I arrived at the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court at 9 pm on the night of Tuesday July 19, as President Bush was in mid-speech nominating John G. Roberts to Sandra Day O’Connor’s seat on the Court. I was invited by an organization carrying the deceptively secular name National Pro-Life Action Center. Expecting a press conference, for that is how it was billed, instead I witnessed a prayer meeting.

The group of maybe fifty souls, at least half under the age of twenty-five (evangelicals seem to have large families and take them to rallies en masse), was circled around the sound system, listening intently to the President and then Roberts speak. I was perplexed by a middle-aged man next to me, hunched over and rocking back and forth with his eyes closed–then I realized he was praying. He wasn’t the only one. The crowd seemed to be experiencing this political event as a deeply spiritual moment.

The press conference was barely differentiated from the kneeling prayer vigil beforehand or the candlelight vigil afterwards. There was a podium, but it was treated as a pulpit. All of the seven speakers, three of them clergymen, invoked God. All were certain that He had intervened in Bush’s thought process on behalf of the unborn.

They had dodged a narrow bullet. The second speaker, Rev. Rob Schenck, President of the National Clergy Council, opened by declaring

President Bush has shown extraordinary moral courage in bringing forth John G. Roberts as his nominee for appointment to the United States Supreme Court. I would like to say that we had no moments of doubt, but that would not be true.

This was a startling admission, it seemed to me, because the later speakers were almost unanimous in asserting that Roberts’ nomination was evidence that God had heard their prayers. What if Bush had nominated the soft-on-abortion Alberto Gonzales? Would they have doubted their faith in God? I suspect that when Bush pleases them they see an affirmation of their faith in God, but when Bush disappoints them they only question their faith in Bush.

Later, I questioned Rev. Schenck’s fresh-faced assistant, on the Clergy Council. What about a woman who would die carrying a fetus to term? “We would hope that it would be the best outcome in God’s sight.” In other words, if she dies it’s God’s will and who are we mere mortals to intervene? God’s will was invoked many times that evening and all the speakers presumed to know what it is. But it left me wondering, if it’s in God’s power to end abortion, why hasn’t he done it yet? Does God have to wait for a vacancy on the Supreme Court for his will to be done?

A young woman, sporting blond pigtails and fingering a Bible, and hailing from a nebulous organization called simply The Cause spoke after Rev. Schenck. She opened with a psalm, and she concluded her speech saying:

Our government is in a transitional moment where we have shifting going on but we believe it’s because of the prayers of the saints. We believe that God answers the cries of the righteous and he is quick to act justly on their behalf. So begin to cry out to god. For righteousness and justice to roll down from our government for righteousness and justice to roll down from this seat that John Roberts has now been placed in. Cry out for justice and righteousness in the Senate that the committees would confirm him quickly and that they would do justly in the sight of the Lord.

She listed justice and righteousness as if they were inseparable. This told me a lot about the thinking of the Christian Right. A secular jurist, whatever his position on Roe v. Wade, makes a distinction between justice and righteousness. The former is a legal consideration, the latter a religious one. The two are logically separable, and that is all the more so in the cases under the Supreme Court’s purview, which determine the constitutionality of a law, not its justness (much less its righteousness). But to this group the federal government’s fealty ought not to be to the constitution, but rather to God. Their mission is not to do what the constitution says, but to “do justly in the sight of the Lord.” To me a judiciary that makes its decisions on its own interpretation of God’s will sounds like an activist judiciary–but apparently not to another speaker, Patrick Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition. He declared “It is our hope and our prayer that judicial activism will come to an end. And that judges will not legislate from the bench.”

“There’s a 22 word prayer that we pray every day in front of this court five times a day at least. said a young man, named Brian Kim, who has also been holding vigil at the Court since thirty days before the 2004 election. And as he began the whole crowd joined in: “Jesus we plead your blood over my sins and the sins of my nation. God end abortion and send revival to America.” This left me more confused. They stand before the court to ask God for a favor. Isn’t that what a church is for? Wouldn’t one stand before the Court when asking them for a favor? Never before had I realized the degree to which the religious right seeks to bring religious power to bear on civil institutions.

Tuesday was an object lesson in what the left is up against. No one I know hold’s his or her commitment to secular liberal values with the fervor and intensity that this crowd held their commitment to Christian values. NARAL instantly denounced John Roberts, but where were their activists? In addition to the rally there was an unrelated band of youngsters from Progress for America, the conservative 501c4, holding up placards urging swift confirmation for the benefit of the television cameras shooting generic footage of the Court. Off to the side stood one lonely crank with a homemade drawing of a coat-hanger.