President Joe Biden’s top judicial nominee served on the board of a Maryland school that opposes gay marriage and abortion.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, who Biden on Tuesday nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, sat for a year on an advisory board for Montrose Christian School, a K-12 private academy in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. The school, a ministry of the Montrose Baptist Church, faced a period of financial turmoil during Jackson’s 2010-2011 tenure.
BIDEN TAPS KETANJI BROWN JACKSON TO REPLACE MERRICK GARLAND ON FEDERAL APPEALS COURT
Like many organizations broadly identifying as Baptist, at the time of Jackson’s involvement, Montrose Christian held traditional views on issues related to sexuality and abortion. In its mission statement, the school claimed it would impart a “Christian character” on its students, preparing them “to engage the culture, unshaken by the various worldviews, and able to defend the faith in intellectual and non-embarrassing ways.”
The school’s longer form explanation of its beliefs revealed that for it, a Christian character meant opposing “racism, every form of greed, selfishness, and vice, and all forms of sexual immorality, including adultery, homosexuality, and pornography.” It also stated that Christians should care for the poor, the needy, and especially the unborn, opposing all forms of abortion.
“We should speak on behalf of the unborn and contend for the sanctity of all human life from conception to natural death,” the school’s belief statement said.
The school also weighed in on an institution that at the time was gaining widespread popularity in Maryland: gay marriage. In a section devoted to “the family,” the belief statement defined marriage as “the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime.”
That union, the statement added, is modeled on Christ’s relationship with the church, meaning that, like Christ, the husband has a “God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family.”
“A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ,” it continued.
Gay marriage was adopted in Maryland in 2013 after a 2012 statewide referendum made Maryland the first state to legalize the practice by popular vote. The Supreme Court nationalized gay marriage in 2015 with its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Montrose Christian’s longform statement was adopted from the beliefs of the Southern Baptist Convention, with which both the Montrose Baptist Church and its school are affiliated. The church’s current belief statement contains much of the same language regarding abortion and marriage.
Jackson did not respond to a request for comment.
Jackson, who is widely viewed as a Supreme Court contender, is not the first judicial nominee to sit on the board of a school with traditional beliefs. Justice Amy Coney Barrett last year faced intense scrutiny after she revealed a brief stint serving on the board of Trinity School at Greenlawn, a Christian school in South Bend, Indiana, that also opposes abortion and gay marriage.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Like Montrose Christian, Trinity’s website hosts a belief statement that lays out how the school intends to form the minds of its students. Barrett, a member of People of Praise, the group that runs the school, deflected criticism during her confirmation hearing, saying that she could set aside her personal beliefs while making legal judgments.
