Regent University: Christ Almighty What a Pal
On your way out of church this Easter Sunday, or perhaps on a walk with your family if you’re not a churchgoer, consider the major role that graduates of Pat Robertson’s Regent University law school have played in the Bush administration.
An extraordinary 150 Regent University alumnae have signed on with Bush, but that is exactly what televangelist founder Robertson intended. The school’s motto is “Christian Leadership to Change the World” and the express goal is, as Slate scribe Dahlia Lithwick puts it:
Not only to tear down the wall between church and state in America but also to enmesh the two.
This bring us to Monica Goodling, a Regent alumna who until Friday was senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Justice Department liaison to the White House. Monica is spending more time with her family after resigning over her insistence on taking the Fifth Amendment when called to testify before a Democratic-controlled congressional committee regarding the scandal. This, she explains, is because she is concerned that she will get into big trouble for telling the truth.
More from Lithwick:
Is there anything wrong with legal scholarship from a Christian perspective? Not that I see. Is there anything wrong with a Bush administration that disproportionately uses graduates from Christian law schools to fill its staffing needs? Not that I see. It’s a shorthand, no better or worse than cherry-picking the Federalist Society or the American Bar Association. I can’t even get exercised over the fact that Gonzales, Karl Rove and Harriet Miers had their baby lawyers making critical staffing decisions. The baby lawyers had extremely clear marching orders.
No, the real concern here is that Goodling and her ilk somehow began to conflate God’s work with the president’s. Probably not a lesson she learned in law school. The dream of Regent and its counterparts, such as Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, is to redress perceived wrongs to Christians, to reclaim the public square and reassert Christian political authority. And while that may have been a part of the Bush/Rove plan, it was only a small part. Their real zeal was for earthly power. And Goodling was left holding the earthly bag.
In the end, Goodling and the other young foot soldiers for God may simply have run afoul of the first rule of politics, codified in Psalm 146: “Put not your trust in princes, in mere mortals in whom there is no help.”
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77 Responses to “Regent University: Christ Almighty What a Pal”
Well, Holly, some of us weren’t fortunate enough to have salvation given to us by the original covenant, so we had to have it paid for by Christ
C Stanley, you had salvation all along!
Two excellent books:
Finding God: Selected Responses (Revised Edition)
Rifat Sonsino and Daniel B. Syme
Paperback $14.95
ISBN: 0-8074-0798-4
URJ Press Item 571300
What Happens After I Die? Jewish Views of Life After Death
Rifat Sonsino and Daniel B. Syme
Paperback $12.95
ISBN: 0-8074-0356-3
URJ Press Item 571201
Rudi, good point, I have always felt that the Democrats could get a decent part of the libertarian vote. Fiscal responsibility and secular government have an appeal to many of them. In order to appeal to more of them I think the Democrats need to show that any social programs they propose would have to show some sort of progress to continue funding, not the open ended programs of the past.
That’s obviously not what I believe, Holly, but thanks for the book references; they sound very interesting and I’ll try to check them out.
I also don’t agree when you state that God created evil; as our priest discussed this morning, darkness isn’t a ‘thing’ or even the opposite of light, it’s simply the absence of it. Also, falsehood isn’t a thing, it’s the absence of truth. And evil or ‘the evil one’ aren’t actualy things, they’re just the way we recognize the absence of God. Satan was a being who was created by God, but the evil force of him is nothing more than the absence of God in him. So also, that’s why I disagree when you say that a belief in Satan contradicts monotheism; he isn’t a being who was not created by God, but by rejecting him he became a creature of darkness.
Satan is the Hebrew word for Adversary or prosecutor, think of the ‘Devil’s Advocate’ who asks hard questions. In Judaism, Satan is not an individual entity that has power. OK, these are generalizations.
I don’t have the citation handy, but Scripture clearly states that God created evil.
Hmm, I have to admit that I’m not an expert on Scripture so I’m not doubting you, but that’s not what I’ve been taught and it’s not consistent with my belief that God is perfect love. He can’t contradict Himself in that way.
My understanding in a philosophical way, is that God chose not to fill up the universe with his light and goodness, and so He allowed evil to exist; but that’s not the same thing as creating it. You can’t create nothingness.
Here is Wikipedia on Theodicy – it is of course incomplete.
A Jewish mystical interpretation is that God deliberately contracted Godself to make room for humanity, the workd and darkness.
All of these ideas are attempts to square the inconsistent belief that God is Omniscient, Omnipotent AND Benevolent.
What is God then?
The problem of evil has from earliest times engrossed the attention of Western philosophers.
Why here ya go. The minute you put philospohers in charge of defining God it is akin to letting Adam Eat the Apple all over again. They are going to make a mess of something they cannot understand.
Well, that’s sounds similar to what I believe; that He chose to not fill the entire void, in order that we might choose to either seek the light or reject it. Those who reject Him are choosing to live in the darkness (metaphorically).
Hmm, then why are there loads of religious philosophers? I go with Maimonides in that God cannot be defined:
Davebo,
I am well aware of the fact that Jews and Christians have committed terrorist acts while claiming to act in the name of their religion. But let us be honest and admit that for whatever reason there has been nothing in modern times with the scope of what is being seen in in the Muslim world now.
Jim,
I agree with you completely on that. And it’s a serious issue we need to work at addressing.
I just don’t think it’s well addressed with vast generalizations based on little knowledge of the region and it’s people. Or, more properly when dealing with the muslim religion, the regions and peoples.
If you find that 200,000 people really really hate you, multiplying that number by a factor of ten is not really a good idea.
And, through generalizations like Holly’s, you multiply it, in your mind at least, by a factor of tens of thousands.
Counterproductive if you ask me.
Holly,
God can’t be defined by man but He can be sought, no? We can only experience or understand a small bit of who/what He is. I wouldn’t pretend to be able to define Him or limit Him to some definition made by man.
It’s very clear that God created evil. Belief in Satan or an Anti-Christ violates the concept of montheism.
It depends on how you define Satan, The antiChrist and monotheism. If you attribute to Satan Godlike status then yes you have violated the concept of monotheism.
However the fact that God allows Satan/Evil/AntiChrist to exist implies that he is not on an equivalency with God and therefore the definition of A monotheistic God is intact.
For us, Satan and the Antichrist are totally irrelevant. If you want them to exist for you, you can have them.
I don’t think that it would be even a slight exaggeration to say that the overwhelming majority of Muslim Arabs in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia would happily cut my throat.
Well, with all due respect then Holly, if this is how you feel then you probably shouldn’t have responded to Nobody’s comment by saying that it was sad that he/she seems to believe in Satan (that certainly sounded like a criticism of that belief, rather than just stating that you don’t share the belief).
And I think even saying that “if you want them to exist for you” misses the point and is a bit offensive. There are, I’m sure, some sects that do “want them to exist” because the belief in Satan can be exploited to scare people into joining the ‘believers’, but for many of us a belief in the existence of evil (and a particular, supremely evil angelic being that we call Satan) is part of an overall belief system. It’s not meant to coerce people into following rules of religion, but rather an explanation for the existence of evil which is in contradiction to what we believe about God’s goodness.
Can’t we agree to disagree?
I’m not sure we can agree to disagree when people who hold a minority opinion can’t accept that the majority simply doesn’t care that their views are being “oppressed”.
To wit, and to return to the topic of Shaun’s post, it’s obvious to most people that governments whose leaders acknowledge and respect a loving higher power are better than those that do not.
The concept of separation of church and state was never meant to restrict individuals of faith from serving in the U.S. government. Nor was it meant to decree the the absence of religion from government. The purpose was to ensure that religion was not dictated by the state.
Leading is not the same as dictating and Bush has never attempted to force Christianity on the unwashed, much as they might benefit from it.
So no, Shaun, it’s not inappropriate at all for Bush and co. to pick graduates of religious schools out of proportion to the general population. Why shouldn’t he select a staff that reflects his values? The fact that atheists and liberals don’t like it is hardly a reason.
To your point that Republicans regret allowing themselves to be lead by Christian leaders I would submit that you are correct, in a limited fashion, but only because of Bush’s two failures: his colossal misjudgment in starting the war in Iraq and his failure to act as a fiscal conservative.
Does NOBODY really think that there is or will be an Anti-Christ? Perhaps NOBODY even thinks Satan exists.
How sad.
Your first comment directed to me was Your religion is irrelevant.
For us, Satan and the Antichrist are totally irrelevant. If you want them to exist for you, you can have them.
Your final comment to me was Your religion is irrelevant.
From responses like this I can understand why Jews can’t get along with other people and I am one of the Jewish peoples biggest supporter.
How sad.
blackshards,
I agree with you (and I enjoy your blog, by the way). My comment to Holly about agreeing to disagree was meant on a personal level; that she can hold her beliefs and I can hold mine, without either of us having to denigrate the other in order to bolster the merits of our own position.
Blackshards. Amen.
I can’t wait for the Hillary to be elected and scream bloody murder that she is selecting Women to serve in her post. How dare the woman do that!
Or Obama selecting Men to serve in his posts. The nitwit, whats he thinking.
Oh they go to Church!!! Good God! How dare they select anyone that goes to chruch!!
Gotta love Mullens attempt to demonize anything and everything Bush does.
How dare Bush select men or women that share his values. Good God what was he thinking. We all know he as a Christian should select Agnostic/Athiests.
So-called “faith-based initiatives” are a taxpayer-funded effort to do EXACTLY that.
Regent University has scrubbed from its web site any mention of its 150 graduates that work for the Bush administration.
Google cache has a screen capture from April 6 2007 of a Regent University’s “facts� web page where they proudly boast “150 graduates serving in the Bush Administration�
Their current “facts� page has that info removed: http://www.regent.edu/general/about_us/facts.cfm
Hmmm. Isn’t Regent University proud of those graduates anymore?
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Regent U corrects an inaccuracy?
As late as 6 April, 2007, Regent University’s “factsâ€? web page proudly boasted that they had
Sometime between April 6 and April 13, the University removed that statement from their web site and, for at least several days, (April 13-16) there was no statement listed at all about any Regent U. graduates working for the Bush administration.
Sometime on April 16, a new statement appeared on their “facts” page:
http://www.regent.edu/general/about_us/facts.cfm
Apparently not all of the 150 are still “serving” Bush, but does this statement also mean that some of the 150 “students” never actually graduated from the U?