Restoring U.S. Constitutional Government—One Court at a Time

President Donald Trump’s first Supreme Court appointment, Neil Gorsuch, recently marked his inaugural year on the bench, and it was exactly what conservatives had hoped for, according to a column in The Hill.

Southern Evangelical Seminary (SES, ses.edu) president and evangelical leader Dr. Richard Land agrees and goes even further by stating that President Trump is restoring America’s courts—one judge at a time.

“President Trump has kept no promise more faithfully during his presidency than his promise to appoint strict constructionist, original intent jurists to the courts,” Land said. “We all know about the marvelous nomination and confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. But now preparation has met opportunity.

“So far, President Trump has nominated, and the Senate has confirmed, 14 appeals court judges and 14 district court judges. Currently, there are approximately 150 federal district and appeals court vacancies, and that has gone up from approximately 100 when President Trump took office. No court will be more impacted than the notorious Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the most liberal appeals court in the country as well as the largest, with 29 judges and covering more than a nine-state area, including California and the entire Pacific coast.”

Land added that the death of infamously liberal Judge Stephen Reinhardt highlights this opportunity. Reinhardt’s death means there are now eight vacancies on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Mr. Trump can fill them, turning the Ninth Circuit into a much more conservative, constitutional court than it has been in the recent past,” Land said. “We should pray for divine wisdom for President Trump, for his advisers and for the senators who will be making these choices. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rein in the federal judiciary and to restore constitutional government to the United States.”

Topics like these are explored in SES’ new “Philosophy, Politics and Economics” program, with the first eight-week session underway and continuing through May 4. After many months of planning, the PPE program will train pastors, undergraduate and graduate students and lay people interested in a Judeo-Christian perspective of the vital interconnectedness of philosophy, politics and economics.

The PPE program, which is offered primarily at just a few top-tier universities around the world, introduces students to the Christian worldview of how various genres of philosophy, politics and economics intersect, and focusing on the works of Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Karl Marx, Thomas Aquinas, Robert Sirico, Jay Richards and others.

Land, one of the instructors, served for 25 years as the president of The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the Southern Baptist Convention’s social entity assigned to address social, moral and ethical concerns, with particular attention to their impact on American families and their faith. Land is also part of President Trump’s advisory board for faith issues.

SES has also announced the 2018 National Conference on Christian Apologetics, which will focus on the theme of “The God Who Is” on Oct. 12-13. The seminary will welcome top thinkers, scholars, authors, apologists and scientific minds, including Ravi Zacharias, to its 25th annual conference, which will be held at Calvary Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. {eoa}