Justice (sic) Sunday

Received an email today from Melissa Rogers, who’s a Visiting Professor of Religion and Public Policy at Wake Forest University Divinity School. Prof. Rogers sent a link to an op-ed she publised in the Baltimore Sun on the preposterous attempts of Sen. Frist and other GOP senators to paint Democratic opposition to President Bush’s judicial nominees as an attack on “people of faith.”

Here’s Prof. Rogers:

I am a churchgoing, 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.

That’s the message that is scheduled to be preached in a Kentucky church Sunday, at an event sponsored by the Family Research Council and joined by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. The event is titled “Justice Sunday: Stopping the Filibuster Against People of Faith.”

[…]

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.

[…]

Just as the government always perverts the faith it promotes, politicians cheapen the religion they seek to embrace when they push partisan politics in churches. When Jesus cast the moneychangers out of the temple, He said, “My house shall be called the house of prayer.”

Read the rest, as they say.

Regular readers know that this is a hobbyhorse of mine; the attempt to identify any particular political agenda as the “Christian” position (much less the “pro-faith” position – what does that even mean?) does not take seriously the distinction between the City of God and the City of Man.

Thanks to Prof. Rogers for sending this along.

Relatedly, Sen. Frist’s church – the PCUSA – is apparently none too happy about his participation in this farce.