The Personal is Political. The Political is Personal.

 
Christian(ist) Court TV

I've been for a few months now disappointed by how difficult it is (especially given my crappy research skills and inherent, deep laziness) to find sources that try seriously to explain or describe, if the USA or parts thereof were reestablished as an explicitly Christian(ist) state, what the new country's legal system would look like. How would a system of "Biblical courts" work? What would a trial presided over by a "Christian judge" look like?

So, I appreciated my discovery of a proposed "Court TV"-style program entitled "Almighty Justice: Where God Almighty Is Judge, Jury, and Savior."

I am a little surprised that such a television program does not already exist. Creating one seems but a short, easy step. Like "Judge Judy" and her ilk, each episode would be a matter of binding arbitration. "Biblically-based" (Christian) arbitration already exists in some contexts. For example, the Northlake Christian School in Louisiana has used it, saying that the people who work there will settle their disputes in conformity with a few   Bible   passages. How'd that turn out? See here, here (.pdf) and (as of last week) here (.pdf). Ohio has also had occasion to grapple with such things.

Would I watch such a television program? Yes, at least once. And then in the years thereafter, probably for a few minutes at a time every now and then while surfing channels. However, generally, I would inaudibly applaud the existence of such a program as an educational and popularizing mechanism, one that would provide the general public with a concrete context in which to think about and discuss (to the extent it is not already doing so unbeknownst to me, to whom the quantity of unbeknownst information is staggering) whether they would genuinely want to live in a country like that.

posted by TiR at 7:13 AM