Judge Amy Coney Barrett's ties to Christian school that upholds biblical marriage scrutinized; Trinity School's Statement of Faith is Being Investigated

President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett has come under fire for her affiliation with a Christian school that upholds the biblical definition of marriage as a union between only one man and one woman.

A report in Politico published Sunday detailed Barrett’s association with the People of Praise, a Charismatic Christian group founded in Indiana in 1971 that has been described as a “cult” by some of her detractors.

The article noted that People of Praise runs the Trinity School at Greenlawn in South Bend, a “private intermediate and high school that is considered by some to be the best — and most conservative — school in South Bend.”

From 2015 to 2017, Barrett, a Roman Catholic, served on Trinity School’s board.

Adam Wren, the Indianapolis-based Politico contributing editor who wrote the aforementioned article, took to Twitter to state that “Amy Coney Barrett was a trustee at a South Bend private school that describes ‘homosexual acts’ as ‘at odds with Scripture’” and believes “marriage was between ‘one man and one woman’” years after the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage a national right in 2015.

Trinity School outlines its beliefs and commitment to creating a “culture of learning and a culture of Christian life” on its website.

“We understand marriage to be a legal and committed relationship between a man and a woman and believe that the only proper place for sexual activity is within these bounds of conjugal love,” the school statement reads.

Wren described a previous version of the statement, which had similar language, as “at odds with American law.”

While the legality of same-sex marriage has become quite popular among the American public in the years since the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling, many religious organizations and schools hold to biblical definitions of marriage in their statements of faith and policies.

Opponents have also criticized People of Praise's complementarian view of marriage.

Barrett has not commented publicly about her association with People of Praise. The group's spokesperson declined a request by Associated Press to confirm whether or not Barrett and her husband are members.

According to AP, Barrett's father, Michael Coney Sr., has served as the principal leader of People of Praise's New Orleans chapter and sat on the group's board of governors as recently as 2017.

Barrett has faced intense questioning about her religious beliefs in recent years.

In 2017, as she was nominated to her current position on the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., questioned her about the “dogma” that “lives loudly within you.” Feinstein said the “dogma” was concerning when it comes to “issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country."

Now that Barrett has been nominated to the Supreme Court, she will have to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee once again, where she could likely face more questions about her faith as well as her relationship with faith-based organizations.

Last week, when Barrett was speculated to be the person who Trump would select as the nominee, Newsweek released an article accusing the People of Praise of being the inspiration behind Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale.

The outlet was later forced to issue a correction saying that Atwood “never specifically mentioned the group as being the inspiration for her work.”

In 2018, The Washington Post ran an article that poitned out that many were concerned that Barrett’s relationship with People of Praise could have “a potentially inappropriate sway over a judge’s decision-making.”

Barrett is not the first public figure to face criticism over her relationship with a school that subscribes to the biblical teachings about marriage.

Second Lady Karen Pence received scrutiny for teaching at a private Christian school in Virginia that prohibits students and their families from engaging in conduct that does not comport with the “biblical lifestyle the school teaches,” including by “participating in, supporting, or condoning sexual immorality, homosexual activity or bi-sexual activity.”

In recent years, efforts to criticize anyone associated with a church or school that believes in the traditional definition of marriage were not limited to politicians.

In 2016, Chip and Joanna Gaines, the hosts of the popular house-flipping TV program “Fixer Upper,” received condemnation because the pastor of their church has taught that homosexuality is a sin.

In response to the criticism, Chip Gaines stressed that “We do not all have to agree with each other.”

Two years earlier, HGTV pulled the plug on a reality show called “Flip it Forward” because the hosts, conservative Christian brothers David and Jason Benham, supported traditional marriage.

That same year, Brendan Eich, who had just been appointed CEO of the tech giant Mozilla, was forced to resign from his position after it became public that he donated to Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in the state.

In 2009, Miss California USA Carrie Prejean contended that her answer to a question about same-sex marriage from one of the beauty pageant’s judges, openly gay entertainment blogger Perez Hilton, cost her the title of Miss USA.

Hilton did not respond favorably to Prejean’s answer, where she affirmed her support for traditional marriage, calling her a “stupid b****” and saying that if she had won, he would have gone up on stage and snatched the tiara from her head.

No need to fritter away time on musings of writers for publications that make their money for such trivia.

Our time is better spent pointing readers to a source more reliable than ourselves.

Let's read the words of the Author of our Declaration of Independence and President of the U. S., Thomas Jefferson, who, in his 1801 Inaugural Address, laid out what might be considered to be "qualifications" for the American presidency:
(Excerpt, "Our Ageless Constitution," p. xiv, reformatted)
"Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation;
- entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them;
- enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man;
- acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter
—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?
- Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
- This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
"About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you,
- it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations.
- Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political;
- peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none;
- the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies;
- the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad;
- a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided;
- absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism;
- a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them;
- the supremacy of the civil over the military authority;
- economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened;
- the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith;
- encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid;
- the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason;
- freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected.
These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."

The Christian Post stabs her in the back for being too Christian.

I saw no such back-stabbing. It looked to me as though they were just reporting on the fact that we now live in a society that is trying to apply a religious litmus test. We still have the 1st Amendment, and should, under it, have the right of assembly with like-minded believers, and the right to state our beliefs publically. As far as I know, it is illegal to apply a religious litmus test for any Federal position.

So, devout Roman Catholics are against abortion? Many other faiths are as well. So, devout Roman Catholics are for the marriage of one man to one woman, and against divorce? Same statement applies.

Our faith should inform our lives and decisions, but SCOTUS Justices aren't there to legislate from the bench, but to decide the constitutionality of matters brought before it. Roe v. Wade is law, until someone with standing brings a case before it which successfully challenges it.

The progressives would like to muzzle any who profess a belief in Biblical principles (including the founders of our nation) and cancel them. Are we to the point where only progressive athiests need apply?

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