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Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert
Sun, July 3, 2022 at 8:44 AM·5 min read

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear the case of Moore v. Harper, a North Carolina case that concerns gerrymandering, voting districts, and a little-known theory called the independent state legislature doctrine, this coming October.

Should the Court rule in North Carolina's favor, the ruling would reduce voter oversight on state legislatures and likely impact the outcome of various statewide political races — as well as the 2024 presidential election.

The Facts of Moore v. Harper

Moore v. Harper centers around congressional maps drawn by Republican lawmakers in North Carolina following the 2020 census. The maps were challenged in court by Democratic voters and nonprofits who argued the districts were unfairly gerrymandered in favor of Republicans, which violated the state constitution.

Earlier this year, the North Carolina Supreme Court blocked the state from using the maps in primary elections and required the districts be redrawn.

"Today, we answer this question: does our state constitution recognize that the people of this state have the power to choose those who govern us, by giving each of us an equally powerful voice through our vote? Or does our constitution give to members of the General Assembly, as they argue here, unlimited power to draw electoral maps that keep themselves and our members of Congress in office as long as they want, regardless of the will of the people, by making some votes more powerful than others?" Justice Robin Hudson wrote in the state supreme court's majority opinion, which blocked the use of the gerrymandered maps. "We hold that our constitution's Declaration of Rights guarantees the equal power of each person's voice in our government through voting in elections that matter."

Republican state lawmakers in February requested in an emergency appeal that the United States Supreme Court halt the state's order to redraw the maps, though the request was denied.

Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch dissented to the denial. In their dissent, the justices wrote that the independent state legislature doctrine was an important question for the court to resolve.

The new maps, drawn by North Carolina Supreme Court-appointed experts, were used in the state's May 17 primary election.

In another appeal to overturn the state Supreme Court's decision, Timothy K. Moore, the Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, filed for a writ of certiorari — a request that the United States Supreme Court review the case.

The review was granted on June 30 with the case to be heard in the Supreme Court session this October.

Independent State Legislature Doctrine

At the heart of the case, according to SCOTUS blog, is the legal theory called "independent state legislature doctrine," which suggests that, under the Constitution's election clause, "only the legislature has the power to regulate federal elections, without interference from state courts."

"The theory would disable state courts from protecting voting rights in federal elections by eliminating state constitutional protections in those elections," Legal experts Leah Litman, Kate Shaw and Carolyn Shapiro wrote of the case in an opinion piece for The Washington Post. "And it would do so at a time when voting rights are under attack, including at the Supreme Court itself."

Under the most strict readings of the doctrine, provisions in state constitutions which restrain lawmakers' from influencing elections would be rolled back. The governor, who could usually veto new election laws, would lose the ability to do so and state courts would be unable to reverse anti-democratic laws or challenge gerrymandered districts.

This interpretation of the constitution "could make it easier for state legislatures to suppress the vote, draw unfair election districts, enable partisan interference in ballot counting," the Brennan Center for Justice tweeted about the case.

Conservative Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito have all endorsed versions of the legal theory in previous court opinions. Their support signals that they will vote in this case to overturn previous legal precedent which considered such cases highly partisan and thus "unjusticeable" and prevented the country's highest court from weighing in on partisan state issues including gerrymandered election maps.

The Court's forthcoming decision could roll back efforts to combat gerrymandering in battleground states nationwide and give state legislatures unlimited control over how federal elections are conducted.

"This case has the potential to fundamentally rework the relationship between state legislatures and state courts in protecting voting rights in federal elections," election law expert Richard Hasen wrote on his Election Law blog. "It also could provide the path for election subversion."

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the Supreme Court's decision to hear the case "a judicial coup in progress."

"If the President and Congress do not restrain the Court now, the Court is signaling they will come for the Presidential election next," the New York Democrat tweeted. "All our leaders — regardless of party — must recognize this Constitutional crisis for what it is."

Read the original article on Business Insider

https://news.yahoo.com/moore-v-harper-experts-next-124400071.html

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Vocations and church attendance are down. Young people are leaving the church in droves. Why?

May 10, 2022
By Thomas Reese

(RNS) — There are numerous signs that the Catholic Church is failing in Western countries. There are few vocations, church attendance is down and young people are leaving the church in droves. There are as many theories explaining this decline as there are commentators, but the theories can be collected in two major baskets: those that blame culture and those that blame the church itself.

The Catholic hierarchy tends to blame contemporary culture for the church’s problems. Consumerism, individualism and secularism top their list of negative forces. The media bombards people with images and messages that are antithetical to Christianity: Happiness comes from sex, money and power. Life is too busy with work and leisure to have time for religion. The social structures that supported religion have also weakened. Ethnic neighborhoods that once reinforced religious communities and values have seen a decline as their residents have been disbursed to the suburbs. As Catholics joined the mainstream, they lost their roots. Fewer children go to Catholic schools. Interfaith marriages have increased as young Catholics socialize with non-Catholics. As they got better educated, they were less likely to follow the clergy without questions.

There is a lot of truth in this cultural explanation for the church’s failings, but blaming the culture is like blaming the weather. That is the world we live in; learn to deal with it. Retreating to a Catholic ghetto is not an option.

The theory that the church itself is to blame for its decline features a conservative and a liberal version. Both blame the hierarchy for not dealing properly with the sex abuse crisis. Liberals stress the lack of accountability and lay involvement, while conservatives point their fingers at gay priests. Conservatives also blame the changes in the church ordered by the Second Vatican Council. Prior to the council, the church was a rock of stability and certainty in a stormy world. Change undermined the credibility of the church because change was an admission that the church was wrong in the past. One week you would go to hell for eating meat on Friday; the next week you were OK. One year you were told that the Mass would always be in Latin; the next year it would be in English.

Conservatives also blame theologians for confusing the people by publicly debating moral and doctrinal matters that the hierarchy says are definitive teaching. They also believe that the social justice message of the church distracts from its traditional dogmas. Some argue that ecumenical and interreligious dialogue has led to the belief that all religions are equally valid.

Emphasizing the role of the laity in the church took the priest off his pedestal and made the priesthood less attractive. Conservatives believe Pope Francis is going in the wrong direction and pray for a return to the policies of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

The liberal version, meanwhile, points the finger at the hierarchy. Liberals believe Vatican II was just the beginning of reforms that were necessary for the church. They believe the hierarchy, especially John Paul II, feared chaos in the church and shut down any further reform. The documents of the council were interpreted through a conservative lens, and theologians were labeled dissidents and silenced if they did not toe the Vatican line.

Commentators such as the Rev. Andrew Greeley believed that the hierarchy lost the laity when Pope Paul VI reaffirmed the church’s prohibition against artificial birth control. The teaching was rejected by both moral theologians and the laity. Denying Communion to divorced and remarried Catholics has also been problematic for couples and their children.

Liberals also blame the hierarchy for the vocation crisis because, they argue, there would be plenty of priests if they were allowed to marry, and even more if women were permitted ordination. Liberals also argue that the hierarchy’s opposition to abortion and gay rights has alienated many people, especially the young. People have also been alienated by bishops who deny Communion to certain Democratic politicians.

The liberals say that the hierarchy is following much the same path it took in Europe, where it alienated the working classes in the 19th century with its alliance with the upper classes. For much of the 20th century, anti-clericalism was nonexistent in America because the bishops sided with unions and the working classes. Anti-clericalism only blossomed when bishops aligned themselves with the Republican Party against abortion and gay rights.

As a social scientist, I believe that the preponderance of evidence supports the liberal explanation of the decline of the church, but I think that the conservatives make some good points. Certainly, the changes after Vatican II were not well explained or implemented. The clergy were as confused as the laity. And liberals need to explain why more Catholics are joining evangelical churches than liberal churches.

One of the problems with all these theories, however, is that they were developed by theologians who believe that ideas are what motivate humans. Ideas are important, but experience often matters more.

Lots of people stay in the church even though they disagree with some church teaching. But a bad experience in confession, at a wedding or at a funeral can turn people away for good. More people are driven away from the church by arrogant priests than by disagreements over theology. This is why Francis is so critical of clericalism.

And the fact is, we lose more people through boredom than because of theology. Now that people do not believe that they will go to hell for missing Mass on Sunday, they are not going to come unless they benefit from the experience.

If the preaching is dull, if the music does not move them, if they do not feel welcomed, then they are not going to come back. If the Mass is seen as something that the priest does, if the Scriptures are the domain of the clergy, if there is no sense of community, then why come?

This is why many Catholics are drawn to evangelical churches. Ideas are important, but Catholicism must also be a lived experience that is relevant to the lives of the faithful. The pre-Vatican II church provided such experiences in popular devotions. After Vatican II, the liturgy was supposed to provide this experience but too often it did not.

So the next time we have a discussion of why the church is failing, don’t invite the theologians; invite sociologists, psychologists, artists, musicians and the people who have left the church.

https://religionnews.com/2022/05/10/why-is-the-church-failing-in-the-west/

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Portland Press Herald, Maine
Sun, July 3, 2022 at 12:34 PM·4 min read

Jul. 3—The Supreme Court of the United States has become an arm of the Republican Party, using judicial activism to achieve an agenda that could not be accomplished through a democratic process.

This is not just a case of a pendulum swinging to the right after a period of relative liberalism. These justices were trained, recruited, and privately vetted by unnamed wealthy donors, through dark money groups like the Federalist Society and Judicial Crisis Network, which spends millions backing some supposedly apolitical judicial nominees while blocking others.

In a country in which a presidential election decided by 5 percentage points is considered a landslide, these behind-the-scenes powers have engineered a 6-3 court — a two-to-one Republican majority. Although they are sometimes styled as "conservative" judges, they are not. They are radical in their approach, dismissive of precedent and blatantly political.

If not subject to reform, this Republican court will hamstring the legislative and executive branches of government, while making unpopular policy the law, insulated from the voters by their lifetime tenure.

The current term, which ended Thursday, showed what they are capable of if they are not stopped:

— Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, in which women's right to an abortion, and by implication everyone's right to privacy, was eliminated. This sweeping, radical opinion will cause maternal deaths and injuries, burden families while whipping up conflict in state legislatures, the courts and in the streets for years to come.

— New York Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which prevents states from regulating who can carry a gun in public, whether they are hunting in the Maine woods or waiting for a subway in Manhattan.

— Carson v. Makin and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, two cases that tear down the separation between church and state. The court opened the door to taxpayer funding for religious education and coercive worship led by a public employee while he is carrying out his official duties.

— West Virginia v. EPA, in which the court's six Republican-appointed judges said the Clean Air Act does not authorize the regulation of carbon pollution that comes out of coal- and gas-fired power plants because Congress didn't know about climate change when it passed the law in 1970. This bonanza for polluters will hamstring the federal government's ability to combat climate change.

Taken together, along with recent decisions that permit partisan gerrymandering, racially biased voting laws and the free flow of corporate spending in support campaigns and direct payments to politicians track perfectly with the Republican issue agenda and the party's interest in holding onto power.

What they do next could be even worse. The majority of the court, which chooses the cases it will consider, has taken on the case of North Carolina Republicans who want state legislatures to have the authority to conduct elections without review by state courts.

A ruling in that case could give states the power to do what pro-Trump conspirators tried to do after losing the 2020 election, and substitute Republican electors for president, even if the party's candidate did not win the state.

We can't wait this out. There are a number of proposed reforms that would bring the court's power back into balance. The Constitution requires that there be a Supreme Court, but it doesn't say how many judges it should have. Tradition has determined that the right number is nine, but this court has broken many traditions.

The group Demand Justice has proposed legislation that would add four justices to the court, and limit terms so that openings predictably follow election results. There is too much at stake in the current system of random openings when the sudden death of a justice creates a succession crisis you would expect to see in an autocracy.

Others have proposed expanding the court even further — bringing it to 20 or more justices working in randomly assigned panels — making the personality and politics of an individual less of a factor in the court's decisions.

These kinds of reforms are possible only if we insist on them. But we cannot continue to send people to the House and Senate who are satisfied with the political capture of the judicial branch and want to keep things just as they are.

The Supreme Court has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of millions of Americans. Only significant reform can win it back.

https://news.yahoo.com/editorial-reform-supreme-court-too-163400664.html

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Nara Schoenberg, Chicago Tribune
May 10, 2022·7 min read

Eboo Patel began his efforts to bring people of different faiths together for dialogue and service projects in a basement office on the Northwest Side.

He kept his day job and piloted a practical Chrysler Cirrus sedan through the streets of Chicago, delivering high school kids to meetings where they engaged in spirited discussions and packed meals for homeless people.

“I was like a Cub Scout leader,” Patel said with a chuckle.

What a difference 20 years makes. Today Patel, who comes to interfaith work from a Muslim perspective, helms a nonprofit with a staff of 54, a budget of $14 million and programs on hundreds of college campuses. Interfaith America has advised presidents and helped Starbucks develop religious diversity education for employees.

And Patel, whose organization — formerly known as Interfaith Youth Core and is being renamed Interfaith America on Tuesday to reflect its broader goals, is still innovating.

In his new book, “We Need To Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy,” Patel pushes for a broader vision of American religious values that acknowledges not only Christians and Jews, but also Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Zoroastrians and nonbelievers, among others.

“We are an organization that builds bridges and says, ‘Diversity is not just the differences that you like,’ ” said Patel, 46.

“The only way to have a healthy, religiously diverse democracy is for people who disagree on some fundamental things to work together on other fundamental things, right? It’s a remarkable achievement in human history for people of diverse identities and divergent ideologies to build a nation together, and we think religion has an awful lot to do with that,” he said.

Patel acknowledged that religion can be weaponized but noted that his Muslim parents obtained degrees from the University of Notre Dame and DePaul University, both Catholic institutions. His kids went to Catholic preschools. His sister-in-law’s children went to a Jewish preschool.

“We in America have this remarkable civic genius where communities of a particular faith build institutions as an expression of their particular faith identity, (and those institutions) serve everybody. I think it is one of the great, never-celebrated geniuses of America,”Patel said.

In recognition of his organization’s expanded mission, which has included training 2,000 people to work within their diverse faith communities to advocate for the COVID-19 vaccine, the group is formally announcing the name change Tuesday at Georgetown University.

“As my Buddhist friends say, ‘Chop wood, carry water,’ right? There are no shortcuts,” Patel said of his organization’s rise. “I’m really proud of how hard we have worked, program by program, staff person by staff person, student by student, faculty member by faculty member.”

Patel began his career in the shadow of Sept. 11, 2001, and became a media darling at a time when news organizations were seeking out moderate Muslim voices to combat a wave of bias and misunderstanding.

“CNN would be calling us all the time,” said Zeenat Rahman, the executive director of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, who worked for Interfaith America from 2006 to 2011.

Patel, a Rhodes scholar with a doctorate in the sociology of religion from Oxford University, was named one of “America’s Best Leaders” by US News & World Report in 2009. He served on President Barack Obama’s inaugural Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships, and has published five books, including the award-winning autobiography, “Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, in the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation.”

His greatest strength is his ability to convey an inspiring vision of what is possible, Rahman said, but he’s also a strategic thinker who can convince foundations that say, “We don’t do religion,” to get on board and invest in his programs.

“He could have done and been anything he wanted and he chose to do this,” Rahman said of interfaith work.

“He could have run for Senate,” Rahman said. “He could have run for presidential office, and I think we would have been really successful because he has that intangible ‘I don’t know what it is, but you know it when you see it in a leader.’ Obama has it. Bill Clinton has it.”

Wheaton College President Philip Ryken said that he’s known Patel for about 10 years and they see each other regularly at higher education events. A few years ago, Ryken invited Patel
to his evangelical Christian college campus and interviewed him publicly about interfaith issues, Christianity and Islam.

“Eboo has a strong capacity for friendship — not just networking, but also friendship, and I think that enables him to build coalitions more strongly,” Ryken said.

Ryken said that Patel’s message appeals to communities of faith that hold strongly to their religious convictions, a category that includes evangelicals as well as many Muslims and Jews.

“Interfaith Youth Core does not require people of faith to check their religious convictions at the door, but actually to bring them to the conversation so that they can be the fullness of who they are in those relationships and not have to pretend to agree about things that they don’t agree about,” he said.

Ryken disagrees with Patel on big issues such as the nature of God and the path to salvation, he said, but he agrees that there are still areas where they can cooperate for the common good, and that it’s important to seek out such cooperation.

Patel lives in Chicago with his wife, Shehnaz Mansuri, a lawyer, and their two sons, the older of whom is a student at Lane Tech College Prep High school.

Patel was full of his usual enthusiasm during a recent interview, and, true to form, was still setting new goals. He wants the United States to fully embrace the contributions of all religions to the cultural fabric of the country, he said, a paradigm leap that would build on the advances made in the 20th century, when a nation that had viewed itself as Protestant began to see itself as Protestant, Catholic and Jewish.

“My vision is that we start calling the United States ‘Interfaith America,’ and not Judeo-Christian, and that becomes just commonplace in five or six years,” he said. “‘Judeo-Christianz did great work, but it doesn’t include atheists or Zoroastrians, it doesn’t include Muslims or Jains, it doesn’t include B’hais or Buddhists. And we have to. We have to. So a big part of the vision is a shift in paradigm. And then I want our civic American institutions to follow that shift in paradigm with actual activities.”

Patel wants a national day of interfaith service, an interfaith student council on every college campus and training for nurses and doctors in how to engage the diverse religious identities of their patients.

He wants companies to follow Starbucks’ lead and have religious diversity education that encourages interfaith cooperation.

This isn’t the first time that interfaith leaders have tried to broaden the nation’s understanding of its religious identity, according to Kevin M. Schultz, chair of the history department at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author of the book “Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise.”

In the 1920s and ‘30s, people of different faiths worked together to combat a wave of Ku Klux Klan activity and anti-immigrant sentiment aimed at Catholics and Jews from southern and eastern Europe.

“It was a big deal to get Protestants, Catholics and Jews to work together,” said Schultz, and the effort, which included the formation of the National Conference for Christians and Jews, had broad impact. Presidents joined the board of the organization, the group’s National Brotherhood Week was widely celebrated and members helped organize the national March on Washington in 1963, when Martin Luther King Jr., delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Broadening the idea of whose religion is fundamentally American was a big lift, and remains so today, Schultz said. Still, he said, Patel is suited to the task: He is well-connected, having worked on Obama’s interfaith efforts. He comes from a minority faith, but he’s very good at speaking to majority faiths. And he has a vision and optimism that Schultz finds “totally compelling.”

“If anyone’s well-positioned to make it happen again, it’s Eboo Patel,” Schultz said.

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/muslim-bridge-builder-started-interfaith-211400069.html

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The State
Sun, July 3, 2022 at 6:00 AM·3 min read

Separate church and state

My father’s blood soaked the sands of Iwo Jima in WW II. I am the direct descendent of a Revolutionary War patriot who served with George Washington at Valley Forge.

For years I have worked to register voters, teach voter registration, and get people to the polls so they may participate in democracy. My family and I are the stuff of which this country was made, and we want it back.

Abraham Lincoln ended the control of one people by another, but six people sitting on a court bench have taken away the right of all women to control their own bodies. Instead of enacting control to curb gun violence and thus save lives, these six justices have enabled more guns to be on the streets.

I want an America with a clear separation of church and state so six Supreme Court justices will not be able to impose their religious beliefs on us.

We must elect people who will restore rights we have lost, protect rights we still have, and stop taking away more.

Voting has never been more crucial. Register to vote and be prepared to go to the polls for the next elections. America needs you.

Elizabeth Sumner Jones, Columbia

Combine passions

In the wake of the SCOTUS decision overturning Roe v. Wade, both pro-life and pro-choice passions could be better spent in the combined compassionate support of women who find themselves in desperation due to an unwanted pregnancy.

Let us provide excellent pre- and postnatal counseling, healthcare, and sheltered protection if needed, excellent children’s homes, foster care, and adoption programs.

Let us require financial support from the men who contributed to the pregnancy and let us insist on harsh penalties for those committing rape and incest.

There are plenty of available birth control methods to prevent the need for an abortion. Women who can should exercise “choice” before conception.

Vulnerable women who are taken advantage of should receive the utmost support, and the men who prey upon them should receive appropriate penalties.

This decision should be as welcome and celebrated as Brown v. Board of Education.

This is an opportunity for good in our time to address real needs in positive ways. Can we not unite in this common cause?

Cathy Strickland, Columbia

Ask questions

As our elected officials consider reproductive health care mandates, I urge you to ask hard questions.

Who benefits? Who is harmed? Who is responsible for the funding for such a mandate?

What is the projected budget and taxpayer cost of a full term pregnancy mandate? (lost wages, child care, transportation, medical care, hospitalizations, 24-hour care for severely compromised births; mental health care for the mother, etc.)

What are the statistics for viability of high risk pregnancies?

Will women who endure a miscarriage be punished when, according to the Mayo Clinic, as many as 1 in 4 pregnancies result in miscarriage with over 90% occurring before the eighth week of pregnancy? Most are because the fetus isn’t developing as expected. About 50% are genetic-related.

Will descendants of veterans exposed to toxins like Agent Orange and burn pits be punished? These toxins impacting veterans continue to cause miscarriages and severe birth defects in children of second and third generations.

Mixing religious extremism and law creates a dangerous precedent which has the potential to destroy our democracy.

Betty Rankin, Rock Hill

Consider the male

I am disappointed that Roe has been overturned and I am especially disappointed that there has been no discussion of the responsibility of the man who fathered the child.

Should the woman be solely responsible for the financial responsibility of raising the child?

In many cases, it will be taxpayers who pick up the slack for feeding and housing the mother and child while the father moves on with no responsibility at all.

Of course. the laws against abortion will be written by men who will give no thought to the financial role of the male or his family if he is a dependent.

Any laws enacted to make abortion illegal should include language that requires financial support by the male. Bob Robinson, Columbia

https://news.yahoo.com/reader-yearns-america-governs-greater-100000972.html

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CP ENTERTAINMENT | TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2022
By Brandon Showalter, Senior Investigative Reporter

A new movie based on Messianic Jewish Rabbi Jonathan Cahn’s bestselling book, The Harbinger, which explores America’s spiritual history and destiny, will be released this week. "The Harbingers of Things to Come" will be in select theaters nationwide on May 12 and May 19.

“We’re at a much more dangerous time. And so, the object is to get the word out to as many people as possible to people who have not read the books or might not read the books,” he said of the film in an interview with The Christian Post, adding that he considers the movie a “trumpet call” in a critical hour for believers in Jesus and non-believers alike. Cahn's 2012 book, The Harbinger: The Ancient Mystery that holds the Secret of America's Future, compares the United States to ancient Israel before its destruction.

In ancient Israel, there appeared nine specific warnings and omens of national demise, the same harbingers that have appeared in the U.S. that portended significant implications for the nation's future. In September 2020, Cahn released The Harbinger II: The Return, which continued with those same themes. The Messianic rabbi, who leads Beth Israel at the Jerusalem Center, just outside New York City in Wayne, New Jersey, further explained that the mystery of The Harbinger is that it hasn’t stopped. One of the warnings is that the U.S. has followed the pathway of ancient Israel and has continued to race away from God, particularly since Sept.11, 2001. Yet, much of what is in the movie is not in either of TheHarbinger books and details what has come afterward. In what he described as a “prophetic explosion” on the screen, Cahn explores several sites where numerous important and mysterious events have taken place in America’s spiritual history.

Featured in the movie are foreshadows of coming events and archival footage that the filmmakers found of politicians speaking of judgment coming on the U.S.

Cahn takes viewers to an island in Massachusetts Bay, where he explains how a mystery that has been embedded for 400 years exists as a warning to the nation, particularly what would happen if the people ever turned away from God. Viewers also go on a journey to places of great significance, including Lower Manhattan in New York City, the Supreme Court, the National Mall in Washington, D.C., and the greater Boston area.

Cahn noted that Boston is an especially significant place in the history of the U.S. as it was where English Puritan lawyer and preacher John Winthrop declared in 1630 that the U.S. should be a shining city on a hill and that if the nation followed God’s ways, it would become the most blessed and powerful nation that has ever existed. Winthrop was one of the leading figures in founding the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Winthrop’s words about the trajectory of the nation have materialized, Cahn told CP, adding that “what people miss is that he also gave a warning, that if we don’t [follow God's ways], that if we turn away from God, then the judgments that came upon Israel will come upon us. And that’s exactly what is all happening.”

The land upon which Winthrop uttered those famous words is now the site of Boston's Logan International Airport, which was the starting place of American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, both of which were hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center towers in New York City on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

Cahn maintains that Winthrop was alluding to Moses warning the Israelites in Deuteronomy 28:49, which reads: “The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand.”

Coincidentally, Cahn recounted, the first 9/11 plane happened to have an image of a downward swooping eagle on the side of the aircraft.

Also coincidentally, he stressed, “just a few days before 9/11, all around New York City, the appointed Scripture-reading in the synagogues was that an ‘enemy shall come from a far-away land and come like an eagle if you turn away from Me,'” he said, referring to that exact Deuteronomy passage.

“We are in a further, more dangerous part of this template of judgment because we have not turned back from God,” Cahn explained.

“Shakings are coming upon this land. So ... revival is the only thing that can save America. If we don’t, we, as a nation, are headed to decline, disorder and breaking apart. It couldn’t be more critical for where we are and where we are heading,” he said.

The U.S. has been the leader on the international scene in the post-World War II era, and if it falls, the entire global order the world has known will be replaced by something else, Cahn warned.

The Messianic rabbi continued that, according to the paradigm of ancient Israel, it was 19 years between the first Babylonian strike on Jerusalem that came in 605 B.C. and when the greater shakings came upon the land in 586 B.C. occurred, when Jerusalem was conquered, the temple was destroyed, and the Jews were sent into exile. Likewise, in a modern parallel to the U.S., between the 9/11 attacks and 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic besieged the nation, was also a 19-year span.

“God is real, and He’s still in control, but America is in trouble. It ends with a trumpet call. We need to be awake. We cannot be complacent. We need to be ready. We need to be light as it is getting darker, and we have to become brighter,” Cahn said.

“This is not a thing to fear. This is a thing to rise to our calling. To me, this is the most exciting time for a believer [in Jesus] who says yes, full out. The time of being gray is over. It’s time to be a light in the dark.”

https://www.christianpost.com/news/new-harbinger-movie-details-americas-prophetic-history-and-des.html

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TIME
Kermit Roosevelt III
Tue, July 5, 2022 at 6:30 AM·6 min read

Those who do not learn from history, George Santayana famously wrote, are doomed to repeat it. But today’s Supreme Court majority seems to have a different idea of the lessons of the past. Increasingly, they are saying that we must learn history because the Constitution demands that we repeat it.

Two cases decided in the past few weeks show us this point in stark relief. In Dobbs, Justice Alito wrote that the question of whether a particular liberty that is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution counts as a fundamental right, deserving of constitutional protection, is to be settled by historical analysis. The Constitution protects only rights that are “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” Abortion, he said, does not pass this test. So, regardless of how important it might be today to women’s ability to participate as full and equal citizens in the life of the nation, regardless of how oppressive it might be to force upon them the role of mother, the Constitution offers no protection.

In Bruen, Justice Thomas deployed historical analysis with a slightly different spin. When you’re dealing with a right that is enumerated in the Constitution, he said, or at least when you’re dealing with the Second Amendment, the only restrictions allowed are those that have a historical pedigree: those “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” A concealed-carry permit regime that required people to show special need, he said, does not pass this test. So regardless of how different circumstances are from the 1860s, or the 1790s, regardless of whether people live differently, or guns fire more rapidly, or magazines hold more bullets, the government is limited to the set of solutions deployed hundreds of years ago, or those that judges are willing to see as a “proper analogue.”

Neither of these approaches is originalism. Originalism does not mean looking to historical practice. It means adhering to a constant meaning unless the Constitution is changed by amendment. The Due Process Clause might mean that judges should identify fundamental rights by asking what rights were recognized in 1868 or 1791. Or it might mean that judges should invalidate exercises of government power that are arbitrary or oppressive—determined in light of contemporary facts and values. Originalism tells us to stick with whichever of those meanings was the original understanding of the Due Process Clause. It does not tell us which of these meanings is correct, and the Dobbs majority makes no effort to establish that its interpretation is right.

As for Bruen, the idea that the Second Amendment was understood to freeze the government’s ability to respond to new challenges by restricting it to the regulations that had been enacted in the past is on its face absurd, and again the majority makes no effort to show that its interpretation is right. So originalists should not be happy with these decisions, which smuggle in contested and implausible interpretations under the veil of self-proclaimed judicial modesty.

Originalists often claim that their methodology constrains judges, but recent decisions have demonstrated the obvious fact that historians disagree about how to interpret the past. Motivated judges can easily cherry-pick the historical record to support their preferred outcomes—to say nothing of the question of what is a “proper analogue.” Americans should be aghast. The methodology that the Court has announced has never before been the conventional approach to constitutional interpretation. It is an imposition by five judges, and a terrible one.

It is easy enough to see this with Bruen. In most constitutional cases, if the government seeks to restrain or infringe on an individual’s constitutional rights—freedom of speech, for instance, or free exercise of religion—the Court will balance the significance of the infringement against the government’s interest. It will do so using one of what constitutional lawyers call the tiers of scrutiny—more or less demanding tests, adapted to the different circumstances in which constitutional issues present themselves. Most of the time, if the government can show that what it is doing is necessary to promote a compelling interest (like public safety), it will win.

But not according to Bruen—at least not with the Second Amendment. Instead, the question is simply whether the government’s regulation is, or is analogous to, one that has been used in the past. The shortcomings of this approach are screamingly obvious. Society changes. Technology changes. New problems arise that require new solutions. The idea that a 21st century government should be limited to the toolkit of the 1860s is flatly absurd.

There is a similar problem with Dobbs, and though it is more subtle it is in some ways worse. If you look to history to see what rights were recognized, you will find that society generally gave people the rights it thought they needed to fulfill their appropriate roles. A society that thinks women are capable of and entitled to full and equal participation in the life of the nation will have a set of views about the rights they need to do so. That is, aspirationally, today’s society. But it is not the society of 1868.

In 1872, Myra Bradwell took a case to the Supreme Court. She wanted to practice law, but the state of Illinois excluded women. Was this unfairly discriminatory? Did it deny her the fundamental rights to which she was entitled? No, said the Supreme Court. And in a concurring opinion that has become infamous, Justice Bradley explained why. “The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex,” he wrote, “evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life. … The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble and benign offices of wife and mother.” The through line to Dobbs is clear: if women are destined and fit only to be mothers, forcing motherhood upon them does not violate their rights.

The Dobbs approach tells us that our understanding of fundamental rights—of the rights that every person must have to play their appropriate role in society, to be recognized as a full and equal citizen—is to be determined by an 1860s understanding of those roles. The consequences of that are disastrous for women, for Black people, for the LGBTQ community, for non-Christians—basically for everyone except the white Christian men who held power then. Again, this is not originalism. This is a judicial choice to identify a set of congenial values and insist that they are inscribed in our highest law. It is to say that the Constitution, which should be the pantheon of American values, contains instead all the ignorance and prejudices of the past that the true heroes of our history fought so hard to overcome. That makes a mockery of their sacrifices and turns their victories to ash. It is a betrayal of the American experiment and an embarrassment to us all.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-dooming-america-repeat-103010618.html

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Steven K. Green, Professor of Law, Director of the Center for Religion, Law & Democracy, Willamette University
May 10, 2022·4 min read

The leaked draft of Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which has sent shock waves across the United States, indicates that a majority of Supreme Court justices will likely overturn the constitutional right to an abortion granted in Roe v. Wade. Employing unusually harsh language, Alito declared that “Roe and Planned Parenthood v.Casey must be overruled” because of the decisions’ “abuse of judicial authority.”

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito wrote, and its “reasoning was exceptionally weak.”

He also asserted that neither abortion nor privacy is mentioned in the text of the Constitution, nor should they be considered to be “deeply rooted in the Nation’s history or traditions” so as to be worthy of protection.

As a professor of constitutional law who has taught about reproductive rights for more than 20 years, I argue that Alito’s legal reasoning leaves out several established constitutional principles also not mentioned in the text – such as separation of powers and executive privilege – as well as rights that conservatives hold near and dear like the right to marry and parental rights.

Alito’s claim that a right to an abortion “was entirely unknown in American law” until Roe is unfounded. Historically, abortion was not completely illegal, even in Puritan New England. The first abortion restrictions were enacted in the U.S. in the 1820s.

Even then, they generally outlawed abortions only after “quickening,” the early equivalence of fetal viability – the ability to survive outside the mother’s womb. Alito’s legal rationales aside, the legal debate over abortion is as much a religious dispute as it is a constitutional one.

Religious opposition

Most anti-abortion rallies have signs and banners with religious admonitions such as “pray for life” and “pray to end abortion.”

Today, the Catholic Church’s strong opposition to abortion and contraception is well known. However, in an interesting recent book, “Abortion in Early Modern Italy,” historian John Christopoulos argues that prior to 1588, the Catholic Church’s position on abortion was more ambiguous. Before then, the church did not necessarily oppose abortion before quickening, but in that year shifted its position through a papal declaration that pronounced that the human soul is created at the moment of conception, known as “ensoulment,” and that all abortions were murder.

In 1968, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops founded the National Right to Life organization to coordinate activities of state groups that opposed abortion. In 1973, following Roe, the organization incorporated as the National Right to Life Committee, severing formal ties with the Catholic Church in order to attract conservative Protestants.

In addition to Catholic groups such as Priests for Life, opposition to abortion is driven by other conservative groups with Protestant members, including the Faith and Freedom Coalition and the Family Research Council.

More militant anti-abortion groups such as Operation Rescue and Operation Save America also state their opposition on religious grounds. According to one OSA official, “Satan wants to kill innocent babies, demean marriage and distort the image of God.”

Religious division

In actuality, America’s religious community is divided over the issue of abortion. According to the Pew Research Center, approximately three-quarters of white evangelical Protestants – 77% – say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, while 63% of white Protestants who are not evangelical say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Interestingly, attitudes of Catholic laity are more narrowly split – 55% favor legal abortion in all or most cases, while 43% say it should be illegal in all or most cases.

As philosopher Peter Wenz argued in his book “Abortion Rights as Religious Freedom,” one’s opinion about whether a pre-viable fetus is a person is a religious decision. Abortion restrictions interfere with this right to religious freedom.

Several liberal denominations agree. A 1981 resolution of the United Church of Christ declares that “every woman must have the freedom of choice to follow her personal and religious convictions concerning the completion or termination of a pregnancy.” And according to the National Council of Jewish Women, Jewish law does not recognize a fetus to be a person but instead teaches that abortion is permitted and even required when a woman’s health is endangered.

Yet for conservative Christians who believe that life or ensoulment begins at conception, there can be no compromise on the issue of abortion. And the issue of abortion has long been a priority among conservatives in a way not shared by liberals. This helps explain much of the staying power in the anti-abortion movement. Fifty years of legal precedent support the right to abortion. But anti-abortion activists’ moral certainty about the issue is so strong that, in their eyes, even this half-century of precedent seems destined to crumble.

After all, they reason, legal rules and principles are rarely absolute. For them, the religious certainty about the wrongness of abortion provides an answer that the law lacks.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Steven K. Green, Willamette University.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/religious-beliefs-strength-anti-abortion-120517055.html

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CP U.S. | WEDNESDAY, MAY 25, 2022
By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor

A school district in West Virginia has agreed to pay $225,000 in plaintiff’s costs and attorney fees to end a lawsuit filed by an atheist group over once hosting an elective Bible class.

Mercer County Schools agreed to the settlement with the Freedom From Religion Foundation last week, ending litigation that began in 2017 over its Bible in the Schools program.

"We are pleased that this violation involving the illegal proselytizing of youngsters has come to a mutual resolution," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president, as quoted by the Bluefield Daily Telegraph. "But it should not take a lawsuit and years of effort to stop blatantly unconstitutional school programs."

The Christian Post reached out to Mercer County Schools for this story. The school district directed CP to a spokesperson who did not return comments by press time.

Known as the Bible in the Schools program, the course was first offered at Bluefield High School in 1939 and then was added to other schools in the county as time passed.

In January 2017, the FFRF filed a lawsuit against Mercer County for the Bible class on behalf of Elizabeth Deal, whose daughter had been reportedly ostracized for refusing to take the course.

"This program advances and endorses one religion, improperly entangles public schools in religious affairs, and violates the personal consciences of nonreligious and non-Christian parents and students," read the lawsuit.

"Forcing Jane Doe to choose between putting her child in a Bible study class or subjecting her child to the risk of ostracism by opting out of the program violates the rights of conscience of Jane and Jamie Doe and therefore their First Amendment rights."

U. S. District Court Judge David A. Faber dismissed the lawsuit in November 2017, pointing out that the school was mulling possible revisions to the Bible course curriculum.

"Indeed, whether or not this court were to undergo an (albeit incomplete) factual analysis of the past BITS program, defendants might remain capable of developing, adopting, and teaching a new BITS curriculum in conformity with Establishment Clause jurisprudence," ruled Faber.

"As a result, the clouded future of BITS classes in Mercer County would hang over the heads of the Does regardless of the court's substantive review. Nevertheless ... if BITS returns and it is clear the new BITS program violates constitutional law, this district is more than capable of granting a preliminary injunction."

Faber added that "Supreme Court jurisprudence has by no means established an absolute bar to the Bible being taught and studied in the public school system."

In December 2018, however, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overturned the earlier ruling and remanded the case back to the lower court.

“In sum, the County has not carried its burden of showing that subsequent events make it ‘absolutely clear’ that the suspended version of the BITS program will not return in identical or materially indistinguishable form,” ruled the panel.

“Appellants’ current claims are therefore not moot. Of course, this does not prevent the district court from addressing mootness in the future if presented with that issue.”

In January 2019, the Mercer County’s board of education passed a resolution that ended the Bible class program rather than simply make revisions.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/school-district-pays-225k-to-end-atheist-suit-over-bible-class.html