Rusty Bowers, the Speaker of the Arizona State House of Representatives, was the lead witness on June 21 before the Congressional committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. During his testimony, he stated that “it is a tenet of my faith that the Constitution is divinely inspired.”
While I admired his conviction not to violate his oath or go against his views about the Constitution, I must adamantly disagree with his view that God was somehow involved in the drafting of that historical document. This may be a tenet of faith for him and other members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons.) But I am unaware of any Christian denomination that shares that view.
I do not think God was involved in the three-fifths clause in Article 1 dealing with taxation and white political representation that was the basis upon which Southern states agreed to ratify the document.
I do not think God was responsible for the often overlooked phrase following the three-fifths clause that says, “Indians not to be counted.” If that was divinely inspired, then you can only assume that God consented to the ways in which Native Americans have been treated over the history of this country — ranging from the theft of their land, to the so-called “Indian Schools” that attempted to rob them of their culture, to the sports teams that used their image and tribal names as mascots and logos, thus robbing them of their dignity.
I do not think slavery was divinely inspired, and yet the U.S. Constitution wrote several protections for slaveholders whose enslaved persons had run away. The Transatlantic slave trade was allowed to continue twenty (20) years after the Constitution had been adopted.
If the Constitution is divinely inspired, then it is ungodly when some people seek to subvert or overturn the Reconstruction Amendments (13th, 14th, and 15th.)
I also find it hard to understand Mr. Bowers, who said he would vote again for Donald Trump, who tried to subvert that very Constitution Bowers so reveres by refusing to accept the results of an election and failing to engage in the peaceful transfer of power.
I embrace the language of II Timothy and II Peter that the Bible was written under divine inspiration. That accounts for its longevity as a source of comfort, challenge, and correction.
I agree with Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who reminded us that the values and views of our nation’s political founders have needed to be updated 25 times in two hundred years.
No books have been added to the Bible since the Council of Nicaea in the 4th century CE. That is what divine inspiration looks like.
When I am lying on my sick or my death bed, please do not read to me from the U.S. Constitution. That is not where I hear the voice of God.
• • •• • •
—
The Rev. Marvin A. McMickle, pastor emeritus of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio, retired in 2019 as president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York, where he had served since 2011.
