(Editor’s Note:  Scott Redd is President of RTS Washington Campus and is a newly appointed contributor to the Washington Post’s local ‘On Faith’ website.  This is his first contribution.)

It’s a Washington ritual, complete with a sung liturgy:

 “What did he know?”

“When did he know it?”

(“And why does it matter?”) 

Perhaps the most burning question — “What did he do after?” — has yet to be answered, but after recent revelations about Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s Jan. 10 meeting with consultant Jeanne Clark Harris, that answer seems to be forthcoming.

The lack of clear answers, though, is fueling a rally organized by two local pastors, the Revs. Graylan Hagler and Willie F. Wilson, who are calling on the denizens of the District and their representatives to avoid a rush to judgment. The rally supports the position that Gray deserves “courtesy and respect” as well as the scrutiny of a “fair and equitable process.”

On the first point, the Christian scriptures explicitly call on Christians to show courtesy and respect to the governing authority because it is established by God (Romans 13:1). On the second point, such fair and equitable processes are valuable in any modern society, particularly a nation of laws, in which the legal system is only as effective as it is trustworthy and fair. A society does well to remember these values when faced with cases of public corruption, and the pastors do well to remind us of them.

I don’t hear, however, many serious voices calling for a rush to legal judgment. Hagler and Wilson seem to be thinking not of legal due process but rather of ethical due process.

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