The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile
nor prevent a juror from verbally citing Scripture in support or opposition to inflicting the death penalty (Wojdacz n.d.; Sporn 2009).
Judge Tammy Kemp stirred criticism that she was engaged in proselytizing and crossing the line between church and state in October 2019 when she gave a Bible to police officer Amber Guyger, who had been convicted of killing a neighbor, Botham Jean, after walking into the wrong apartment that she thought was her own (Holcombe 2019).
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See also Criminal Law; Puritans; Quakers; Rush, Benjamin
For Reference and Further Reading
Davis, David Brion. 1957. “The Movement to Abolish Capital Punishment in America, 1787–1861.” American Historical Review 63 (October): 23–46.
Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972).
Gregg v. Georgia, 428 .S. 153 (1976).
Hudson, David L., Jr. 2005. “The Bible Tells Them So.” ABA Journal. July 28. www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/the_bible_tells_them_so.
Holcombe, Madeline. 2019. “Judge Who Gave Convicted Murderer Amber Guyger a Bible Is Accused of Bridging the Church-State Divide.” CNN. October 4. https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/04/us/guyger-judge-freedom-religion/index.html.
Osler, Mark. 2009. Jesus on Death Row: The Trial of Jesus and American Capital Punishment. Nashville, TN: Abington Press.
People v. Harlan, 209 P.3d616 (2005).
Rau, Andy. 2011. “What Does the Bible Say about Capital Punishment?” Bible Gateway Blog. September 27. https://www.biblegateway.com/blog/2011/09/what-does-the-bible-say-about-capital-punishment/.
Sporn, Jeremy B. 2009. “Legal Injection? The Constitutionality of the Bible in Capital Sentencing Deliberations.” Tulane Law Review 83: 813–51.
Van Ness, Dan. n.d. “A Biblical Perspective on the Death Penalty.” Prison Fellowship. https://www.prisonfellowship.org/resources/advocacy/sentencing/the-death-penalty/.
Vile, John R. 2019. A Constellation of Great Men: Exploring the Character Sketches of Dr. Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence. Clark, NJ: Talbot.
Whitman, James Q. 2008. The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Wojdacz, Mariah. n.d. “Should Bibles Be Present in a Jury Deliberation Room?” LegalZoom. https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/should-bibles-be-present-in-a-jury- deliberation-room.
Carey, Matthew
Matthew Carey (1760–1839) was an Irish-born publisher who, after being persecuted for his anti-British sentiments, fled first to France, where he struck up a friendship with Benjamin Franklin, and then to Philadelphia, where the Marquis de Lafayette gave him money to set up his business. He began publishing the Pennsylvania Herald in 1785 and subsequently published the Columbian Magazine and the American Museum as well as a variety of books. He is best known for publishing the Douai (Roman Catholic version translated from St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate) Bible in 1790, which was largely sold by subscription. This volume had first been translated by Gregory Martin at the University of Douai at Rheims in 1582 (New Testament) and 1609 (the entire Bible), but Carey patterned his Bible after the second edition that Richard Challoner had published in England in 1764.
Although he appears to have published no more than five hundred volumes (Daniell 2003, 625), the interest that his Bible generated suggests that Protestants mistook the Roman Catholic mistrust of the King James Version of the Bible with a more general distrust of Holy Writ itself (Carter 2007, 448).
Prior to the American Revolution, Britain held a monopoly on the printing of English Bibles for America, and Carey’s was only the second such Bible printed 84in America—the first having been the so-called Aitken Bible. To encourage sales, Carey appealed to Catholics by suggesting that such purchases would “evince their determination to shew their reverence for the Holy Scriptures—and to prove the futility of the charge, that they are forbidden the use of the sacred volume” (quoted in Carter 2007, 459). While advertising that the Douai Bible was superior to the King James Version, in an address “To the Protestants of the United States,” he also suggested that “liberal-minded protestants who glory in the influence of the benign sun of toleration will probably be happy in an opportunity of uniting their names of the Roman catholics who have supported this work, and thus evincing, that they are superior to that wretched—that contemptible prejudice, which confines its benevolence within the narrow pale of one religious denomination, as is the case of bigots of every persuasion” (quoted in Carter 2007, 459–60).
Although he retained his own Roman Catholic faith, Carey went on to print numerous editions of the King James Bible, often containing detailed commentary and semi-salacious prints (Daniell 2003, 629). Among his salesmen was Parson Mason Weems (1759–1825), who later wrote a biography of George Washington that included the legend of refusing to lie about chopping down a cherry tree in his youth.
Carey served as the secretary of the society for establishing Sunday Schools and was an advocate of religious pluralism (Carter 2007, 465). He thought that knowledge of religion was a way of promoting citizen virtue.
See also Aitken Bible; Roman Catholics
For Reference and Further Reading
Carter, Michael S. 2007. “‘Under the Benign Sun of Toleration’: Matthew Carey, the Douai Bible, and Catholic Print Culture, 1789–1791.” Journal of the Early Republic 27 (Fall): 437–69.
Daniell, David. 2003. The Bible in English: Its History and Influence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Falls, Thomas B. 1942. “The Carey Bible.” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 53 (June): 111–15.
Carson, Ben
Dr. Ben Carson (b. 1951) is a former pediatric neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins University who serves as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Trump. Carson, who is African American and a Seventh-Day Adventist, grew up in a rough neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan, but succeeded, largely with his single mother’s inspiration, in achieving academically and graduating from Yale University and the University of Michigan Medical School.
Carson vied unsuccessfully for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Known as a conservative who attends a weekly Bible study and proudly displays his faith, he spoke both at the 1997 and the 2013 National Prayer Breakfasts. Carson’s middle name is Solomon, and he appears to quote more frequently from the book of Proverbs, which is attributed to Solomon, than from any other book. In his second speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, three of his four texts were from Proverbs (11:9; 11:12; and 11:25), and the last