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Bryan Griffin: Amy Coney Barrett’s Christianity Is A Strength, Not A Weakness

Amy Coney Barrett’s legal career and curriculum vitae merit confirmation to the Supreme Court. 

So, the opposition has had to focus elsewhere. 

Barrett, a successful judge, jurist, and working mother of seven, is now painted as the un-doer of feminism and progress. 

“If you’re a woman, you want to keep your freedom,” Chuck Schumer threatened of a Barrett confirmation.

Due in part to her “religious conviction,” argues Sarah Jones in the Intelligencer, “Barrett is a familiar specter: a traitor to her sex.”

How can she possibly deserve such critique? 

In a New York Times opinion piece, Elizabeth Bruenig writes, “Judge Barrett’s nomination has merely renewed attention to a fundamental conflict, centuries underway, between Catholicism and the American ethos.”

As if the two are not just at odds, but fundamentally incompatible.

Amy Barrett’s Christianity is going to continue to face criticism all the way through her confirmation process because her Christianity stands in the way of a governmental morality that her detractors would rather see on the Supreme Court.

Christian pro-life policy does not seek to dismantle ‘women’s reproductive freedom,’ but Christians do concern themselves with the liberty of both the carrying woman and the eventual child.

Christianity does not stand for the intolerance or hatred of another. In fact, a guiding Christian commandment is to love thy neighbor unconditionally. This isn’t at odds with the American ethos, it is the architect.

Grave danger awaits any and every American when right and wrong are defined by the party in power instead of universal morality. Lose an election and find yourself susceptible to new laws conforming with the new “ethos.”

Dominic Green wrote the following in the Wall Street Journal: “If we consider the current state of American public life and institutions, it’s clear that the problem isn’t religious influence but its absence. As secular liberalism grows ever further from its historical roots in the religious spirit, its moral and spiritual fruits wither.”

America’s defining characteristics of liberty and freedom are born from Christian founding influences. This isn’t to the exclusion of other faiths nor to the detriment of secular government. This is to their distinct benefit.

“Roman Catholicism does not readily distinguish between public and private moral obligations,” Elizabeth Bruenig later argues in the same New York Times piece.

Yet Christian leaders are not the ones pushing dogmatic religious adherence. It is the left pushing for a government big enough to blur that line, and unquestioned complicity with the modern illiberal conceptualization of progress.

"Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God, the things that are God's,” said Jesus. Herein, the ultimate case was made for morality coming from the inalterable word of the Lord, not the dictates of the state.

The religion of statism wants a federal decision on abortion, a federal administration of healthcare priorities, and a federally decided curriculum in schools.

The Constitution grants no authority to the federal government to do these things, so those who want to see it done know they need a Supreme Court willing to rule outside of the text.

Democrat Senators voted to kill a bill designed to requiremedical treatment for unwanted yet born infants. Religious-based organizations, companies, and individuals are forced into government-dictated actions on issues like contraceptives under Obamacare.

It amounts to exactly what Barrett’s detractors publicly claim to fear from her nomination: a religion of the state forced onto everyone.

Barrett’s personal faith is not the issue, it just doesn’t leave room for a morality designed by the government.

Big government is its own religion. It can have no competition to its authority; there can be no higher power. China, the world’s biggest government, periodically releases guidelines for the morality its citizens should hold . In China, religious practices beholden to a higher power are vehemently persecuted by the government because they compete.

Socialist and Communist countries eliminate people of faith serving in high positions. In America we have historically done the opposite and we need to continue that tradition with people of all faiths.

Amy Coney Barrett’s Christian faith does not disqualify her. It encourages jurisprudence that preserves life and guards liberty. And it stands to shield the process of the individual conscience from the indoctrination of government.

Bryan Griffin of the London Center for Policy Research is a lawyer and author who specializes in American policy in the Middle East.

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

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