It’s my intention to pass along all the information we receive on President Obama’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. As the hours pass, more information is flowing into our office. This information came from an attorney we’ve known personally for almost 15 years. She and her husband are good friends to my brother and me and generous supporters of Faith and Action. She writes:

- Childbirth Connection links to, and does activities with Planned Parenthood and March of Dimes, both dedicated to ridding us of unwanted or “defective” children.

Not surprising at all that as of 2004 the current Exec. Director of Childbirth Connection, Maureen Corry, was an executive with March of Dimes…in 2004, she was on the National Guidelines Task Force for Comprehensive Sexuality Education for KINDERGARTEN through grade 12.  Serving on the that same board with her were her many friends from Planned Parenthood, SIECUS, etc.

- Childbirth Connection co-authored a much-heralded report last year with the Milbank Memorial Fund, a population control group with its origins in the eugenics movement.  Google searches yield many connections between the groups.

-Their “support” for pregnant women involves lobbying for increased welfare payments and lobbying against any restrictions on “access” to reproductive health services, including for minors.  (They also promote midwifery and fight against forced C-sections, but that doesn’t make up for their abortion industry connections, does it?)

-They take “no position” on abortion, which means they support it, since unlimited abortion is required virtually everywhere, and if they opposed it they would take a position, wouldn’t they?

Even more interesting….

- They changed their name in 2005 from “Maternity Center Association”, that wonderful and respected and venerated group started in 1918 by one Lillian Wald, whose obituary described as her employee and “protege” none other than one Margaret Sanger, whose valiant fight to take “birth control” information to poor women Lillian vigorously supported…we all know how great that has turned out

- I also see Maternity Center Association popping up in searches with the terms “population control” and eugenics.

My brother Paul adds that the pick of Judge Sotomayor may very well indicate the President and the White House are taking stock of the increasingly pro-Life trajectory of the American electorate. His theory is they had to choose someone with the Judge’s sort of resume in order to get her past public opposition or at least public skepticism.

I’ll keep posting the good, the bad and the ugly in this. We all need to be informed so we can pray and let our U.S. senators know how we feel about this nominee.

More information is on its way. Let’s keep praying . . .

Stand by for commentary on developments surrounding California’s court decision on marriage. Very important stuff.

Your missionary to our government leaders,

Rob Schenck

In light of the above, this L.A. Times story is worth reading:

President Obama’s choice for the US Supreme Court will be Sonya Sotomayor of New York City.

Judge Sotomayor is the daughter of Puerto Rican parents and grew up in the South Bronx. She was diagnosed young with diabetes and lost her father in childhood. She has a Catholic background, but it appears she is not terribly observant. She was briefly married during her college years, but was divorced and has remained single.

While she’s generally knows as “pro-choice,” Judge Sotomayor also either served or serves on the board of an organization called Childbirth Connection. Its mission is to “improve the quality of maternity care through research, education, advocacy and policy. Childbirth Connection promotes safe, effective and satisfying evidence-based maternity care and is a voice for the needs and interests of childbearing families.”

Already some very liberal and very conservative groups are complaining equally. We are doing extensive research into this nominee’s background and will report it as we get it.

Immediately following the President’s official announcement this morning we will hold a prayer service in front of the Supreme Court for the nominee and for the confirmation process.

Stand by.

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!

Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near.

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

– Philippians 4:4-7

Cultural seismometers may go crazy today, but it doesn’t mean we all must dive under our beds. There is a way to stay on balance even when the earth beneath you is shifting—and it’s simpler than you may think . . .

It’s 3:45 AM and I am up, wide-awake and praying. No, not about the impending California State Supreme Court decision affecting marriage. Nor am I praying about President Obama’s pick for the next US Supreme Court, which he may announce today.

Instead, I’ve been praying for my father, Hank Schenck, who is dying of cancer. Oh, I’ll get around to praying for the other things, but Dad comes first. I tell you this because it’s helping me to keep things in proper perspective. There are the things that matter; and then there are the things that really matter.

When I was in Bible college preparing for the ministry, my mentors drove into me, “God first, family second, everything else third.”

Like so many things, I didn’t get the practical implementation of this quite right until only recently. Ask my now adult kids about the time I “allocated” to them during my early years of ministry. Back then I was sure it was plenty, given all the demands on my life, but it wasn’t—not by a long shot.

So, while today carries a potential double-whammy to one of the core institutions in human civilization and American culture (and I draw a critical distinction between the two), one thing remains immanently more important: Dad.

I say it again because a lot of people may be shaken up by what happens today: The California Supreme Court, representing the judicial branch of the largest state in our Union, may rule that a constitutional amendment by the people of that state is, well, unconstitutional. To my layman’s mind, that seems ludicrous, because the only way to change a constitution is by amendment. If the court strikes down this amendment, it will say two things: The California state constitution is immutable and seven judges are the only ones ever able to discern its meaning and application. That’s weird.

Should President Obama announce his nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court today, it could signal a prospective federal justice sympathetic to such an outcome in California and receptive to a national challenge on the definition of marriage. (I know the President has affirmed that marriage is only for a man and woman, but his legal philosophy makes room for a different finding on that question once its examined by his judicial appointees.)

Notwithstanding the outcomes of all these machinations, one thing remains clear to me: God, family and everything else remains the order for today, tomorrow and forever. Even if I lived in some God-awful place, like Somalia, or North Korea, or Cuba, these would still be the right priorities for me.

Should Prop 8’s success go down in flames today, “God, Family, Then Everything Else,” will not only stand, it will become our “modus vivendi,” or way of living, in the midst of cultural tension. This is the way the early Christians transformed the Roman world, a cultural environment in far greater conflict with Biblical Truth than what we here experience now or may experience in the near future.

It was because of their love of God, love of one another and love for even their enemies, that the first generations of Christians were able to be salt and light. Many of their killers were converted in the end and whole empires embraced their message.

When I’m done praying for Dad this morning, I’ll pray for the rest of my family, friends and loved ones. Then I’ll pray for my enemies and the enemies of God’s people around the world. Then, I’ll pray for the California Supreme Court, the people of California, our President and his impending nominee for the High Court. Oh, and I’ll pray for our country and for countries around the world that are far worse off than our own.

That should keep me on balance—and get more done than if I spend a sleepless night fretting about all of this.

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

Let us pray . . .

This weekend I preached for two wonderful churches in rural Adams County, Ohio, right on the Kentucky border. Seaman United Methodist Church is a quintessential country congregation that meets in a white clapboard building with a spire and bell tower rising above the dappled sidewalks of sleepy, tree-lined Main Street. Neighbors to the over 100-year old congregation literally rock on their porches on lazy Sunday afternoons. Still, this church and one like it, the Union Hill Church up the way about ten miles are dynamos in the work of God.

Pastors Ken Johnson at Seaman and Phil Fulton at Union Hill have long been friends and great allies to Faith and Action. I met them almost ten years ago when both were leaders in the battle to preserve Ten Commandments monuments in front of public schools in their county. I went out to present them and other community leaders with our Ten Commandments Leadership Award and we all became fast friends. We’ve been together many times since, including in Alabama when then Chief Justice Roy Moore was punished for displaying the Ten Commandments in the Supreme Court there, and later in our own battle over the Ten Commandments sculpture in our own ministry center’s front garden.

When it comes to both their financial support for Faith and Action, and their personal involvement with us, these two churches have consistently outdone other congregations ten and one hundred times their sizes.

It’s getting harder and harder for me to leave Washington to visit our supporting churches, but we as a ministry, and I as an individual get so much from these relationships. The friendship and cooperation with the churches of Adams County (and there are more than these two) have been unusually beneficial, though. So, while it’s hard to get here–it’s an over-the-hills-through-the-woods-to-Grandmother’s-house kind of thing–I will always make time to minister to them, thank them and strengthen the bond we have out here. These are real people, hard working, Democrat and Republican, salt-of-the-earth, farmer, laborer, newly unemployed, but God-loving, God-fearing, precious, generous and really likable souls.

After 15 years on Capitol Hill, it does me good to be with the good folk of Adams County! Thank you one and all!

Your grateful missionary on Capitol Hill,

Rob +

PS. Check out Faith & Action’s photo gallery for pictures from this weekend’s events in Adams County.

As I write this I’m drying out after standing in the drenching rain hailing taxis to no avail. I finally packed it in and descended into the nearby Metro subway. The event that had me soaking on the sidewalk was worth the discomfort, though. Tonight I sat at table with a fascinating collection of people, including two members of Congress, dedicated to one thing: Encouraging Bible reading.

Yes, you read it correctly. In the room were highly successful businesspeople, extraordinary public servants–including the only man to have headed both the FBI and the CIA, William Webster–and two of the most interesting clergymen in the country, congressional chaplains Daniel Coughlin and Barry Black. The two members of Congress, Rep. Heath Schuler, a Democrat from North Carolina and Sen. George Voinovich, Republican former mayor of Cleveland and past Ohio governor.

Sitting in a room at Washington’s prestigious Metropolitan Club, just a stone’s throw from the White House, listening to influential Americans advocate the reading of Holy Scripture is yet another hopeful sign. The weather outside was a metaphor for so much of what’s going wrong around us, but the exercise inside the dining room tonight was a ray of sunshine.

Even after 15 years on Capitol Hill, I haven’t become so cynical to believe that Bible reading won’t do us any good. Bible reading will always do us good. The more reading, the more good.

I pray tonight’s event induces more of our national leaders to read the Word of God, for “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (Romans 10:16)

Let more reading begin!

Be back later . . .

Rob

“Listen to your father, who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old.” Proverbs 23:22

There are plenty of reasons to honor mothers, only the least of which is the Hallmark holiday. Still, Mother’s Day in America has a great history and preserves one the most honorable practices in our society: recognizing and affirming the incomparable role Mom has played in all our lives.

Of course, plenty of my friends no longer have their mothers with them. Some are estranged because of painful pasts. Still others, like my friend and former Colorado State Supreme Court judge, Gregory Scott, have lost the ability to communicate their love and devotion to Mom because of her Alzheimer’s, dementia or other illness.

Yet, I can think of friends in all these situations who none-the-less take the time and effort to show their affection, respect and devotion to the first woman in their lives.

This weekend I made my pilgrimage home to Mom. She’ll turn 88 this year and is wheelchair bound in a nursing home. Thankfully she’s with my Dad. They’ve shared 55 years together and are still passionately in love. Dad, as you know by now, is in the terminal stages of cancer. Mom treasures every hour with him, knowing it could be the last.

Because of his special care, Dad requires an enormous amount of attention these days. Often it means during family visits Mom gets short-changed, but she never complains.

Yesterday was different. Of course, Dad got everything he needed, but Mom was the focus. My two older sisters who live nearby, their grown kids and I lavished Mom with attention. Notwithstanding her easy exhaustion, she enjoyed every minute of it. She got flowers, clothes and hand-made (well, computer generated) cards and lots of hugs and kisses. What made her ecstatic, though, was the micro refrigerator we bought her so she can have her favorite chilled drinks right by her side—especially the Ensure nutrient drink she consumes like a milkshake! (She loves it cold and the nursing home always delivers it room temp!)

The crown of the day for me was completely something else. At mealtime, Mom’s Parkinson’s disease and post-polio syndrome (she has lifelong partial paralysis due to childhood polio), are most evident. This weekend she trembled so uncontrollably she couldn’t feed herself. So, for the first time, I fed Mom like a baby. It was a level of intimacy I have never experienced with her, and it filled me with memories of Mom’s doting on me as a little boy. Now the tables were turned. She’s too weak to eat and talk, so we just looked at each other, as one spoonful after the other went from her plate to her mouth. It was the most precious moments I’ve ever spent with her.

Most of all, though, feeding Mom brought God’s wondrous circle of life and living into vivid reality for me. This is the system the Creator Himself designed. This is why we have the Commandment to “Honor thy father and thy mother.” It is the way it’s supposed to work.

Ecclesiastes, “The Preacher,” tells us there’s “a time to be born and a time to die.” This journey through my last earthly days with Mom and Dad is not an easy transition, but it is a naturally God-ordained one. It’s filled with a whole new palet of emotions, some euphoric and some mournful, but all enriching.

What a Mothers Day this was for me, my family, and, I hope, my Mom. There was a lot of love in what could have been an otherwise sad room at the nursing home. There was a lot of love, so, there was a lot of God, for, “God is love.”

I’m sure that’s just how God meant for it to be.

I’d love to hear from you about your journeys with aging parents, so I can join you in them, at least in prayer.

Your Missionary to Capitol Hill, Washington, DC,

Rob Schenck

Reporters and others often ask me, “What’s a day like for a minister to government officials in Washington, DC?”

Yesterday was the epitome of an answer to that question:

8:15  Caught a flight back from Buffalo, NY, where I had visited my ailing parents and had driven to nearby Toronto, Ontario, Canada to address the annual Canadian conference of the Evangelical Church Alliance.

9:00: Aboard the plane I recorded my daily video blog post. This one was with free-lance writer Rick Kern who “happened” to be on the same flight–and, who has done a lot of writing for us in the past.

9:35  Drove to Capitol Hill from Baltimore airport, uploading the video blog along the way. (Thanks to Verizon mobile Internet!)

10:45 Arrived at Faith and Action ministry center, quickly changed into a suit, and ran out to catch a cab over to the US House of Representatives Cannon Office Building for National Day of Prayer event.

11:00 Met up with my chief of program, Peggy Birchfield-Neinaber in the Cannon Office Building Caucus Room. Was escorted to front-row seat near Dr. James Dobson and his wife, Shirley, chair of the National Day of Prayer events.

12:00 Stood with the Dobsons, numerous members of Congress and other Christian leaders during a news conference on America’s Judeo-Christian heritage.

12:30 Ran over the Capitol Hill Club to give brief address to a luncheon of Christian business leaders.

1:15 Headed over by foot to the US Capitol to preside at the closing of the 2009 US Capitol Bible Reading Marathon. (I had opened the Marathon Sunday night.)

2:30 Headed over by foot to the Supreme Court to convene the only National Day of Prayer observance allowed on the High Court’s property.

3:00 Headed over by foot to a nearby office for a classified meeting related to our Capitol Hill outreach.

4:00 Convened a ministerial council to examine a candidate for clergy licensure by the Evangelical Church Alliance.

6:00 Working dinner to debrief with top-level staff on the day’s activities.

8:00 Collapsed in my apartment next door to the ministry center!

This doesn’t describe a “typical day,” but they’re all generally pretty close to it. Thanks for your prayers–they sustain me!

Your grateful (and sometimes exhausted) missionary to Capitol Hill,

Rob Schenck

If you’ve attempted to view the live stream video of this year’s Bible Reading Marathon at the US Capitol, you’re probably as disappointed as I am. The constant deluge of cold rain knocked us off the air almost immediately. In fact, we had serious technical problems due to weather from the very beginning, missing the dedication ceremony and only getting a few hours covered before the US Capitol police shut down our power out of safety concerns.

I blamed it all on the farmers! (You know, they’re always praying for rain!) Anyway, the Marathon did launch right on schedule, thank God! After presiding over the opening ceremonies, I was also the first up to read. 20-year Marathon organizers Pastor Michael Hall and his wife Terri asked me to read Genesis 1:1 in the original Hebrew, to which I obliged, of course. Then it was on to the next two chapters, after which other hearty souls took up the torch of God’s Word. Come rain or shine (and there’ll be a lot more of the former), volunteer readers from every walk of life will declare the Biblical record non-stop, verbatim and without interruption for a total of 90 straight hours!

The steady rain and cold temperatures drastically reduced the number of passers by who normally stop and listen. Still, we had a fair number of tourists climbing off busses and making their way to the famed West Terrace Steps of the Capitol (where the President swears the oath of office on Inauguration Day)—and Voila! There we were with our impressive podium shaped as an open Bible.

In spite of no sound equipment this year (new regulations), a natural sound box was created by the natural amphitheater configuration of the plaza, with its acoustic-friendly horseshoe walls. I figured if the great preachers of yesteryear could belt it out without microphones and speakers, so could we! And indeed we have! The reading can be heard from yards away. The transfixed gazes of onlookers huddled under umbrellas or dripping wet, testify to the Bible’s unmatched power.

We hope an expected break in the weather will let us get up and streaming on the web again sometime today. Please check back every so often. The timing will be as much a surprise to us as it will be for you. Meanwhile, I’ll keep updating you here and we’ll periodically post special recorded video features about the Marathon and other happenings as well.

Beginning today we expect members of Congress to join us as readers. It’s with a certain impish delight that I watch otherwise very capable communicators stumble over those endless lists of unpronounceable names in the Historical Books. (God knows how to keep all of us humble!)

Thanks for your prayers and continued support. The Bible Reading Marathon at the US Capitol could not happen without you!

We love and appreciate you in the Lord!

Back later . . .

Rob

Just as we were getting ready to launch the 20th annual U.S. Capitol Bible Reading Marathon, word reached me that Jack Kemp had died. Mr. Kemp was a former congressman from a district not far from were I grew up. I knew him mostly from his reputation as a star quarterback for our home team the Buffalo Bills. After Congress, he served as secretary of health and human services for the first President Bush. He retired from politics following a failed vice-presidential bid with Bob Dole in 1996.

More than anything else, though, I knew Jack Kemp as a really decent guy who loved God, loved his family and loved his country. He was a true “compassionate conservative,” often pushing the envelope of the term “conservative.” He championed many social justice issues, including help for under served and blighted urban neighborhoods. In a statement, President Barack Obama said, “Jack Kemp was a man who could fiercely advocate his own beliefs and principles while also remembering the lessons he learned years earlier on the football field: that bitter divisiveness between race and class and station only stood in the way of the ‘common aim of a team to win.’”

Jack and his wife, Joanne, attended a great church in the Washington area, the highly evangelical and Bible-centered Fourth Presbyterian Church in Bethesda, Maryland. They were also involved with Prison Fellowship, the outreach founded by “Born Again” author Charles Colson. Together with Senator Joe Lieberman, Mr. Kemp was the very first to accept our presentation of a Ten Commandments plaque as part of our ongoing Ten Commandments Project here in Washington.

Post script: One of my earliest Christian experiences was when Joanne Kemp came to the Christian coffeehouse my brother and I helped found as teenagers. That was 35 years ago and I remember vividly how Joanne went out with our tract distribution team. The Kemps have always been the real deal.

“Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” (Matthew 25:21)

Every president that gets to nominate a new member to the U.S. Supreme Court leaves a mark on 1/3 of the Federal Government. Most chief executives intend to pick candidates that reflect their own political philosophies. Gerald Ford appointed John Paul Stevens, one of the most liberal members of the High Court. George H.W. Bush picked two polar opposites, the soon-to-retire David Souter–another super liberal–and Clarence Thomas, arguably the most conservative justice. President Clinton predictably named two liberals, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer, although Breyer has surprised some with somewhat moderate decisions.

Most recently, George W. Bush anchored the conservative wing of the Court by successfully shepherding now Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito to their seats. Now, President Barack Obama will get his opportunity to tack down the other wing. While current and past justices prove outcomes of the nomination process are hardly guaranteed, it would seem Obama judges on every level will uphold the pro-abortion decisions Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, generally support same-sex marriage and likely limit the public acknowledgments of God.

I thought a piece by my long-time friend and ordained Catholic deacon Keith Fournier might help us get started. You can read it here. Let me know what you think.