Harriet Miers And The No Religious Test Clause

President Bush has appointed Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and this has antagonized his conservative allies for two main reason I have heards of. One is that they have in the past has one too many stealth appointees. The secound are also concerned because apparently unqualified cronies such as Michael D. Brown have been appointed to positions of importance in the past. To reassure these conservatives of which I am one, Bush has mentioned that one reason he appointed Miers was that she lived a Christian life.

This in no way reassures me as the vast majority of Americans claim to be Christians, go to church regularly and yet support views that violate the law of love your neighbor as your self. For example Roe v. Wade, a ruling expressing hate to human beings, would have been overturned as soon as it was made or shortly thereafter. Nerveless if he was declaring that Christianity was one of the reasons he chose her, he has opened another can of worms.

This invokes situation where the appointment of Harriet Miers could violate the Constitutional clause "but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." . This clause in the Constitution is one that serves to protect our religious freedom. An example is that I have no wish to support a religion, such as Atheism, by electing judges or others based on their adherence to it. This being so, as one whom adheres to the doctrine “do unto others as you would have them do unto you“, I am therefore unwilling to force others to support my religion in the same way.

One of the lines of questioning the Senate needs to follow is to discover if Bush used Christianity as a litmus test, because if he did then they should not consent to Harriet Miers becoming a Justice. On the other hand if all he used as a litmus test was that she lives according to the philosophy love your neighbor as yourself, as I believe is the case, then she should be approved providing she is otherwise qualified. This is because the Christian ethics is the foundation of natural law and natural law was established as the law of the land in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.