the speakers at Justice Sunday II did much more than merely encourage their audience to support John Roberts. Their goal was to foster a sense of crisis in the conservative “base” to support their demands for the kind of ideologically extreme judicial nominees who share their beliefs. The unwavering support of the right-wing leaders at Justice Sunday II for nominee John Roberts, demonstrates that they believe - or at least strongly hope - that by supporting his confirmation they will bring about a Supreme Court that is the answer to their right-wing prayers.