In the current controversy over the administration’s judicial nominees, some are trying to make us believe that it is a religious battle, and that only one side represents "people of faith." This is because the sides have been drawn up over the issue of abortion-rights. Many Christians have decided that abortion is the definitive place where faith meets public life. It is assumed that these nominees, once they become Federal judges, will fight to overturn abortion rights.

But the fact is that there is more going on here than merely a conflict over abortion. For political reasons, both sides find it convenient to frame the debate in this way. But these so-called "moral values" issues are all but a smoke-screen hiding a much more comprehensive and fundamentally dangerous agenda. As a person of faith, it is this prospect which is far more alarming to me.

The judicial nominees proposed by the current administration reflect a philosophy wider that what we would identify as "pro-life." These people believe that the government’s right to regulate individual economic behavior at all is highly questionable. What is really at stake is, of course, not "a culture of life," or "moral values." What they like to dress up in Christian-sounding language really has to do with money, property, wealth, and economic license.

For these judges, Medicare, Social Security, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, Zoning laws, the Minimum Wage, and a whole host of other regulatory initiatives, are simply unconstitutional, and should be wiped away forthwith. It is the rights of property that are inalienable for them; the government has no right to tell you what to do with your property. They will spout the rhetoric of "freedom," but in practice they only freedom they care about is the freedom of the rich to exploit everyone else.

My concern is that some people are identifying this philosophy with a Christian view of things. In fact, this philosophy contradicts the explicit teachings of the Bible at every turn.

For all the religious propaganda surrounding this debate, the proponents of this judicial philosophy can’t honestly root their views in the Bible. What would they do with Leviticus 25, for instance, where God requires assets to be radically redistributed on a regular basis? What would they do with the fact that the prophets were always talking about regulating economic life? What would they do with Jesus,’ and the New Testament’s repeated and explicit warnings about wealth and the rich?

No. This movement is not based in Scripture or Christian tradition. Instead, they look to the Deistic, atheistic, or semi-atheistic thinkers of the so-called Enlightenment for their inspiration. They are influenced, for instance, by John Locke’s fantasies that early humans had an inherent individual right to acquire and dispose of property. There is of course exactly no anthropological evidence for this imagined rugged individualism of early humans. Neither does it have any support in the Bible.

More significantly, though they will never admit it among the Christian fundamentalists they need for support, these theorists are in fact followers of Charles Darwin. Darwin also had a vivid imagination about the original humans in a state of nature, which he summarized as "the survival of the fittest," even rhapsodizing about the necessity and benefits of genocide and ethnic cleansing.

The idea that something "is mine and I can do whatever I want with it" is heard very often from the mouths of four-year-olds. It is certainly not the kind of mature and responsible sentiment upon which to build an economic system for a great nation, let alone the world. It is not a philosophy one can harmonize with the confession that "The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein" (Psalm 24:1).

For Christians, since the whole world belongs to God, property ownership carries with it a responsibility to the whole community. This is an article of faith for us. If everything on the planet is God’s and we are only the temporary caretakers, then this whole laissez-faire, social-Darwinist scheme about inalienable individual property rights falls apart. This kind of godless evil has always led to destruction.

Therefore, the current debate is not really about abortion; neither does it have to do with whether filibusters are a useful tool of the U. S. Senate. But it is about "people of faith." And people of faith, it seems to me, have no choice but to be opposed to turning our courts over to people who would reduce God’s creation to real estate, assets, and property. We cannot give power to those who would undermine and even take away the ability of a community to regulate obnoxious and lethal behaviors. For people of faith, freedom belongs to God and through God to all; it cannot just be for those with wealth.

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