Tennessee pastors express 'embarrassment' over Marsha Blackburn’s 'inappropriate' behavior during SCOTUS nominee hearings
Pastors in Tennessee are pushing back against Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) for her involvement in the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Following the second day of hearings, pastors with the Southern Christian Coalition penned a letter to express their "frustration" over Blackburn's seemingly unprofessional approach during the hearings. According to the members of the grassroots organization, Blackburn failed to maintain a professional stance placing more of an emphasis on politics, according to FOX17.
Rev. Brandon Berg, Pastor of First United Church located in Bristol, Tenn., recently weighed in with his concerns about Blackburn's actions.
“While most Senators in the Judiciary Committee focused on the qualifications and experience of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, our Senator Marsha Blackburn’s line of questioning was inappropriate and irrelevant, and as a Christian, pastor, and Tennessean, I was embarrassed by her public behavior,” said Berg.
Senator Blackburn tossed away an opportunity to behave professionally in favor of currying votes from her political base. Her vocabulary of fear-mongering is in stark contrast to the faith she claims in a Savior who reminds us repeatedly, ‘do not fear,’ and ‘the first shall be last, and the last shall be first,’ while on the other hand, Judge Jackson shows the ability to live out the believer’s call to ‘do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God,’ as all Christians should strive to live out.
Rev Billy Vaughan, a Memphis Theological Seminary professor and retired United Methodist pastor, also expressed similar sentiments as he detailed his concers.
“She took past statements by the nominee grossly out of context solely to make political points," said Vaughn. "Those points had nothing to do with either the truth of the statements or the qualifications of Judge Jackson. Contrary to Senator Blackburn’s suggestion that Judge Jackson had an 'agenda,' the opposite was clearly the case. That Senator Blackburn rudely and consistently interrupted Judge Jackson when she tried to answer the legal and judicial issues involved suggests that the Senator’s primary agenda was creating sound bites for her political base. She used terms such as 'progressivism,' 'critical race theory,' 'white privilege' and 'social justice' to, I assume, offer an alternative conservative agenda. But what was she conserving? Certainly not the truth, something on which our judiciary and our life in community depend."
