The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile

The Bible in American Law and Politics

The Bible in American Law and Politics - John R. Vile

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      A lot of the controversy has centered on whether observers believe that the Bible signings were done for purely political purposes or as a way of connecting to those who asked for such signatures. Bill Leonard, the dean of the Wake Forest School of Divinity, observed that signing Bibles is a southern tradition, whereas Wayne Flynn, a professor emeritus at Auburn University, described Trump’s actions as “right next to a sacrilege” (Roach 2019). In an indication that his judgment may have been more about the signer than the practice itself, however, Flynn said, “If Jimmy Carter had signed a Bible . . . I would have no problems with that” (Roach 2019). Hershael York, from the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, observed that there was nothing objectively sinful about the practice, although some individuals would be more comfortable with it than others.

      Although the practice is not quite the same, both Americans and their British forbearers have long used Bibles, which themselves detail numerous genealogies of the Jewish people, to record family births and deaths (Wulf 2012). Moreover, incoming justices of the U.S. Supreme Court sign the flyleaf of a Bible that John Marshall Harlan I donated to the court in 1906.

      See also Harlan Bible; Trump, Donald J.

       For Reference and Further Reading

      Mcdermott, Jennifer. 2019. “Some Cheer, Some Decry Trump’s Signing of Bibles.” The Tennessean. March 11, 16A.

      From the time of the Reformation, Protestants have placed special emphasis on the study of the Bible. This emphasis has been accentuated during the Trump administration with the establishment of what is believed to be the first Bible study among cabinet members in the past hundred years.

      Created by Ralph Drollinger (b. 1954), a former basketball player who has helped establish Capitol Ministries, which is now in forty-three U.S. state capitols and twenty foreign legislatures, Drollinger’s studies, which take a verse-by-verse approach to Scripture, have been contrasted with what he apparently considers to be the “candy floss Christianity—big, sweet, unsubstantial”—of the National Prayer Breakfast, which is run by The Fellowship (Amos 2018). The establishment of the cabinet study followed the establishment of similar studies in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Vice President Mike Pence sponsors the cabinet group and apparently helped select a core of initial members who have included former attorney general Jeff Sessions, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, former health secretary Tom Price, former secretary of homeland security Kirstjen Nielsen, and former energy secretary Rick Perry.

      Critics have questioned Drollinger’s policy excluding women from directing such Bible studies as well as his criticism of same-sex marriage and of the Roman Catholic Church, which he is quoted as saying “is one of the primary false religions of the world” (Gander 2018). Drollinger has likened Pence to such figures as Joseph, Mordecai, and Daniel, who have exercised godly influences from the number two position in government, and Trump to Samson, the biblical strongman (CBN News 2017). One reporter has linked former attorney general Jeff Sessions’s justification of separating immigrant families at the border to one of Drollinger’s Bible studies, which emphasized both corporal punishment and the necessity of obedience to law (Seidel 2018). Responding to critics, Drollinger has said that he believes in the separation of church and state but does not believe that “institutional separation” requires “influential separation” (Amos 2018).

      See also Corporal Punishment; Immigration; National Prayer Breakfast; Pence, Mike; Perry, Rick; Pompeo, Mike; Trump, Donald J.

       For Reference and Further Reading

      Hugo Lafayette Black (1886–1971) was one of the longest-serving and most notable Supreme Court justices of the twentieth century; he served from 1937 until shortly before his death in 1971. Born in Clay County, Alabama, Black established himself as a trial attorney, as a congressional investigator, and as a strong supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs before Roosevelt appointed him to the court. Black appeared in a national radio address to explain, albeit not to deny, his prior membership in the Ku Klux Klan, and went on both to uphold many New Deal laws and to gain a reputation for being a champion of constitutional provisions, especially those in the Bill of Rights.

      Black became known as something of a constitutional fundamentalist in that he believed that the Constitution should be interpreted quite literally and resisted what he believed to be calls to expand even civil rights and liberties beyond the constitutional text. After thus fighting to expand the right to counsel and other rights, Black dissented from the majority decision in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), which recognized a constitutional right to privacy. Similarly, although Black outlined a fairly absolutist position with regard to protections for freedom of speech and press, in his later years, he opposed decisions that would have widened this protection to symbolic speech. Black, however, believed that the Fourteenth Amendment intended to apply, or “incorporate,” the provisions of the Bill of Rights to state as well as national governments, even though this amendment does not explicitly say so.

      Black was known for his view, which he attributed to Roger Williams and to Thomas Jefferson, that the First Amendment established a “wall of separation between church and state.” He outlined this strict position in Everson v. Board of Education (1947), even though he did in that case allow a state to provide transportation for students attending parochial schools. Black strongly supported decisions banning public

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