***News Release***
The Remaking of the Federal Courts Is Evident
White House Advisory Board Member and Southern Evangelical Seminary President Dr. Richard Land Says Trump Is Keeping Promise to Put Conservative, Original Intent Jurists on Benches Across America
CHARLOTTE, N.C.—As Southern Evangelical Seminary (SES, www.SES.edu) President and Evangelical leader Dr. Richard Land looks at the nation’s federal courts, he is encouraged.
Land, also a member of President Donald Trump’s advisory board on faith issues, points to a recent article in
The New York Times about how the Trump administration is remaking America’s courts.
“The article bemoans the fact that President Trump, keeping his promises to the American people, is nominating a record number of strict constructionist, original intent judges to the federal court system at the district, the appellate and the Supreme Court levels,” Land said in his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive.” “It is clear from the article that the New York Times loathes and detests this development because it is dismantling the liberal, judicial imperium that has reigned over the American people for at least half a century.”
The Times writer goes on to complain: “In 2017, the Senate confirmed 12 of Trump’s appeals court picks — the most for any president in his first year in office. This year, the Senate has already confirmed 12 appellate judges and, according to a Republican Judiciary Committee aide, hopes to confirm at least four more. The White House refers to every new batch of judicial appointees Trump selects as ‘waves’—in early June, it announced the ‘Fifteenth Wave of Judicial Nominees’—as if they’re soldiers landing on the beaches of Normandy.”
Land continues, “The New York Times does point out that Mr. Trump’s nominees ‘have tended to be unusually well credentialed.’ Their conclusion, in short, is that a radical new federal judiciary could be with us for a long time after Mr. Trump is gone, in other words a judiciary where the majority will be judges who believe in the Constitution and who believe they should be umpires, calling balls and strikes, not changing the strike zone from the bench. And that is bad news for The New York Times, but it is good news for the rest of the nation. But isn’t that most often the case these days? If The New York Times doesn’t like it, it must be good for the country.”
Land adds that the good results of having judges who will interpret the Constitution and not try to rewrite it from the bench are already being seen. Since June of this year, the United States Supreme Court has issued more than 30 decisions on issues that directly impact American’s freedom to govern themselves and to pursue life liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without interference from the federal judiciary.
“The Court protected religious freedom in the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission Supreme Court case,” Land says. “It upheld the protection of life by reversing the California mandatory abortion counseling requirement in the National Institute of Family and Life v. Becerra, which is a tremendously important decision for protecting not only life, but free speech. Justices also protected the right of states to draw their own congressional boundaries, and limited the power of labor unions to force members to pay dues to promote things they do not believe in. And the Court also issued a decision securing accurate voter registration rolls to make certain that only the people who should vote can vote in American elections.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Land concludes, “and these decisions would have been decided very differently had Mrs. Clinton won the election and been making these nominations to the courts. So elections do have consequences, as President Barack Obama reminded us, and one of the most positive consequences for freedom-loving Americans about the 2016 election is that President Trump in conjunction with the Federalist Society, is keeping his promise to put conservative, original intent jurists on the courts so that we get to make our laws and not have them imposed upon us by a federal judiciary.”
SES has settled into its new home in the rapidly growing area of West Ballantyne in Charlotte, North Carolina. The 35,000-square-foot, two-building campus symbolizes the 26-year-old seminary’s reaffirmed commitment to both on-campus and online learning. While other schools offer apologetics, SES was the first to be grounded in apologetics throughout all its degree programs, which equip students to more effectively proclaim and defend the Gospel in all areas of ministry.
The more centrally located campus in the greater Charlotte area features state-of-the-art classrooms, better technological advances and increased streaming capabilities. In fact, online students will have one of fastest bandwidths available in order to stream their courses. The ideal location also affords on-campus students a variety of options for housing in nearby neighborhoods. The campus is also close to four restaurants, a YMCA and a racquetball club.
Registrations for SES’s annual National Conference on Christian Apologetics topped more than 1,000 at the Aug. 1 early bird deadline. The 2018 conference will focus on the theme of “The God Who Is” and will take place at Calvary Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, Oct. 12-13, when the seminary will welcome top thinkers, scholars, authors, apologists and scientific minds, including Ravi Zacharias. For answers to frequently asked questions about SES’s NCCA conference, click here.
For more information on SES, visit its web site at www.ses.edu or its Facebook page, follow the SES Twitter feed, @sesapologetics, or call (800) 77-TRUTH.
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