For pro-life advocates, Amy Coney Barrett isn’t just an added vote to an already conservative majority on the Supreme Court, she is one of the most conservative judges in recent history. The contoversy is two-fold.
On one hand, those who are not fundamentalist Christians are concerned with “the dogma which lives loudly inside” her – to paraphrase Sen. Diane Feinstein of Calif.
On the other hand, Chris Hedges, journalist and ordained minister, points out in Consortium News that the Christian Right may be content to focus on her opposition to abortion and membership in People of Praise, a far-right group which began as a Catholic offshoot group, because this distracts from her bias in favor of corporate power.
People of Praise opposes the right to any abortion. Female members are reportedly expected to obey their husbands’ wishes in all things and provide sex for them at any time. They are also required to have as many children as possible.
Barrett’s History
Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a 48-year-old Louisiana native and mother of seven, was appointed to the Supreme Court on Oct 27, 2020 by President Donald Trump in an historically expedient manner. She graduated from Notre Dame in 1997 with Juris Doctor summa cum laude. Her education preceding Norte Dame included Catholic girls’ high school St. Mary’s Dominican in New Orleans and Presbyterian-affiliated Rhodes College, a liberal arts college in Tennessee from which Barrett graduated magna cum laude.
According to an Oct. 6 article by Associated Press, “As a young law student, Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett lived in a house owned by co-founders of People of Praise Kevin and Dorothy Ranaghan, who co-wrote ‘Catholic Pentecostals,’ a 1969 book about the religious movement that helped spawn the South Bend group, a religious community that teaches that men are divinely ordained as the ‘heads’ of both family and faith.”
“Current People of Praise members, including Amy Barrett’s father, told the AP that suggesting male members 
dominate their wives is a ‘misunderstanding’ of the group’s teachings and that women are free to make their own decisions,” reports AP.
Barrett’s connection with the religious organization was a concern to many in the U.S. despite the fact that she had not discussed her role in the group and didn’t list them among her affiliations.
In her academic career at Notre Dame, Barrett taught federal courts, constitutional law and statutory interpretation. She also signed a 2012 “statement of protest” condemning the accommodation that the Obama administration created for religious employers who were subject to the Affordable Care Act’s birth control mandate. The statement lamented that the accommodation “changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the assault on individual liberty and the rights of conscience which gave rise to the controversy.”
Between 2002 and 2017, she was a member of The Federalist Society, a conservative group, according to Media Bias/Fact Check. In May 2017, Barret was nominated by Trump for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Barrett’s first article for law review was written concerning Catholic judges and their adjudication of capital cases.
According to SCOTUSblog, “When questioned about the article at her 7th Circuit confirmation hearing, Barrett stressed that she did not believe it was ‘lawful for a judge to impose personal opinions, from whatever source they derive, upon the law,’ and she pledged that her views on abortion ‘or any other question will have no bearing on the discharge of my duties as a judge.’ She acknowledged that, if she were instead being nominated to serve as a federal trial judge, she ‘would not enter an order of execution,’ but she assured senators that she did not intend ‘as a blanket matter to recuse myself in capital cases if I am confirmed.’”
In a 2013 law review article, Barrett declared that she was not beholden to the doctrine of stare decisis, which asks a court to follow the precedents set in similar cases. Barrett wrote, “I tend to agree with those who say that a justice’s duty is to the Constitution and that it is thus more legitimate for her to enforce her best understanding of the Constitution rather than a precedent she thinks clearly in conflict with it.”
Barrett as SCOTUS
Barrett’s nomination and the subsequent confirmation by a slim majority of 52 to 48 senate votes gave pause to some who observed her career primarily because of her very conservative leanings. Democracy Now wrote “we look at how an emboldened 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court could dramatically loosen gun laws, hurt immigrant communities and play a possibly central role in deciding a close presidential election”.
According a Washington Post article dated Sept. 30, “An analysis by The Associated Press shows that People of Praise erased numerous records from its website during the summer of 2017 that referred to Barrett and included photos of her and her family. At the time, Barrett was on Trump’s short list for the high court seat that eventually went to Justice Brett Kavanaugh.”
People of Praise in Corvallis
There is a Corvallis connection to People of Praise which made news. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now interviewed Coral Anika Theill, an author of a memoir Bonsheá: Making Light of the Dark, who was also a member of Corvallis People of Praise from 1979 to 1984 and is now speaking out against the organization.
“I experienced abuse and torture by my husband,” Theil said, “and the cult leaders, as well as shunning, shaming and a smear campaign against me when I escaped and left. For safety, I legally changed my name, and I’ve lived under a state address protection program from my ex-husband for the past 20 years.”
Theil recounted many difficult times.
“Even though I left the People of Praise cult, I didn’t have any rights, due to being married to my husband, who was a cult member. I was under the authority of my husband and his authoritarian head, Ed Brown,” she said. “Under their authority, I was forced to attend meetings, but because I had defied leadership and their authority, I was forced to sit on the floor outside of their meetings in the hallway at the St. Mary’s Catholic Church.”
Immediately after a surgery she underwent in 1984, Thiel recalls, “I was forced to attend a People of Praise women’s meeting, or handmaidens’ meetings. I had a head that was also woman, besides my husband. They wanted to go shopping, and I couldn’t, due to returning from surgery and feeling weak. I left the meeting to go home and rest, as my doctor had ordered. I was met by my husband and forced into the car, kidnapped against my will, where I was driven to the cult leader’s home. I was interrogated until wee hours of the morning and psychologically abused. The next morning, the community was informed to shun me.”
The Women’s Coalition published a letter Thiel sent to the U.S. Senate on Oct 8, 2020 which requested the right to testify against Barrett becoming a Supreme Court Justice due to her affiliation with the People of Praise group. The letter read in part: “Although men have ultimate authority in the sect, women leaders, like Amy, are complicit in the subordination and mistreatment of lower status women like me.”
Thiel wrote, “The People of Praise Community that I was forced by my husband to join, was founded in South Bend, Indiana in 1971. I met and attended meetings with the founder, Paul DeCelles and attended a retreat which his wife, Jeanne DeCelles, led. They teach that men have total authority over their wives. Their policies are based on the domination of men and submission of women. They assert that men’s power is absolute and instill fear in women that great harm will come to whoever questions and/or defies that power.”
Thiel’s letter continued with, “Head coordinators and their wives from South Bend, Indiana, Amy’s group, would visit our Community periodically presenting at retreats. Paul and Jeannie DeCelles and Bud and Sharon Rose were frequent speakers. Bud and Sharon Rose eventually moved from South Bend to live in Corvallis for a year, so there was much coordination and interaction between the two communities.
People of Praise
On their website, People of Praise call themselves “a charismatic Christian community. We admire the first Christians who were led by the Holy Spirit to form a community. Those early believers put their lives and their possessions in common, and ‘there were no needy persons among them.’“
According to their website, the organization consists of 17 branches, some outside of the U.S. They fund and manage Christian schools of various levels; in Oregon People of Praise founded Trinity Academy, a middle/high school in Portland.
The Corvallis Advocate attempted to contact the local branch of People of Praise to have their opinion on Barrett’s appointment and the importance of Barrett’s faith in her professional activities, but the organization declined the interview stating that they were “currently taking a break from interviews.”
By Joanna Rosińska
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