Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, publicly grappled decades ago with the tension Catholic judges can face between their religious values and the law. She has since said that she would never bend the law to meet her Catholic faith.

But her role as a speaker at a training program for Christian law school students drew scrutiny three years ago when Trump nominated her to be a federal appellate judge. It may do so again now — as part of broader questioning about how she would balance faith and law — as she seeks confirmation to the nation’s high court.

Barrett was a paid speaker five times, starting in 2011, at the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, a summer program established to inspire a “distinctly Christian worldview in every area of law,” tax filings show. It was founded to show students “how God can use them as judges, law professors and practicing attorneys to help keep the door open for the spread of the Gospel in America.”

The Blackstone program is run by Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal advocacy group whose founding leader has questioned the “so-called separation of church and state” as it is often understood. In the years Barrett spoke there, the fellowship’s suggested reading list included a book co-written by the same leader that lamented how Christians for too long had been “AWOL from the courthouse.”

When Barrett was before the Senate in 2017, to be confirmed as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, she was asked about those speaking engagements and grilled particularly on ADF’s stance on gay rights. Senators did not address the program’s goal of connecting Christian teachings to the practice of law, which has been little noted in the context of Barrett’s role on the courts. Read more via Washington Post