THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES MAKES A RARE STATEMENT TO OPPOSE KAVANAUGH By Julie Zauzmer October 4 at 2:42 PM
The National Council of Churches, an umbrella organization representing dozens of Protestant denominations, usually steers clear of Supreme Court nominations.
When Republican senators refused to hold a vote on President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, the NCC did not say a word. When President Trump nominated Neil M. Gorsuch and the Senate confirmed him, the NCC stayed silent.
But on Wednesday, the NCC broke its silence on Brett M. Kavanaugh, Trump’s latest nominee whose confirmation process is causing a deep rift across the nation and in many of the churches the NCC includes.
“We believe he has disqualified himself from this lifetime appointment and must step aside immediately,” the group, which represents about 30 million U.S. parishioners, wrote in a statement. “During his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Kavanaugh exhibited extreme partisan bias and disrespect toward certain members of the committee and thereby demonstrated that he possesses neither the temperament nor the character essential for a member of the highest court in our nation. We are deeply disturbed by the multiple allegations of sexual assault and call for a full and unhindered investigation of these accusations. In addition, his testimony before the Judiciary Committee included several misstatements and some outright falsehoods.”
Jim Winkler, the president and general secretary of the NCC who authorized the statement, said Thursday he hopes and believes members of Congress will take notice, as they prepare to vote on the nominee. “Many have told me, ‘We definitely pay attention to what the faith community says,’" Winkler said.
The NCC does not speak for all Christians. A consortium of denominations, it includes mainline Protestants as well as Orthodox, historically African American and other churches.
It does not include the Catholic church, the largest religious affiliation in America; the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has not made a statement about Kavanaugh, though the Jesuit magazine “America” initially endorsed the judge and then pulled its endorsement after the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that included testimony by Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who says Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school.
The NCC does not include the Mormon Church; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also has not offered an official position but a Mormon group claiming 6,000 members has urged Congress to vote no on Kavanaugh.
And significantly, the NCC does not include any large evangelical Protestant denomination, the religious group most central to Trump’s core constituency. Political advocacy groups based in the evangelical community have been vociferous supporters of Kavanaugh. The Family Research Council, which says it advocates for family values in national policymaking, has issued numerous statements on Kavanaugh’s behalf in recent days.
“There are just too many inconsistencies in the story -- and in the Democrats’ handling of it -- to suggest that Kavanaugh was the one responsible” for assaulting Blasey Ford, wrote Tony Perkins, the Family Research Council’s president. “How far back do we go? Junior high? Elementary school? Daycare? At what point do we realize that people grow up, make mistakes, and move forward? As far as Brett Kavanaugh is concerned, there’s been nothing to suggest in his past confirmation hearings that he’s ever mistreated women.”
Perkins argued instead that Democrats want to “smear” Kavanaugh to prevent another conservative justice on the Supreme Court from ruling on issues including same-sex marriage, abortion and what Perkins referred to as “open borders.”
The promise of additional conservative justices on the Supreme Court, particularly because of the prospect of restricting legal abortion access, was the driving factor for many evangelicals to vote for Trump and to continue to support him.
[Evangelicals rejoiced when Trump picked Kavanaugh]
Winkler said the board of the NCC previously granted the president and board chairman the authority to issue a statement like the one published on Wednesday, about a Supreme Court nominee or a similar nomination such as a Cabinet appointment. Although he uses that authority rarely, he did not have to consult the dozens of denominations represented by the NCC before he published an opinion on behalf of the group.
Two denominational leaders called him on Thursday, he said, asking what they should tell their members, who were calling and emailing to say their views of the Kavanaugh nomination do not match up with the organization that claims to represent them.
But Winkler believes most church leaders agree with the statement, even if many in the pews represented by the NCC do not agree.
“The Bible isn’t written to please the majority,” Winkler said. “The Bible has some hard truths that make it difficult sometimes for people to hear, but that doesn’t mean they’re leaving the church.”
Across the country, ministers in mainline Protestant denominations and other denominations that participate in the NCC have expressed a range of views on Kavanaugh. For example, Robert Long, a preacher in the United Methodist Church -- the often liberal mainline tradition that counts Hillary Clinton as a member -- prompted controversy over a sermon in Oklahoma City on Sunday that focused on the damage done by false allegations. In the Orthodox tradition, the Rev. Costa Pavlakos in Falls Church, Va., used his Sunday sermon to condemn Blasey Ford for drinking a beer when she was 15 years old.
But in those denominations and many others in the NCC, pastors and priests devoted their sermons to the importance of believing and supporting sexual assault survivors. Winkler said he saw it as a pressing question of national morality.
“We felt this has really risen to, frankly, a moment of national crisis,” he said. “We don’t take it lightly when we speak on a Supreme Court nominee.”
Soon after the NCC published its statement, its website crashed. Winkler said staff members are trying to determine whether the failure was a result of increased visitors to the site or a malicious attack. -washingtonpost.com
AS SENATORS prepare to vote this week on Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh, they, and the rest of the country, must wonder: Which Brett M. Kavanaugh are they evaluating? Is it the steady, conservative jurist he was reputed to be before his confirmation saga? Or is it a partisan operative harboring suspicions and resentments about Democrats, with possible misdeeds in his past?
Unfortunately — and unnecessarily; it didn’t have to be this way — too many questions remain about his history for senators to responsibly vote “yes.” At the same time, enough has been learned about his partisan instincts that we believe senators must vote “no.”
We do not say so lightly. We have not opposed a Supreme Court nominee, liberal or conservative, since Robert H. Bork in 1987. We believe presidents are entitled to significant deference if they nominate well-qualified people within the broad mainstream of judicial thought. When President Trump named Mr. Kavanaugh, he seemed to be such a person: an accomplished judge whom any conservative president might have picked. But given Republicans’ refusal to properly vet Mr. Kavanaugh, and given what we have learned about him during the process, we now believe it would be a serious blow to the court and the nation if he were confirmed.
One element of the GOP vetting failure has been all but forgotten in the drama over alleged sexual assaults, but it remains for us a serious shortcoming. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee refused to ask for all the potentially relevant documents from his time serving in the George W. Bush White House. The reason was not principled but political: Though they had kept a Supreme Court seat vacant for most of 2016, they wanted to ram through Mr. Kavanaugh before this year’s midterm elections. Those documents, which could have been processed without crippling delay, might end up supporting his case, or they might not; we have no idea. But any responsible senator should insist on seeing them before casting a vote.
It certainly would have been preferable if Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation had surfaced sooner, and then been investigated more promptly. But what matters now is not partisan fault but finding the truth about her claim — or at least making as fair and thorough an effort to find it as possible. Mr. Trump and the Republicans have prevented such an effort. This week’s belated investigation, reluctantly agreed to by the majority, was unduly narrow. Unsurprisingly, Senate Republicans quickly and unconvincingly claimed that it was exculpatory. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) came to his conclusion before even this cursory examination was complete.
We continue to believe that Ms. Ford is a credible witness with no motivation to lie. It is conceivable that she and Mr. Kavanaugh are both being truthful, in the sense that he has no memory of the event. It is also conceivable that Ms. Ford’s memory is at fault. We wish the FBI had been allowed to probe Mr. Kavanaugh’s credibility more fully. But our conclusion about Mr. Kavanaugh’s fitness does not rest on believing one side or the other.
If Mr. Kavanaugh truly is, or believes himself to be, a victim of mistaken identity, his anger is understandable. But he went further in last Thursday’s hearing than expressing anger. He gratuitously indulged in hyperpartisan rhetoric against “the left,” describing his stormy confirmation as “a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election” and “revenge on behalf of the Clintons.” He provided neither evidence nor even a plausible explanation for this red-meat partisanship, but he poisoned any sense that he could serve as an impartial judge. Democrats or liberal activists would have no reason to trust in his good faith in any cases involving politics. Even beyond such cases, his judgment and temperament would be in doubt.
Such doubts feed into concerns about Mr. Kavanaugh’s independence from Mr. Trump and his deference to executive power, at a moment when fateful questions for the presidency may be winding their way to the court. Mr. Kavanaugh began his confirmation process by bowing obsequiously to Mr. Trump, claiming, absurdly, that “no president has ever consulted more widely, or talked with more people from more backgrounds, to seek input about a Supreme Court nomination.” Mr. Kavanaugh then declined to offer much reassurance about how he would handle cases involving Mr. Trump. Given his writings arguing that a president should be free of criminal investigations while in office, it would be best for the court’s reputation for Mr. Kavanaugh to recuse himself from any such case, lest it appear that Mr. Trump chose him in order to foil the Justice Department’s Russia probe. If not a commitment to recuse, he should have offered more of a sense that he would treat the issue with due delicacy.
Finally, Mr. Kavanaugh raised questions about his candor that, while each on its own is not disqualifying, are worrying in the context of his demand that Ms. Ford and his other accusers be dismissed and disbelieved. These include his role in the nomination of controversial judge Charles Pickering while working for Mr. Bush, his knowledge of the origin of materials stolen from Democratic Senate staff between 2001 and 2003, and his lawyerly obfuscations about his high school and college years.
And what of Mr. Kavanaugh’s political philosophy? Here we freely admit that Mr. Kavanaugh would not have been our choice. A president concerned for the court’s standing would have nominated someone of more moderate views for the seat vacated by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the court’s erstwhile swing vote — particularly given the Senate’s inexcusable refusal to consider Judge Merrick Garland when President Barack Obama nominated that eminently qualified jurist.
But we would not have opposed Mr. Kavanaugh on that basis, just as we did not think GOP senators should have voted against Sonia Sotomayor because they did not like her views. Rather, the reason not to vote for Mr. Kavanaugh is that senators have not been given sufficient information to consider him — and that he has given them ample evidence to believe he is unsuited for the job. The country deserves better.
The Washington Post Breaks 30 Years Of Tradition By Urging The Senate To Vote No On Kavanaugh
Posted on Thu, Oct 4th, 2018 by Sean Colarossi
For the first time in over three decades, the Washington Post editorial board is urging the United States Senate to reject a Supreme Court nominee.
The Post, which has supported nominees of both parties for decades, said the so-called FBI investigation was incomplete but that Kavanaugh had already proven himself unfit to be a Supreme Court Justice during his most recent Senate testimony, with or without the expanded background check.
“[T]he reason not to vote for Mr. Kavanaugh is that senators have not been given sufficient information to consider him — and that he has given them ample evidence to believe he is unsuited for the job,” the Washington Post editorial board wrote. “The country deserves better.”
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