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Some SCOTUS justices held prayer meetings with religious group that advocated before the Court?

Discussion in 'Too Hot for Swamp Gas' started by gator_lawyer, Jul 6, 2022.

  1. tilly

    tilly Superhero Mod. Fast witted. Bulletproof posts. Moderator VIP Member

    In polls taken prior to the draft leak and one taken after the Dobbs decision the indication is that the decision isnt changing the midterm landscape. In fact it may actually be motivating conservatives more.

    voters who say overturning Roe would make them "happy" are nearly twice as enthusiastic about voting this fall as those who say such a ruling would leave them "angry" (38% extremely enthusiastic among those happy, 20% among those angry).
    CNN poll: The Supreme Court's draft opinion on Roe v. Wade hasn't shaken the midterm landscape - CNNPolitics
     
  2. gogator7444

    gogator7444 GC Hall of Fame

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    Again they're free to pray away. But the fact they were a PARTY to the CASE is the problem.

    If it was a different religion you'd be upset. If it was golf games folks would be upset.

    It's not sour grapes. It's just facts. YOU don't know what was said. Even her boss was trying to distance himself and said it was wrong.

    But sure, call it an attack on prayer.

    Off to puke my guts out prior to working then MY prayers. I just don't use mine to exert political influence nor force others to bend to The One True God and the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

    I need a break. You guys are breaking me.
     
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  3. jjgator55

    jjgator55 VIP Member

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    I admit there are some good churchy people out there, but people like that are the main reason churches are driving away followers in droves. They quit preaching salvation and started pushing Trumpism. They stopped reaching out with Christian love and compassion and started judging people harshly. Instead of raising money for the poor they started building huge churches that were monuments to themselves, and living lavish lifestyles in mansions. They hate our democratic republic and want it replaced with an authoritarian Sharia law type government modeled after their church.

    You may call the terms derogatory, but I have other terms for them that wouldn’t be permitted in this forum.
     
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  4. tampagtr

    tampagtr VIP Member

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    I originally linked to this piece below at Draft Alito opinion leaked overturning Roe | Page 76 | Swamp Gas Forums

    I thought it followed a thought expressed months earlier about the scandalous "leak", to wit:

    I previously said that the leak of a draft was unprecedented and I still pretty much stand by that, though the amount of leaks during deliberations historically were greater than I realized and more recent. But one thing I feel certain about just knowing how these things work, though I cannot prove it, is that this draft had been freely circulated in the ecosystem of extreme conservative Court functionaries. I don't really have a good name for it, but it would definitely include Leonard Leo and Pat Cippilone and of course Ginni Thomas. Of course, that's not a public leak to the press, but the court operates as another policy arm of the movement within that group and of course it would be shared.

    That and the fact that the cases are jointly coordinated and created.
     
  5. OklahomaGator

    OklahomaGator Jedi Administrator Moderator VIP Member

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    You should visit a few churches, I have never heard our Church even mention the word "Trump". Politics is never taught in our Church. And they don't view the fight over abortion being political either. It is a moral issue.
     
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  6. jjgator55

    jjgator55 VIP Member

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    Oh stop it with those silly right wing talking points.
    No one has a problem with praying, but we do have a problem with the SCOTUS getting their marching orders from these Christofascists trying to replace our democratic republic with Sharia law.
     
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  7. tilly

    tilly Superhero Mod. Fast witted. Bulletproof posts. Moderator VIP Member

    Yeah. I know like 30 pastors. My dad has been one for 35 years.

    Stop using the Joel Osteen's of the world as your reference. 50% of American pastors make less than $50k a year and many of them are highly educated doing it sacrificially. I've seen my dad give entire paychecks to people in need.

    I attend a church with over 1000 members and have never heard Trumps name mentioned... Or Bidens... And this is a conservative church in a conservative area in a southern state.


    But sure you know what is REALLY going on so carry on
     
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  8. jjgator55

    jjgator55 VIP Member

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    A testimonial isn’t proof, and I did start my post saying there are some good churchy people out there. My suspicion though is if I were to enter your church, and it became known that I have liberal leanings, that I would not be treated with the same welcomeness that I would if I were a Trumpist.
     
  9. tilly

    tilly Superhero Mod. Fast witted. Bulletproof posts. Moderator VIP Member

    Newsflash. Those justices didnt vote because of marching orders. They would have voted that way regardless.

    Obama had "Çhristofacists" pray with him.
    WillyJeff did as well

    Were you upset about that?
     
  10. tampagtr

    tampagtr VIP Member

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    Some did, I feel certain (can't prove). The orders may have been given years ago. But they knew the risk of disobeying now
     
  11. jjgator55

    jjgator55 VIP Member

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    Abortion was widely accepted even by the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Association until Jerry Falwell decided it could be used as a political wedge issue, and he could make money off it. Thus the birth of the Coathanger Coalition, I mean the Christian Coalition. At that moment religious institutions gave up on the word of God and started pushing the legislation of peoples morals.

    It’s not that people like me aren’t believers, we just see the hypocrisy in religious doctrine, and the perversion of religious institutions.

    Further you say you attend a conservative church which only proves my point. Churches shouldn’t be liberal, nor conservative.
     
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  12. jjgator55

    jjgator55 VIP Member

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    Link?
     
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  13. ursidman

    ursidman VIP Member

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    Presidents are expected to have an agenda. They campaign on it. Judges are supposed to be impartial. Having prayer meetings with a group that also has matters before the court is just wrong no matter your view on prayers or Christians. It would seem to shut out those of us outside that clique.
     
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  14. AndyGator

    AndyGator VIP Member

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    People seem to conflate separation of church and state intended by our founding fathers. During the 17th and 18th centuries Europe was mired in constant Catholic versus Protestant wars. Each country had an official state religion and each religion was determined to concur Europe. Not to mention Hindu versus Muslim wars outside of Europe. There was constant killing and atrocious violence in the name of religion. A lot of colonists escaped religious persecution to America, both Protestant and Catholic (mostly Protestant, I believe).

    Thus separation of church and state was not to exclude religion, but to prevent a singular state religion to avoid religious persecution of other religions. I totally support separation of church and state. I totally support freedom of religion as well. But there are certain religious sects that I consider wayward and want no part of. So I do not endorse infiltration of religion into our government institutions. That is what I am seeing with the modern Republican party.
     
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  15. gator_lawyer

    gator_lawyer VIP Member

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    I know this won't resonate with you, but it doesn't matter if "true prayer" is a tool of manipulation. This is straight from the horse's mouth (former leader of the org):
    To pray with the justices was to perform a sort of “spiritual conditioning,” Schenck explains. “The intention all along was to embolden the conservative justices by loaning them a kind of spiritual moral support — to give them an assurance that not only was there a large number of people behind them, but in fact, there was divine support for very strong and unapologetic opinions from them.” Prayer is a powerful communication tool in the evangelical tradition: The speaker assumes the mantle of the divine, and to disagree with an offered prayer is akin to sin. “It’s just not common to interrupt or challenge a prayer,” Schenck explains. “That’s not something a devout Supreme Court justice would ever consider doing.” That was true even for the devout Catholic justices, such as Scalia, who joined the evangelical Faith and Action members in prayer, Schenck says.

    Sometimes the prayers would be general; other times, on specific subjects, such as ending abortion, according to Schenck. He says Faith and Action took assiduous care to avoid speaking blatantly about cases in the Supreme Court’s pipeline, discussing the political agenda only in broad strokes. Even so, under the time period Schenck describes, prayers with the justices occurred as Faith and Action signed onto several amicus briefs for landmark SCOTUS cases such as Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, which ultimately upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.

    Schenck walked away from his life on the Hill after receiving a late-career doctorate on the teachings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who questioned the collaborative relationship between Adolf Hitler and 1930s German evangelicals. . . . No longer an anti-abortion activist, Schenck views his past efforts with regret. “Prayer is a positive exercise, until it’s politicized — and too many prayers that I and my colleagues offered in the presence of the justices were political prayers,” he explains. He also believes the work “contributed to the internal moral and ethical corruption of the justices at the court,” he says.
    ------------------------------------------------------
    You continue to ignore the optics of this. There's a reason judges go out of their way to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Indeed, other federal judges are required to do so by ethical rules. Unfortunately, those rules don't bind the Supreme Court.
     
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  16. tampagtr

    tampagtr VIP Member

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    Amen! BTW, Clarence Thomas believes that states are free to establish an official state religion so long as they permit Free Exercise underneath.

    Also there was so much concern for intrusion of religion that the original text bars religious tests for office. Other than age, the only prescribed/proscribed language on qualification for office.

    The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

    A lot of history about how significant this clause was at the link below

    And though I hate citations to Thomas Jefferson generally for interpretation of Constitutional provisions, as he was in France during the convention, the clauses that TJ and Madison drafted for the Virginia State Constitution became the Free Exercise and Establishment Clause. And he was the author of the letter to the Danbury Baptist church. It is the one area where I think his opinions on constitutional provisions are actually extremely significant.


    Interpretation: The No Religious Test Clause | The National Constitution Center
     
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  17. tilly

    tilly Superhero Mod. Fast witted. Bulletproof posts. Moderator VIP Member

    My church is conservative in belief, not politically. As in we take a traditional view of the scriptures based on literal translation of greek and hebrew texts and dont bend to the wind like some churches are doing. (See Olsteen, prosperity churches, political activism etc) I literally said I have never heard politics mentioned from the pulpit there so I cant be speaking about political conservatism.
     
  18. gator_lawyer

    gator_lawyer VIP Member

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    Your article is from May, before the Dobbs decision officially overturned Roe.
     
  19. tjenkins78

    tjenkins78 Junior

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    What is a conservative church?

    Edit. You already answered. Thank you
     
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  20. tampagtr

    tampagtr VIP Member

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    Here is Thomas on the Establishment Clause


    Quite simply, the Establishment Clause is best understood as a federalism provision–it protects state establishments from federal interference but does not protect any individual right. These two features independently make incorporation of the Clause difficult to understand. The best argument in favor of incorporation would be that, by disabling Congress from establishing a national religion, the Clause protected an individual right, enforceable against the Federal Government, to be free from coercive federal establishments. Incorporation of this individual right, the argument goes, makes sense. I have alluded to this possibility before. See Zelman, supra, at 679 (Thomas, J., concurring) (“States may pass laws that include or touch on religious matters so long as these laws do not impede free exercise rights or any other individual liberty interest” (emphasis added)).

    But even assuming that the Establishment Clause precludes the Federal Government from establishing a national religion, it does not follow that the Clause created or protects any individual right. For the reasons discussed above, it is more likely that States and only States were the direct beneficiaries. See also Lee, supra, at 641 (Scalia, J., dissenting). Moreover, incorporation of this putative individual right leads to a peculiar outcome: It would prohibit precisely what the Establishment Clause was intended to protect–state establishments of religion. See Schempp, 374 U.S., at 310 (Stewart, J., dissenting) (noting that “the Fourteenth Amendment has somehow absorbed the Establishment Clause, although it is not without irony that a constitutional provision evidently designed to leave the States free to go their own way should now have become a restriction upon their autonomy”). Nevertheless, the potential right against federal establishments is the only candidate for incorporation.


    ELK GROVE UNIFIED SCHOOL DIST. V. NEWDOW
     
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