A Christian nationalist organization that is vetting potential Supreme Court nominees for their adherence to the group’s biblical worldview standard says that previous Supreme Court rulings have invited God’s punishment on the U.S., and that President Donald Trump must name the “right” people to fill any vacancies “to escape national judgment.”
AFA Action, the political arm of the American Family Association, distributed an email last Thursday and again on Tuesday warning of “fearful consequences” if Trump doesn’t use any future Supreme Court nominations to restore a national relationship with God that AFA says was broken by SCOTUS rulings upholding church-state separation.
“America desperately needs our Supreme Court Justices to turn back to God,” declares the fundraising email, which comes at a time of widespread speculation about the likelihood of one or more justices resigning this year. Highlighting the uncertainty of justices’ intentions is the fact that on the same day AFA’s email said a vacancy was likely soon, the allied Family Research Council published an article saying it is unlikely that Justice Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas would be retiring soon.
AFA Action’s Center for Judicial Renewal is run by a long-time right-wing judicial activist Phillip Jauregui, who also runs the Judicial Action Group. Jauregui was so convinced that Amy Coney Barrett was God’s anointed choice to fill the second vacancy during Trump’s term that he denounced the eventual nominee Brett Kavanaugh as a “usurper.” Jauregui celebrated when Trump named her to fill the next vacancy.
Right Wing Watch first reported in 2023 on Jauregui’s project to evaluate conservative judges and legal figures who are considered SCOTUS prospects based on their Christian faith and biblical worldview and published a “red list” of those who don’t meet AFA’s standard.
AFA Action wants the president and senators to adopt this unconstitutional religious test for Supreme Court justices and other federal judges. Tuesday’s email asks for donations “to help AFA Action provide research and guidance to the Trump administration and the U.S. Senate to select the right nominees for upcoming vacancies.”
This week’s email says that the Center for Judicial Renewal:
- Pours thousands of hours of research into potential nominees to the federal courts, including the Supreme Court.
- Discovers who the godly, constitutional, courageous potential justices are. We identify weak candidates who would be disappointing justices.
- Uses our networks with the Trump administration and the U.S. Senate to promote the good nominees and to oppose the weak ones.
The email offers an enticement for donors: a copy of Jauregui’s book, “The Parable of the Prodigal Court,” which was published in March.
The book includes a foreword by dominionist New Apostolic Reformation figure Dutch Sheets, who writes that the Holy Spirit told him 30 years ago that Satan had established a stronghold at the Supreme Court “from which to implement his plans to control our nation,” plans that Sheets and Jauregui say included legal abortion and marriage equality.
Jauregui’s book begins with a story about praying for the Supreme Court one day in 2017—a court had he “despised” as being “dominated by a bunch of arrogant, self-service, corrupt, dishonorable, lying, filthy lawyers” whose “lies had the tragic result of separating us from God and His blessings.”
But that day, Jauregui writes, he was struck with a sense of God’s love for the court and desire for it to return to him like the prodigal son in the well-known biblical story. “Yes, I believe God wants to take the Supreme Court—the one I hated with all of my heart because it had so wrecked this nation—and use it to save the nation,” he writes.
Jauregui, who had advocated for Amy Coney Barrett so vigorously, writes in his book that Trump’s announcement of her nomination to fill the third vacancy in his first term—which took place the same day as a major Christian nationalist rally on the National Mall—was “a sacred moment.”
Jauregui’s book also describes a Feast of Consecration that he and Sheets organized in the fall of 2023 in which they and other prayer warriors enacted a “consecration of the Supreme Court back to God.” But that is not enough, he writes. “The Court must seek restoration, relationship, and submission to God. They are the ones who left the Father and, therefore, they are the ones who must return to Him in humility.”
Jauregui also reveals in his book that while his Judicial Action Group was publicly opposing the Supreme Court confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, they were privately praying for her nomination and confirmation because they believe she is “known to the Lord” and could be “a prodigal.”
In the early days of the second Trump administration, Jauregui led MAGA prayer warriors in asking God to stop judges from ruling against Trump and bring them “into alignment with your will to preserve the proper powers of the presidency.”
