President GEORGE W. BUSH: I think faith is a personal issue, and I get great strength from my faith. But I don't condemn somebody in the political process because they may not agree with me on religion.
ABERNETHY: The question to the president, and his answer, grew out of the sharp divide that has opened up between conservative evangelicals and mainline Protestants over whether some of those the president wants confirmed as federal appeals court judges are being opposed because they are people of faith. The center of the debate last week was a conservative evangelical rally in Louisville, Kentucky, and Lucky Severson was there.
Dr. AL MOHLER (President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) (Speaking During Justice Sunday Event): Something has to explain why we would take this time on a Sunday night to talk about something like the federal judiciary.LUCKY SEVERSON: It was an emotionally charged gathering -- people who feel their culture and religion threatened at every turn by liberal judges. They saw the denial of a final Supreme Court hearing for Terri Schiavo as one more sign of a judiciary run amok.
Dr. JAMES DOBSON (Founder and Chairman, Focus on the Family) (Speaking at Justice Sunday Event): Do they care about the sanctity of life? I think not, and they've made that very clear. Euthanasia is on their list of things to deal with, and pornography, unchecked and unlimited -- on and on it goes.
SEVERSON: Organizers billed the event as "Justice Sunday: Stopping the Filibuster Against People of Faith." It was meant to energize their base, the Christian Right, and it did.
Dr. MOHLER: We've learned that religious liberty really is at stake. Religious liberty is on the line here.
SEVERSON: Three thousand attended the Highview Baptist megachurch outside Louisville, and hundreds of thousands more watched it on satellite TV.
(Video Clip from Telecast): Our children will best be served by judges who appreciate America's godly heritage.
SEVERSON: The promotion of the event provoked national attention because it seemed to imply that those who took an opposing view were not people of faith. But that's not true, according to Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council that organized the event.TONY PERKINS (President, Family Research Council): We never said that.
SEVERSON: What do you think? What do you say to them when they say that's what you imply?
Mr. PERKINS: That's not what I imply. What I imply is exactly what we've said: there has been an intentional effort to block people that have -- and, again, using their own words -- "deeply held personal beliefs."SEVERSON: The people of faith he is referring to are the judges that Senate Democrats successfully filibustered.
Former congressman and minister Bob Edgar is General Secretary of the National Council of Churches. He is one of many Christian leaders who were infuriated because they believe Perkins did imply that those who support the filibuster were not people of faith.
Dr. BOB EDGAR (General Secretary, National Council of Churches): Taking a segment of Christianity and melding it with conservative Republican ideology and saying, "We're morally right, and everybody is anti-Christian, antifaith" -- I just think it's an outrage.SEVERSON: Larry James, from Texas, is another evangelical who thinks the Christian Right is brewing a combustible mix of religion and politics.
LARRY JAMES (President and CEO, Central Dallas Ministries): We have some demagoguery going on here. Let's face it. This is a constitutional matter, and we live under a democracy -- a constitutional democracy. We're not in a theocracy.SEVERSON: The collective outrage may have been one reason Tony Perkins re-explained the group's views about "people of faith."
Mr. PERKINS (Speaking at Justice Sunday Event): We are not saying that people who disagree with us are not people of faith. We've never said that; we'll never say that.
SEVERSON: The stated purpose of this event was to stop the filibusters, but it went beyond that. It was a condemnation, a damnation of liberal judges. This is Al Mohler, head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Dr. MOHLER (Speaking at Justice Sunday Event): We've learned that we're going to have to exercise our Christian citizenship beyond just the ballot box. We're going to have to follow this through all the way to the nomination and confirmation of judges.
SEVERSON: What riled the critics more than anything was the participation, albeit on tape, of Senate Majority Leader and probable presidential candidate Bill Frist.Senator BILL FRIST (From Justice Sunday Telecast): The judicial nomination debate is creating quite a bit of controversy. ...
SEVERSON: It seems to some a potentially huge fight over only seven appellate court nominees Democrats think are too extreme on environmental, civil rights, and women's issues. Ninety-five percent of the president's judicial nominees have been confirmed by the Senate.
Dr. DOBSON (Speaking During Justice Sunday Event): There is a majority on the Supreme Court that is -- and you'll have to pardon me, but this is the way I see it -- they're unelected and unaccountable and arrogant and imperious and determined to redesign the culture according to their own biases and values, and they're out of control. And I think they need to be reined in.
SEVERSON: These were protesters outside the megachurch, many of them pastors who think leaders of the Christian Right are ignoring traditional Christian issues.
Dr. BALMER: My complaint about the Religious Right is that it defaults on what I consider to be the noble legacy of 19th-century evangelical political activism, which invariably took the part of those on the margin of society.
Rev. CHATHAM: I hope that religion becomes a force that brings people together instead of dividing them. It is dividing and killing people all over the world. It is dividing people in this country, and it has a better word than that.
