One of the core constituencies of Donald Trump’s political base are Evangelicals. Many have pondered why that is. A common answer to this question that Trump will appoint origninalist judges to the Supreme Court. Indeed the Supreme Court has been a priority for many Evangelical voters, and one of the few issues the Republican Party will not bend on even if they falter in their quest to appoint originalist judges.
So this begs the question: why do Evangelicals prefer originalist judges on the Supreme Court? I created this video as a means to answer this question in under four minutes. The answer is far simpler than one might think and far more related to matters of faith. But first let us define what an originalist judge is. An originalist is someone who believes in using the original intentions of the Founding Fathers in their interpretation of the US Constitution. Therefore, in order to understand the US Constitution, one must understand the history, the Founding Fathers, and English Common Law which believed that God was the source of law.
This is similar to how Christians read the Bible. We understand the context, the genre, the author, and the original language all so that we can come to a proper interpretation of the text. In Christianity origninalism is what we call “authorial intent.” Otherwise, we can make Scripture say what we want it to say. This is very similar to how the Supreme Court has ruled in the past on countless occasions. The politicians on the bench ruled as they saw fit, not according to the US Constitution’s authorial intent.
At the end of the day, the fight over the meaning of the Constitution is really a hermeneutics debate. And Christians who faithfully read their Bibles also faithfully read the US Constitution.
