Civics lessons from the bench

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

The United States faces a crisis of “cultural catechesis,” and needs judges who can help educate the public about civic values, Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said this week during the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch.

Sasse said the country’s founders had “a shared framework for ordered liberty where we protect each other’s rights … but we debate big and important questions … and you fight about questions but fight free from violence, and so we protect each other’s rights to argue and to dissent.”

John Stonestreet said this week that judges at all levels of the court system can play a pivotal role in teaching that shared framework to the American public. He recalled a time when he was called to jury duty on the “worst possible day,” but a local judge taught him a valuable lesson.

“Before everything begins, a judge walked into this room of 500 people and talked about what jury duty was—he talked about why this is so important to the American experience,” Stonestreet said. “At the end of that 10-minute talk, my attitude had completely changed.”

The United States needs judges and Supreme Court justices who can provide, “some sort of starting point where we can all agree what sort of project America is,” Stonestreet said. He added that Gorsuch, “really does see his role not only in providing decisions but in also providing some education about what sort of place we are here in America.”

Listen to “Culture Friday” on the March 24, 2017, edition of The World and Everything in It.