Name: Amy Coney Barrett purposely hid her membership in religious group
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Amy Coney Barrett purposely hid her membership in religious group

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&nbsp;Friday, Sep 25th 2020| 3.7k President 's frontrunner for the Supreme Court seat hid her membership of the conservative religious group that inspired the hit TV show The Handmaid's Tale when she was first up for a seat on the Federal bench, DailyMail.com has learned.And now Amy Coney Barrett is likely to face withering scrutiny as to why she did not reveal her ties to the group — which insists women must obey their husbands in all matters — when she was grilled by senators three years ago.Barrett and her husband Jesse — and their parents — are members of People of Praise, a small group that teaches that wives have to obey their husbands in everything — even the way they vote.Jesse, 46, is a lawyer in a private practice in South Bend, Indiana, their adopted hometown. He has kept a low public profile.&nbsp;Democratic senators are almost certain to bring up her affiliation if she is to be nominated and goes before the Justice Committee later this year.&nbsp;. Trump said he will announce his nomination on Saturday.And one of the main questions could be whether Barrett, 48, deliberately concealed her People of Praise membership from senators when she was before the same committee in September 2017 after Trump nominated her to the Chicago-based Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Her ties to People of Praise only became public when the broke the story three weeks after her confirmation hearing, but before the committee had voted. The committee eventually split along party lines to confirm her. Three Democrats voted with the Republican majority in the vote in the full Senate.Potential federal judges have to fill out a lengthy questionnaire for senators who are considering their nomination.&nbsp;One of the questions calls for them to list of 'all professional, business, fraternal, scholarly, civic, charitable or other organizations' that they have belonged since high school.&nbsp;Barrett listed various committees she had been on at Notre Dame as well as the conservative Federalist Society, the Morris Park Country Club in South Bend and she said she had been on the board of Trinity School. She did not say that Trinity is run by People of Praise.Louisiana-born Barrett has never publicly commented on whether she is a member of the group.&nbsp;People of Praise spokesperson Sean Connolly told DailyMail.com: 'Like most religious communities, People of Praise leaves it up to its members to decide whether to publicly disclose their involvement in our community.'After DailyMail.com discovered online a picture of two of her children, Vivian and Tess, at a community celebration picnic in a 2007 issue of the group's magazine, Vine &amp; Branches, the magazine's entire archive was taken down. Connolly did not reply to a question as to why.Vivian is one of two children Barrett and her husband adopted from Haiti. They also have a boy with Down Syndrome. Vivian, Tess and another daughter, Emma, sat with their mother at her 2017 confirmation hearing.The Times said many articles that mentioned Barrett's membership were removed from the Vine &amp; Branches website around the time of her Court of Appeals confirmation hearing. Among them was an announcement that she and her husband were adopting and a photograph of her at a People of Praise gathering.'Every nominee for the federal bench is required to fill out a detailed questionnaire for the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ms. Barrett did not list any religious affiliations on her questionnaire, though many nominees have in the past,' the paper reported.It quoted a Boston College Law School professor as saying: 'I'm concerned that this was not sufficiently transparent. We have to disclose everything from the Elks Club to the alumni associations we belong to — why didn't she disclose this?'A message left with the Seventh Circuit asking for comment from Judge Barrett was not returned. People of Praise was founded in 1971.&nbsp;Most of its members are Roman Catholics although the group does allow in members of other Christian faiths. Many of its leaders, including Barrett and her husband, have ties to Notre Dame, the Catholic university that dominates South Bend. They are both graduates.&nbsp;The potential Supreme Court Justice taught constitutional law there. Jesse Barrett, an attorney in private practice, is an adjunct professor.The group's website says: 'People of Praise is 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.'The group has just 1,700 adult members, Connolly said. Its largest branch and headquarters is in South Bend.In 2018, Barrett's father Mike Coney wrote an online biography of himself on his church's website, saying he joined People of Praise because he and his wife Linda 'felt a call to live life in a close knit Christian community…one that would help form our children into good Christians and strengthen our marriage and family.'According to numerous reports members are expected to live close to one another and pay a minimum of 5% of their income to the group. They are asked to 'covenant' themselves to the group and are expected to attend weekly meetings.All male and single female member of People of Praise are assigned a personal advisor of their own sex — originally called 'heads' for men and 'handmaids' for women, although the 'handmaid' title was dropped after the runaway success of the Hulu series and replaced with 'woman leader.'Married women, such as Barrett, are 'headed' by their husbands.The advisors are said to give direction on who a member should date or even marry, how to raise children and, whether to take a new job and where to live. Margaret Atwood, the author of The Handmaid's Tale, has repeatedly said her futuristic novel was inspired by male-dominated religious sects. In the novel, women's bodies are governed and treated as property of the state.Although she has never singled out People of Praise, she told in 1986: 'There is a sect now, a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect, which calls the women handmaids. They don't go in for polygamy of this kind but they do threaten the handmaids according to the biblical verse I use in the book — sit down and shut up.'She said she put off writing the book for three years because she thought it was too crazy. 'Then two things happened. I started noticing that a lot of the things I thought I was more or less making up were now happening, and indeed more of them have happened since the publication of the book.'Emily DeClerq Flannery, a former member of People of Praise told thein 2018 that she was spied on by members of the group and eventually expelled for dating a man without permission when she was 18.'It's very much a Big Brother type of thing,' said Flannery who was 34 at the time of the interview.Flannery said the group does not allow dating until a member 'prays through your state of mind.''That means you take time to do a lot of praying and discerning, and either God tells you yes, you are open for marriage, or no, you are going to be single for the Lord,' she said. 'You are not allowed to date unless you have discerned that you are open for marriage, and that was unheard of for an 18-year-old to do. I had not done that, so I was not allowed.' Flannery admitted she did break the group's rule by dating. 'But these are 18-year-olds you are talking about. They said, 'You may not come back to this community until you get your life in order,' and then they left.'She said she was also confronted about drinking alcohol at a party and discovered her name on a list of teens, organized by how many drinks each had consumed. That list was distributed to the teens' 'heads.''It was pretty intense,' she said. 'They're very watchful of their people. They report things to your heads if they see you out doing things you're not supposed to be doing.'DailyMail.com's attempts to reach Flannery — who rejoined a separate People of Praise branch when she went off to university —were not successful.Amy Vivian Coney, the oldest of seven children, was born and raised in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie, Louisiana. Her father, Mike, was an attorney for Shell and her mother Linda a homemaker.She went to the all-girls St. Mary's Dominican High School in New Orleans, graduating in 1990. Then she went to Rhodes College in Memphis, where she studied English literature and graduated magna cum laude. She took her law degree at Notre Dame, graduating first in her class in 1997.She and Jesse Barrett met while they were both students at Notre Dame and married in 1999. He edited the Notre Dame Law review.Jesse Barrett spent 13 years as a federal prosecutor in the northern district of Indiana, specializing in white collar crime. He now defends the same group of people he previously prosecuted as partner in the South Bend law firm Ladue, Curran &amp; Kuehn, as well as working on complex corporate investigations.Amy Coney Barrett spent a year clerking for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and then practiced law for three years in Washington, D.C. She returned to South Bend to teach law at Notre Dame in 2002, receiving the Distinguished Professor of the Year three times. Fellow Notre Dame professor Stephen Yelderman called her 'mind-blowingly intelligent, and one of the most humble people you are going to meet.'Democratic senators hoping to derail Barrett's nomination will have to tread a fine line when it comes to questioning her about People of Praise. They do not want to be seen to be questioning whether she is suitable due to her faith.Veteran California Senator Dianne Feinstein was widely criticized when she appeared to say Barrett's Catholicism was a problem in her 2017 hearing.'I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you,' Feinstein said.'That's of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for, for years in this country.'One of the issues concerned a 2006 speech to the Notre Dame graduating class.&nbsp;'Your legal career is but a means to an end,' Barrett said. 'That end is building the kingdom of God... if you can keep in mind that your fundamental purpose in life is not to be a lawyer, but to know, love, and serve God, you truly will be a different kind of lawyer.'Already West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat and Catholic, and one of the Democrats who sided with Republicans on Barrett's nomination in 2017, has made it clear her faith should not be an issue.'It's awful to bring in religion. It truly is,' Manchin told Fox &amp; Friends on Wednesday. 'The freedom of religion is one of the basic rights we all have as an American citizen.'Share what you thinkThe comments below have not been moderated.The views expressed in the contents above are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.Post comment to your Facebook TimelineBy posting your comment you agree to our .Submit CommentClearDo you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline?Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual.&nbsp;NoYesDo you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline?Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usualWe will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. 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&nbsp;Friday, Sep 25th 2020| 3.7k President 's frontrunner for the Supreme Court seat hid her membership of the conservative religious group that inspired the hit TV show The Handmaid's Tale when she was first up for a seat on the Federal bench, DailyMail.com has learned.And now Amy Coney Barrett is likely to face withering scrutiny as to why she did not reveal her ties to the group — which insists women must obey their husbands in all matters — when she was grilled by senators three years ago.Barrett and her husband Jesse — and their parents — are members of People of Praise, a small group...

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Amy Coney Barrett purposely hid her membership in religious group

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