Doing God's Work at the DOJ?

Monica Goodling resigned Friday from her job at the Department of Justice. She is also declaring her intention to plead the 5th if called to testify before Congress about her role in the US Attorney firings. Monica Goodling is also an Evangelical Christian and graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent University. She is one of 150 Regent U Law School grads working in the Bush administration, which is quite a few considering everything.

In a Slate article found via the Daily Dish, Dahlia Lithwick discusses "how Pat Robertson's law school is changing America." I'm not sure that Alberto Gonzalez is a "true believer," but his predecessor John Ashcroft surely was, and the current DOJ has been active in righting any perceived wrongs to Christians.

Lithwick writes:

Goodling is only one of 150 graduates of Regent University currently serving in this administration, as Regent's Web site proclaims proudly, a huge number for a 29-year-old school. Regent estimates that "approximately one out of every six Regent alumni is employed in some form of government work." And that's precisely
what its founder desired. The school's motto is "Christian Leadership To Change the World," and the world seems to be changing apace. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft teaches at Regent, and graduates have achieved senior positions in the Bush administration. The express goal is not only to tear down the wall between church and state in America (a "lie of the left," according to Robertson) but also to enmesh the two.

Now, I'm all for changing the world, but enmeshing church and state, I'm not so sure about. Now considering this weekend there is an organized "Blogswarming Against Theocracy" this article seems appropriate. While I don't see theocracy in our future, there are definitely those like Robertson, Falwell, James Kennedy, Dobson, and David Barton, who envision such a state of affairs.

And as for the dangers of this mentality, Lithwick writes:

No, the real concern here is that Goodling and her ilk somehow began to conflate God's work with the president's. Probably not a lesson she learned in law school. The dream of Regent and its counterparts, like Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, is to redress perceived wrongs to Christians, to reclaim the public square, and reassert Christian political authority. And while that may have been a part of the Bush/Rove plan, it was, in the end, only a small part. Their real zeal was for earthly power. And Goodling was left holding the earthly bag.

At the end of the day, Goodling and the other young foot soldiers for God may simply have run afoul of the first rule of politics, codified in Psalm 146: "Put no trust in princes, in mere mortals in whom there is no help."

Such is good advice -- especially on Easter Sunday, which is God's NO to the Empire!