I often joke with people that, since I was baptized as a baby in the Catholic church, and then came to trust Christ as my Savior later in a nondenominational church, then became a Baptist by doctrinal conviction at a yet later point, I have all of the bases covered in salvation.
Mind you, please, that it is just a joke. I am fully aware and fully persuaded that, as Ephesians 2:8-9 puts it “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” My salvation, my “ticket to heaven,” was gained solely as a result of my receiving by faith what Christ did for me on Calvary. But I mention the Catholic connection to Baptist conviction because of President Trump’s most recent nominee to the Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett.
I am a Baptist; Judge Barrett is a Catholic. To say that Baptists and Catholics do not always see eye to eye would be a bit of an understatement. And yet despite those differences, I have an ability that many people in the political realm used to have, but few seem to have any more: the ability to acknowledge when a person is qualified for a task, even if they are not of “my stripe.”
The position of a Supreme Court justice is clearly one that exists in the political realm, whereas the Catholic faith of Judge Barrett is rooted in the spiritual realm. And yet throughout our history and our society there have been constant intersections of politics and faith – most notably the First Amendment to the Constitution itself. America has always been primarily a spiritual people and, as such, it can hardly be logically expected that such intersections can be barred from existence. I have discussed at great length in previous editions of this column all of the Scripture literally engraved in stone in the nation’s capital, on the Liberty Bell and in hundreds of other prominent public places. We are all the better for that, and none the worse.
But, to the subject of Judge Barrett, I cannot help but shake my head in bemusement at the attacks quickly leveled against her even before she was officially nominated to succeed Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Even in 2017, when she was appointed as a judge for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Diane Feinstein, during Barrett’s confirmation process then, famously pointed at her Catholic faith and said derisively, “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.”