Eroding Biblical Foundation, Exploding Judicial Activism 

What do the Tulsa zoo and Supreme Court have in common?  Both are plagued by a damaging philosophy.  Most don’t know its insidious seeds have been systematically sown in America’s law schools for over a century.  This devastating doctrine has been eroding the Biblical foundation of our constitutional legal system by sparking an explosion of liberal judicial activism.  It has created a crisis manifesting itself in Supreme Court cases since the 1960s.  The next Supreme Court nominee will either exacerbate the problem or help cure it.  The problem?  Humanistic evolution.

 

What does evolution have to do with law?  More than you realize.  I will expose the problem by first showing America’s Fathers firmly founded our law and government on immutable Biblical principles.  They knew the fixed laws of God would provide a lasting foundation for freedom, a foundation being eroded by evolutionary judicial activism.

 

Our Anglo ancestors imported and adopted English common law.  “While Roman law was a death bed convert to Christianity,” says a legal historian, “the common law was a cradle Christian.”[1]

 

When King John ignored the law, those whose rights were threatened compelled him to sign the Magna Charta in 1215.[2]  The Magna Charta reflects the Biblical character of common law.  Its central message: “the supremacy of God and the law over all human beings.”[3]  It boldly declared “rights of liberty and property” are fixed and inviolable because they come from God.[4]

 

From then until the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Christian nature of common law strengthened.  The 13th century “Father of Common Law,” Henry de Bracton, “formulat[ed] a truly Christian philosophy of law.”  Sir Edward Coke, “one of the most eminent jurists in all English history, and best known as a [16th century] compiler of the law,”[5] affirmed Bracton.[6]  An 18th century Oxford law professor, Sir William Blackstone wrote:  “Christianity is part of the laws of England.”[7]  Like Bracton and Coke, Blackstone believed “God dictated the law governing man.”  He identified “God” as of the “Bible” and “God’s law” as revealed in the Bible.[8]  “Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England,” observed Justice Clarence Thomas, was “a primary legal authority for 18th and 19th century American lawyers.”[9]

 

On this Christian legal foundation, America declared freedom from men violating God’s laws.  Echoing the Magna Charta, the Framers justified their independence on “self-evident” Biblical truths - “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”  Their Declaration concludes by “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world” for “divine Providence.”[10]

 

The official acts of the first Congress, President, and Supreme Court further prove our Christian heritage.  Congress began in prayer, passed a law paying for Christian chaplains, and reenacted a law encouraging “religion” in schools as “necessary to good government.”[11]

 

President Washington “opened his Presidency with a prayer.”  In his farewell, he warned: “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”[12]

 

The first Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Jay, who later served as President of the American Bible Society, proclaimed:  “Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."[13]  Justice Story, teaching law at Harvard, emphasized that Christianity is the foundation of common law,[14] that “Christianity is indispensable to the true interests & solid foundations of all free governments,” and government promotion of Christianity is lawful if one sect is not favored.[15]  Even liberal Justices Stevens and Ginsburg conceded last month that “for nearly a century after the Founding, [the Supreme Court] accepted the idea that America was not just a religious nation, but ‘a Christian nation.’”[16]  It thus permitted in schools prayer until the 1960s[17] and the Ten Commandments until the 1980s.[18]  The erosion of our Christian foundation the past 50 years is worsening.  Last month’s McCreary County case declared it unlawful to encourage religious morality by displaying the Decalogue in any public place.[19]

 

Evolutionary judicial activism taught in America’s law schools since the late 1800s is precipitously eroding the Christian foundation of our nation.  We must petition President Bush to nominate and lobby our Senators to approve Supreme Court Justices and other federal judges who reject evolutionary law and will protect our God-given Constitutional liberties.

 

We shouldn’t be “stunned” the Supreme Court expanded eminent domain power at the expense of Constitutional property rights (Eminent domain case mocks our rights, July 14).  Nor should we be surprised it stripped prayer, creationism, and the Decalogue from public forums, while permitting evolution to monopolize it under a false shroud of “science.”  We’re reaping what we’ve allowed to be sown (Gal. 6:7).  Previously, I showed the Founders anchored our Republic to Biblical principles, and the Supreme Court considered America “Christian” until the 20th century.[20]  I claimed evolutionary legal education sparked an explosion of liberal judicial activism, eroding America’s Biblical foundation.  I will now show how Darwin’s disciples displaced Biblically-based legal study with evolution and why we should care.

 

Until the late 1800s, American lawyers learned law from Blackstone.[21]  Blackstone taught law came from God and His Word. [22]  Like God, reasoned Blackstone, law and liberty are immutable.[23]  Blackstone “argued that no human laws are of any validity if contrary to God’s law, and that no human laws have any authority except as derived from God’s law.”[24]

 

Things changed when Darwin published his evolutionary beliefs.  To “free” education from “narrow” and “dying” religious views,[25] Harvard replaced Blackstone in 1870 with evolutionary law, teaching that judges decide right and wrong apart from God and actively create new law with each case.  Over time, law gradually “evolves.”[26]  By 1914, evolutionary law “prevailed in almost every law school in the country.”[27]

 

As June’s eminent domain case proves, evolutionary judicial activism threatens us all.  It takes law and liberty captive to the “shifting sand” of man’s whimsical opinions.  One moment, power to take private property is tightly limited.  Law then evolves when activist judges expand that power.  One moment, we’re a Christian nation where prayer in school is encouraged.  Law then evolves when activist judges erect a mythical “wall of separation” and outlaw school prayer.

 

Evolutionary law perverts law and liberty.  One moment, the Constitution doesn’t address abortion.  It then evolves and is grossly perverted when activist judges decide the Constitution permits and protects abortion.

 

In contrast, the Biblical “strict constructionist” approach hallows law as fixed and liberty as unalienable, because they derive from God whose “counsel … stands forever” (Ps. 33:11).  Judges do not create law.  They strictly apply existing law to each case.  “What distinguishes the rule of law from a dictatorship of a shifting Supreme Court majority,” warned Justice Scalia, “is the absolutely indispensable requirement that judicial opinions be grounded in consistently applied principle.  That is what prevents judges from ruling now this way, now that … as their personal preferences dictate.”[28]

 

The impact of Blackstone’s Biblical approach is exemplified in the life Charles Finney.  Finney began studying law in 1818.  Noting Blackstone’s repeated reliance on scripture, Finney bought his first Bible.  Convinced of its authority, Finney repented and left law to preach. Revival erupted in over 1,500 cities. In Rochester, New York, “all the leading lawyers, physicians, and businessmen were saved ... and the whole character of the town was changed,” thanks to one person impacted by a Biblical legal education.[29]

 

While many reject Finney’s beliefs,[30] my point is irrefutable: education has ramifications.  The Founders knew Biblically-based education is essential to “the safety and well being of civil government.”[31]  Evolutionary humanists also knew our destiny hinged on education and purposed to destroy America’s Biblical foundation by working tirelessly to replace Christian education with evolutionary humanism.[32]  After a century of evolutionary legal education, combined with evolution’s court-sanctioned monopoly on public education, evolutionists are clearly prevailing.

 

By allowing evolution to monopolize public spheres to the exclusion of competing views, we violate Jesus’ command to be “salt” and “light” and become guilty accomplices to tragic social and spiritual consequences.  Blackstone ignited revival by pointing one person to God’s Word.  We, too, must be tactfully active in public arenas to point people to God’s Word.  That’s why it’s vital to erect the Genesis creation account by the evolution display at the Tulsa Zoo.  That’s why it’s critical for individuals and groups to challenge evolution’s monopoly of public arenas.  That’s why we must lobby senators to approve Biblically minded, “strict constructionist” judges.  Most importantly, we must equip ourselves to answer the tough issues of our day (1 Pet. 3:15).