The First Amendment legal battle in Texas politics

The politics of the legal battles over the public religious displays and the vagaries of what it means for a government to respect an establishment of religion are playing out in Texas, now, in the governors' race that's just getting started.

Gregg Abbott, Texas' attorney general, announced on Sunday he is running for governor. If he wins, he'll succeed Rick Perry and George W. Bush, likely becoming a Republican Party leader and someone talked about, at least, as a possible presidential candidate. Political observers expect him to win: He has $20 million in his campaign war chest, the blessing of the Republican party establishment, and a reputation for being a fighter.

As attorney general, Abbott has sued the Barack Obama administration 27 times. He has said that's his job, suing Obama.

But perhaps the most important example of his fighting is one Supreme Court decision on the First Amendment question of a Ten Commandment monument. It's evidence that some Texans take quite seriously, evidence which may well be parlayed into lots of votes.

Part of that reputation for fighting comes from Abbott's personal biography. He was paralyzed by a falling tree 29 years ago, and has been confined to a wheelchair ever since. Despite that challenge, he's had a successful career as a lawyer, served as a judge on the Texas Supreme Court from 1995 to 2001, and has been the attorney general since 2002.

In his gubernatorial race announcement, Abbott said, "You know, too often you hear politicians get up and talk about having a spine of steel. I actually have one, and I will use my steel spine to fight for you and Texas families every single day."

The other part of his fighter's reputation comes from Abbott's successful legal defense of a public display of the Ten Commandments. In 2005, the Supreme Court decided the case of Van Orden v. Perry in Abbott's favor. That's not incidental to his campaign announcement. His political ambitions are underwritten by how Texas voters view that victory, and his role in that victory. The court ruled that, though on the grounds of the capitol, the monument of the decalogue -- which was erected by a fraternal order in connection with the promotion of Cecile B. DeMille's film, The Ten Commandments -- did not signify a government endorsement of religion.

From the opinion, written by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist:

The Capitol Grounds, as a whole, form the proper context in which to determine the effect of the Ten Commandments monument upon a reasonable observer. And this overall, museum setting precludes any reasonable perception of official endorsement of the monument’s religious content .... In its museum-setting context, this monument would not convey to the reasonable observer any official en- dorsement of religion. This is simply not a context in which the State is reasonably understood to be taking sides. The many monuments commemorating veterans do not communicate disapproval of pacifists; the Tribute to Children does not reflect negatively on older Texans; the Hiker and horse-riding Cowboy monuments send no message concerning motorized transport; and the Volun- teer Firemen monument reflects no official disapproval of those who pursue firefighting as a paid profession. The monuments, memorials, and commemorative plaques on the Capitol Grounds are not reasonably perceived as creating 'insiders' and 'outsiders' in the Texas political community.

Rehnquist also wrote that the monument was not exclusively religious, as it has a civic meaning, says something about the history of the laws of the state, and can also be seen as a tribute to the fraternal order that put up the monument in the first place. Those who want Christianity honored in the public square have not seemed dismayed by the claim that the publicness depletes the religiousness.

In his campaign bio, Abbott's role in Van Orden v. Perry was highlighted as an example of the kind of person he is and the kind of governor he would be. The official statement says, "Attorney General Abbott believes there is no higher power than God, and in March 2005 he personally appeared before the United States Supreme Court, where he successfully defended the constitutionality of the Ten Commandments display that adorns the Texas Capitol grounds."

Another lawyer representing Texas in the case has already built a political career on the Van Orden v. Perry decision. Ted Cruz, now a U.S. senator, references the court case regularly in his speeches. He cites "Preserving Religious Freedom" as a major reason to support him. The Supreme Court decision that the Ten Commandment monument isn't an endorsement of religion is listed as the first bullet point evidencing that commitment. Cruz's campaign literature says "that U.S. Supreme Court victory set a vitally important precedent for the right to display similar monuments across the nation."

Legal scholars are not as persuaded of the significance of the court case. They have pointed to the case as an example of how confused the jurisprudence on the First Amendment's establishment clause is, at the moment. But if the precedent is not as clear as it might seem, politically, the political value of the victory is clear enough for Cruz's stump speeches and for Abbott's gubernatorial campaign.

It's a win. It's the victory of fighters. It's the basis of a reputation to run on.

Abbott faces a long-time Republican operative and venture capitalist in the GOP primary. Some expect the recently famous Wendy Davis to go up against the Republican candidate in the general election, though no Democrat has won the governorship since George W. Bush took it in 1994.

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Howard Phillips, 1941-2013

Howard Phillips, a leader of the religious right who spent more than 30 years pushing conservatives to be more true to their anti-government principals, has died at the age of 72.

He worked for Richard Nixon in the 1970s, dismantling welfare programs, but resigned when Nixon failed to stop funding programs he had promised to slash. Phillips was a key player in the founding of the Moral Majority and the politicization of evangelicals in the 1980s, and then founded a religious right party as an alternative to the Republicans in 1991. Phillips ran for president three times on the U.S. Taxpayers' Party ticket, in 1992, 1996, and 2000.

He embraced Christian Reconstructionism and libertarian economics, and was particularly interesting as a radical figure who refused to compromise. At his most politically successful, in 1996, Howard got .19 percent of the vote.

In 2000, during his last presidential run, he devoted some of his campaigning to attacking George W. Bush, a politically conservative evangelical Christian embraced by much of the religious right. Phillips, however, called Bush "a pretty new face to mask the ugly old policies" of "America's permanent power structure."

On the stump that year, Phillips said,

In this century, three Presidents in particular, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Lyndon B. Johnson have successfully launched fundamental assaults on America's heritage of Constitutional liberty. None of their successors altered the course on which these Presidents directed us.

Neither Harding, Coolidge nor Hoover undid the damage done during the Wilson presidency. Eisenhower consolidated and extended the systems put in place under FDR's New Deal and carried forward the institutional policies of the Truman presidency.

When Richard Nixon became President, instead of challenging the neo-Marxist revolutionary agenda of LBJ's Great Society, he consolidated it and extended it, while providing increased funding for its activities.

Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton all operated in the context of LBJ's Gramsci-esque political reality which was, in essence, a Federally funded war on the Constitution, on the culture, on the military, on traditional educational policy, and on the family.

Instead of e pluribus unum, America has become 'a house divided,' with its citizens defined on the basis of gender, ethnicity, race, and sexual orientation.

A runaway Supreme Court has, without serious challenge, asserted legislative claims never intended or granted by the Framers. Religious liberty has been assaulted, respect for the sanctity of human life has been abandoned, local control of crime has been undermined, and private property rights have been jeopardized. 

[....] 

But the real reason for the pro-Bush dynamic of the Year 2000 election is the overriding disgust with Bill Clinton and the desire to end the Clinton era.

Moreover, America's permanent power structure needs a pretty new face to mask ugly old policies.

That is the reason 'Dubya' is the clear favorite.

Once disgust with Clinton is, a few years hence, superseded by a new political reality, with Dubya having been in office for one, two, or three years, sensible conservatives and Christians will discern that, in GWB, they have installed Clintonism without Clinton.

Phillips got more than 98,000 votes cast for him that year, about .09 percent of the total vote. He finished in sixth place, behind the Green Party, Reform Party and Libertarian Party candidates. Despite his electoral failures, though Phillips was a real force for radicalization on the Christian right.

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A tax on sex outside of marriage

Chuck Colson died a year ago today. The one-time Watergate criminal, who converted to evangelical Christianity after his indictment, played a pivotal role in the political mobilization of American evangelicals, particularly by popularizing and promoting the work of Francis Schaeffer and the idea of "worldviews," and also in convincing evangelicals to work with Catholics on common social causes.

In one of his very last daily radio commentaries, broadcast April 2, Colson argued tax policies necessarily reflects legislator's worldview, and that conceptions of "sin" are important to the shape that those tax policies take. He said,

... the number of sin taxes is increasing, perhaps because legislators simply want to be on record as opposing the 'sins' of alcohol, smoking, and even sugary drinks! 

It’s odd, though, that despite this feeding frenzy, nobody is proposing to tax an activity that nearly every previous generation saw as truly sinful and harmful to society: sexual promiscuity. 

In fact, the word 'promiscuity' is no longer uttered after the word 'sexual' in polite company, although the word 'freedom' certainly is. And we actually celebrate sexual promiscuity. 

... now the Sexual Left not only excuses sin, they want us to actually subsidize it.

It's a clever argument, partly playfully facetious, built not on argument for a policy position per se but the deftness of the reversal of the policy position being opposed, an argument via subversion, mutates mutandis.

That style was not incidental to his success, I don't think.

The late Colson's radio commentaries can be heard here. Colson's columns for Christianity Today, including those he co-wrote with the Catholic theologian Robert P. George, can be found here. The radio commentaries of those who have continued his work -- including those of popular Dietrich Bonhoeffer biographer Eric Metaxas -- can be heard here.

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Religious arguments in the legal fights over same-sex marriage

Photo by Jamison Weiser (CC)

A man dressed up in Catholic liturgical regalia protests religious teachings against same-sex

marriage in San Francisco, Monday.

One of the biggest, most contentious issues in the ongoing American culture wars goes to the Supreme Court this week, with oral arguments today and tomorrow in two cases about the constitutionality of legally defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

At Religion and Politics, law professor Calvin Massey offers a preview of the cases:

Hollingsworth v. Perry confronts whether California’s 2008 constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage violates the U.S. Constitution, specifically its guarantee of equal protection to all persons under the law. Prop 8 drew a lot of attention during the 2008 election; it was bolstered by a host of religious organizations, notably the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and megachurch pastor Rick Warren. It passed by a 52 to 48 percent margin, receiving more than 7 million “yes” votes. Then two same-sex couples filed suit in federal court to invalidate Prop 8. The trial court voided the amendment and a federal appeals court affirmed that decision on equal protection grounds.

In United States v. Windsor, the plaintiff, Edith Windsor, is an 83-year-old widow who is challenging section 3 of DOMA, also on equal protection grounds. When her spouse Thea Spyer died in 2009, Windsor was not allowed the marital deduction for estate taxes, though she and Spyer legally married in 2007. DOMA, enacted in 1996 under the Clinton administration, makes federal marital benefits available only to married couples of the opposite sex. Because of this, Windsor paid some $350,000 in estate taxes before she sought a refund in federal court. The trial court agreed with her, and the federal appeals court affirmed the ruling; the federal government has appealed to the Supreme Court.

Massey notes that because of the way culture-war conflicts have played out over the last 40 years, some proponents of same-sex marriage are actually hoping for a small victory, rather than a big, dramatic win. If the court strikes down all same-sex marriage bans, that could detrimental to the cause, resulting in lots of backlash and generations of cultural entrenchment, where conservatives use the court's ruling as a rallying cry. It's a fear of a Pyrrhic victory. Massey calls this the "specter of Roe v. Wade":

Roe overturned all state laws prohibiting abortion, and even those that severely regulated but did not outlaw abortions. The result, as Justice Ginsburg noted in her Madison Lecture at NYU Law School, delivered 20 years ago this month, was that the trend in the states toward progressive legalization of abortion was truncated by a sweeping judicial fiat. Had the Court confined itself to striking down the Texas law at issue in Roe, without addressing the validity of other states’ laws, there would have been room for further evolution of abortion laws in the states. Instead, Roe closed the door of legislative change and brought about a 40-year battle of high emotions, even violence, and stubborn opposition to Roe and its progeny. 

When people feel that they have lost in an open and democratic debate, they may not like it but will usually accept the popular verdict. But when people feel that their voice has been ignored by a process in which they have no input, they are apt to resist the result as an illegitimate usurpation of democratic institutions

National Public Radio has a piece on a Pentecostal church in El Paso where many people would likely respond to a clear legal victory for same-sex marriage in just this way. That church has -- like a number of conservative Christian groups -- been politically active on what NPR dramatically calls "one of the battlegrounds in the gathering war over gay marriage." It's not a great news story. There are more than a few problematic framing issues typical of accounts of "culture war." But the story does give space to the views of some of those religious people in America who are deeply opposed to same-sex marriage, and worried about what the court might decide in June. One of the main fears is that a sweeping ruling will, by judicial fiat, etc., basically rule religiously informed arguments against same-sex marriage unconstitutional.

This is one of the many legal arguments that religious groups are officially making in these two cases, which can be found in the nearly 100 amici filed with the Supreme Court, where various groups not directly involved in the dispute offer their input in legal briefs.

In Hollingsworth v. Perry, there are at least two dozen such briefs from religious organizations. A survey of some of the arguments those organizations are making in favor of the right of the State of California to legally define "marriage" as only involving opposite-sex couples shows the variety of religious arguments that are being made. Some are familiar, some innovative.

A sampling:

• The National Association of Evangelicals, The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Missouri-Synod Lutherans jointly argue the lower court's ruling that overturned the voter-approved definition of marriage was "a misguided incursion into this democratic debate," mis-applying legal precedent, and declaring "in the name of the Constitution that religious understandings are irrational and illegitimate, even when coupled with nonreligious judgements."
• The Conference of Catholic Bishops argues that legally defining marriage as being between a man and a women is "rationally related to legitimate state interests," because of opposite-sex couples potential to procreate and because children are better off when raised with a father and a mother. The bishops write "as a matter of simple biology, the union of one man and one woman is the only union capable of creating new life [and] the People of California could reasonably conclude that a home with a mother and a father is the optimal environment for raising children." They further make the case if religious and moral considerations are involved in enacting such a ban, that doesn't make it constitutionally invalid, since "Many, if not most, of the significant social and political movements in our Nation’s history were based on precisely such considerations. Moreover, the argument to redefine marriage to include the union of persons of the same sex is similarly based on a combination of religious and moral considerations (albeit ones that are, in our view, flawed)."
• The Coalition of African American Pastors USA and others argue that the historic ruling striking down state bans on inter-racial marriage cannot be used to strike down bans on same-sex marriage. They write "the anti-miscegenation statutes in Virginia were at war with the core purposes of marriage -- especially the fostering of responsible procreation and child rearing by biological parents -- because those Virginia statutes prevented children from being raised in the optimal setting: a family headed by married biological parents" (emphases original). According to this group, the present movement to legalize same-sex marriage is analogous to historic efforts to ban inter-racial marriage, since both seek to radically redefine marriage for the sake of "extraneous" social policies. 
• The Foundation for Moral Law makes the argument that "the Framers of the Constitution would be shocked to see their document twisted to protect something they regarded as abhorrent" and that "marriage is not simply an individual right, but rather it is a divinely-established institution that is as old as if not older than civil government."
• Catholics for the Common Good (a lay-led organization from California) argues that legally defining marriage as necessarily involving opposite-sex couples is not discriminatory, but based on reasonable judgements about the biological differences between men and women. The claim is made that "there is a vast body of credible, scientific evidence that supports the California voters’ choice to differentiate the nomenclature to be assigned to male-female pairs (marriage) and single-sex pairs (domestic partnership)." They argue it must be permissible for states "to construct public policies that assume that there is a real difference between men and women; between mothers and fathers; between boys and girls; and between male-female sexual relationships, and those of same-sex couples."
• Family Research Council -- once the political arm of Focus on the Family, though now independent -- offers what they call "alternative grounds" on which same-sex marriage can be rightly, legally banned. One argument the group makes is that "the fundamental right to marry that has been recognized by this Court is limited, by the nature of marriage itself, to opposite-sex couples." Another argument offered is that the state's definition of marriage did not discriminate against anyone, since all men and women, even homosexual men and women, have the right to marry someone of the opposite sex. 
• Patrick Henry College makes the argument that legal definitions of marriage are necessarily about morality, and not allowing the people of a state to ban same-sex marriage means coercing them to morally sanction same-sex marriage. The college writes: "The definition of marriage [...] is a quintessentially moral determination, for it encompasses the question of what marriage ought to be. Since this case (like any case dealing with polygamy or incest) is about the meaning of marriage, rather than access to it on equal terms, each side is asking the state for moral sanction through the designation, 'marriage.'"

There are also a number of religious organizations that have filed amici in favor of striking down California's ban on same sex marriage. One has the backing of 18 different groups, most of which are mainline Protestant or Jewish. These include the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, several Lutheran groups, several Presbyterian groups, the Unitarian Universalist Association, and a Quaker group, as well as the Union of Reform Judaism, the Rabbinical Assembly, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, and others. In their brief, these groups emphasize the breadth and diversity of support for same-sex marriage among religious groups, and make an argument from American religious pluralism. They claim that "permitting same-sex couples to marry will not impinge on religious beliefs, practices, or operations, but rather will prevent one set of religious beliefs from being imposed through civil law." Another such brief has been filed by a number of California-based religious organizations who say they oppose legally defining marriage as between a man and a woman because that would be "governmental discrimination turning on whether a committed couple's union accords with liturgical doctrines."

There is a slightly smaller number of legal briefs from religious groups filed in the second case, United States v. Windsor. Some of the groups involved are the same, though there are also others. In these briefs, those arguing for a federal law -- the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) -- defining marriage as being between a man and a woman turn their attention to questions of discrimination, and whether or not such a law discriminates against homosexuals. There are also assorted other arguments that are made. A survey of some of the religious organizations' arguments:

• The National Association of Evangelicals, et al., make a technical argument about how "suspect classes" should be determined in questions of violation of Equal Protection, and argue, more generally, that religious groups "have just as much right as anyone else to have our views considered by democratic decision makers. But that cannot properly occur if the great marriage debate is removed from our democratic institutions and decided by the judiciary under a heightened standard of review."
• The Family Research Counsel writes that DOMA "on its face, does not discriminate between heterosexuals and homosexuals, but between opposite-sex married couples and same-sex married couple," and repeats many of the arguments made in Hollingsworth v. Perry.
• The Catholic bishops argue DOMA's definition of marriage is not a problem because it does not deny anyone a "fundamental right," since there is no fundamental right to same-sex marriage. According to the bishops, "civil recognition of same-sex relationships is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and tradition—quite the opposite is true. Nor can the treatment of such relationships as marriages be said to be implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, such that neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed."
• The Manhattan Declaration, Inc. -- the movement with a manifesto with more than 500,000 signatures of Catholic, evangelical and Orthodox Christians who believe "the male-female nature of marriage to be an essential Christian teaching" -- argues for the universality of the DOMA definition of marriage, and that it has nothing to do with animus towards homosexuals. A religious liberty argument is also made. The group writes:  "Marriage is a foundational institution universally known and accepted, without regard to the accidents of time and place, as a male-female coupling" and "redefining marriage imperils religious liberty and oftentimes requires that freedom of conscience be sacrificed to the newly regnant orthodoxy." Striking down the federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman would, according to Manhattan Declaration, "constitutionalize" same-sex marriage.
• Robert P. George, who helped found the Manhattan Declaration, Inc., and has been at the forefront of natural law arguments against same-sex marriage, argues that the question for the court to decide is not the definition of marriage, but only "whether citizens and legislators may embody in law the belief in marriage as a conjugal union, as they have historically done." He further argues that it is rational and practical for those citizens and legislators to define marriage as necessarily involving opposite-sex couples (implying it is not just a religious judgement and therefore should be allowed).
• The Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty argues similarly, making the case that striking the opposite-sex marriage provision from DOMA would mean that "service members who adhere to traditional religious beliefs on marriage and family will likely be penalized and marginalized, and the chaplaincy’s efforts to protect religious liberty will face severe conflicts."
• Concerned Women for America -- the group Beverly LeHaye founded -- writes that homosexuals should not be a class protected against discrimination because, as a group, they're politically powerful, having "repeatedly demonstrated their ability to influence public policy through democratic means. And their influence is only increasing. Their causes are supported by the mainstream media, popular culture, big labor, and big business." The group also makes the argument that in this case, one of the key questions at stake is who defines marriage, in addition to how marriage is defined. The group argues that the decision should be made democratically, i.e., not by the courts.

There only seem to be two amici from religious groups opposing DOMA's definition of marriage in United States v. Windsor. As in Hollingsworth v. Perry, there's one brief with a large number of socially left-leaning religious groups signed onto it. These groups have chosen a strategy that's quite different than the right-leaning groups 21-guns approach. In that brief, filed by the Episcopal church of the 10 states and the District of Columbia where same-sex marriage has been legalized, six Reform and Conservative Jewish groups, the Unitarian Universalists, the United Church of Christ, and several Lutheran, Presbyterian and Methodist groups, the arguments made in the amicus in the other case are substantially repeated. They repeat the point that there is no one religious position on same-sex marriage and that a particular religious doctrine about marriage should not be given the backing of federal law. 

What import these various arguments will have in the cases before the Supreme Court remains to be seen. What is notable about these arguments from religious groups is how secular they are. They're secular in the sense that they're grounded in this-worldly justifications, arguments which are, in principle, accessible to all. These are arguments about social good, arguments that could mostly be proven or proven false with data. The cases being made mostly do not involve arguments from revelation, or religious authority, or any claims that necessarily entail any theistic ontology.

Steve Bruce has argued the rise of the religious right as a political force is evidence for secularization even in America for exactly this reason. He writes:

Critics of the secularization paradigm sometimes point to the Christian Right as evidence that social differentiation has not marginalized religion. I draw the opposite conclusion from the same data .... Christian Right organizations now present their causes in secular language .... They cannot assert that God dislikes divorce [e.g.]. They have to argue that divorce is socially dysfunctional. 

This is important, because the culture war that's fought around such issues as these Supreme Court cases is often understood -- especially by those involved -- as a pitched battle between secular and religious forces. Religious people and organizations that are politically active on the right regularly express the fear that secularists are attempting to effectively disenfranchise them, push them out of the public sphere. That's certainly the fear expressed by the pastor of the Pentecostal church in El Paso, profiled by NPR. It's an issue raised by many of the religious groups that have filed amici in these legal cases. Court rulings tend to aggravate that feeling of disenfranchisement, which is why some advocates of same-sex marriage (such as Andrew Sullivan) prefer the issue not be settle by the courts. And why some observers think conservatives stand to gain by losing these cases in court.

But, here, the religious forces are secular forces.

The main "religious" arguments being made for the legal definition of marriage as only being between opposite-sex couples is not religious, in any meaningful way. The counter argument being made, likewise, is not that these arguments should be disallowed because they are religious. Ted Olson, for example, the lawyer advocating for homosexuals' right to get married in the Hollingsworth v. Perry case, responds to the religious right's secular arguments with secular counter-arguments, saying that each fails only because it fails to prove what it sets out to prove, which is that it is in the state's interest to bar homosexuals from the legal benefits and protections of the institution of civil marriage.

As NPR reports:

Olson replies that none of the offered justifications for Proposition 8 hold water -- not family, not kids, not the institution of marriage. No one, he says, has come up with any reason why same-sex marriage 'damages heterosexual marriages in any way.' 

Ultimately, he says, it is no justification to say the country has been doing something for hundreds of years, if it flies in the face of the constitutional guarantee of equal protection of the law.

There are many like the Reformed theologian Peter Leithart, who worry that Christian arguments against same-sex marriage are barred from the public debate, and that even if they were allowed, they'd be underwhelming. Religiously informed arguments would be ineffectual and unpersuasive. "It will take," he recently wrote, "nothing short of a cultural revolution for biblical arguments to be heard, much less to become persuasive." This is because, for Leithart, it seems that "the only arguments we have are theological ones, and only people whose imaginations are formed by Scripture will find them cogent."

In these two Supreme Court cases, though, it is apparent that theological arguments aren't the only ones. Whether or not the non-theological arguments are any more cogent and persuasive to the general public is another question.

It's that question that has bubbled up in an intra-religious conservative dispute about the usefulness of the idea of natural law. The ideas of natural law underly many of the arguments religious groups are making in the legal briefs in these two cases: that there is a natural and right order that can be determined by rational thought and ought to be adhered to for the sake of human flourishing.

As Hugo Grotius pointed out, a key aspect of natural law is that it depends on reason alone, and holds "etsi Deus non daretur," even if God is not a given. Which is to say, it is secular.

The natural law arguments against same-sex marriage that are being made and have been made are secular, and thus at least theoretically reasonable and effectual in public debates in a pluralistic society. This is why the theory of natural law was embraced so wholeheartedly by conservative Christian groups seeking to have a political impact on American culture. As Brad Littlejohn explains:

With the ascendancy of the Moral Majority, conservative Christians found themselves catapulted into the public square, and the more sophisticated were conscious that a raw and undiluted biblicism was not going to get them very far in public debates. Finding themselves shoulder-to-shoulder with Catholic co-belligerents in the culture wars, evangelicals glanced over at the popish playbook and thought natural law looked like a pretty promising notion. Accordingly, they took up the idea with gusto.  

But now, scarcely a decade into this revolution [....] finding that natural law arguments are gaining them no traction in the current debate, evangelicals, and indeed many within the whole cobbled-together conservative coalition, were already wavering and considering withdrawal.

The wavering can be explained by the fact that natural law theory was picked up, by and large, because of the promise it would be a powerful tool. Conservative religious people involved in political activism may believe in natural law, but there's a strong instrumentality to that belief. Where strictly religious and theological arguments (built on biblicist or presuppositional epistemologies) had failed, those grounded this way, in reason -- commonly accessible, public reason -- would succeed. That was the promise. And yet they haven't, or at least not enough. The swing in public opinion on the topic of same-sex marriage has been shocking. Arguments about natural order have had little strength, where the testimonies about the public good of gay marriage have been both affective and effective.

The images of long-committed same-sex couples getting married have seemed to growing portions of the public to speak much more clearly about the common good, and much more persuasively about the kind of society that American citizens want to live in.

The natural law arguments against same-sex marriage have been so unpersuasive, it seems that the only way to continue to hold them is by way of giving up on the debate. To quote Littlejohn again, "We seem to be back in a situation where we must simply give up on the rest of 'irrational' society and retreat to our strongholds, or else aggressively assert the superiority of our own reasoning and call upon our opponents to subject their reasons to the yoke of Christ."

These are the religious arguments that have gone to the Supreme Court, though. Perhaps in that context things will be different. Or, perhaps the sun is setting on these particular religio-political arguments.

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American evangelicals ♥ Pope Benedict XVI

One of the really fascinating stories of American evangelicalism in the 20th century is how evangelical attitudes towards Catholicism completely changed. In 1926, one of America's leading fundamentalist pastors, J. Frank Norris, attacked Catholicism and warned American evangelicals not to trust them, with sermons and articles with titles like "The Conspiracy of Rum and Romanism to Rule this Government."

Such attitudes persisted even into the 1960s. But things have changed since then. As Religion News Service notes, American evangelical leaders have responded to Pope Benedict XVI's announcement of his resignation by praising the man, and saying how much they will miss him.

Daniel Burke writes:

Just a generation or two ago, such lavish praise might have been unthinkable. During the early 1960s, evangelist Billy Graham — sometimes dubbed the Protestant pope — took heat for inviting Catholics to join his revivals. But after the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), denominational barriers fell and ecumenism prospered.  

Meanwhile, evangelicals developed an appreciation for Catholic culture, and Catholics found ready evangelical allies in the battles against secularism, abortion and gay rights.  

'One of the challenges of evangelical Protestantism as it became a political force was to find a vocabulary to talk about the role of Christian faith in a diverse, pluralistic society like the United States,' said R.R. Reno, executive editor of First Things, an interreligious journal. 'By and large, they turned to Catholicism.'

The other major factor in this cultural shift -- besides Roe v. Wade, which at first was considered just a Catholic issue that evangelicals shouldn't particularly care about -- was the Cold War, and the Catholic Church's opposition to communism.

The American religious historian Barry Hankins has written about the change in the "marketplace of ideas" that brought evangelicals and Catholics together.

Of course, there are still those out there like William Tapley, who talks about the papacy in terms of the antichrist and assorted end times prophecies. That's just an extreme fringe, though. The days of Norris-style warnings about Catholicism has passed.

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J. Gresham Machen's signs of the times

What will be the end of that European civilization, of which I had a survey from my mountain vantage ground—of that European civilization and its daughter in America? What does the future hold in store? Will Luther prove to have lived in vain? Will all the dreams of liberty issue into some vast industrial machine? Will even nature be reduced to standard, as in our country the sweetness of the woods and hills is being destroyed, as I have seen them destroyed in Maine, by the uniformities and artificialities and officialdom of our national parks? Will the so-called 'Child Labor Amendment' and other similar measures be adopted, to the destruction of all the decencies and privacies of the home? Will some dreadful second law of thermodynamics apply in the spiritual as in the material realm? Will all things in church and state be reduced to one dead level, coming at last to an equilibrium in which all liberty and all high aspirations will be gone? Will that be the end of all humanity's hopes? I can see no escape from that conclusion in the signs of the times; too inexorable seems to me to be the march of events. No, I can see only one alternative. The alternative is that there is a God -- a God who in His own good time will bring forward great men again to do His will, great men to resist the tyranny of experts and lead humanity out again into the realms of light and freedom, great men, above all, who will be messengers of His grace. There is, far above any earthly mountain peak of vision, a God high and lifted up who, though He is infinitely exalted, yet cares for His children among men.

-- J. Gresham Machen, Mountains and Why We Love Them, 1933.

The "signs of the times" really do dramatically change. Even though what the signs say is always the same, regardless of whether the specific sign is a new national park or gays openly serving in the military, regulation of child labor or employee health care.

Machen -- a Reformed theologian at the forefront of opposition to Modernism and Christian liberalism -- climbed the Swiss Alps in 1913 and 1932, in both cases ascending a peak on the eve of a world war. He believed Modernism, especially in the form of the "higher criticism" taught by German theologians, had significantly weakened Christianity, undermined it, and was threatening the faith and also civilization, leading directly to the destruction and devestation of World War I and World War II.

He was a significant influence on Francis Schaeffer, and can be thought of as the grandfather of today's religious right, though many reformed Christians, such as Machen biographer and religious-right-critic D.G. Hart, would argue that politically-oriented American Christians have strayed too far from Machen's ideals. I.e., that they are not conservative enough to be Machen's true heirs.

Those who are direct spiritual and intellectual descendants of this leader of Christian fundamentalism have famously been called "Machen's warrior children," emphasizing a Machenian attitude that's praised by some as a willingness -- a boldness in being willing -- to defend truth.

Machen, it's important to say, accepted the name "fundamentalist." He thought there was a better word for it, though: orthodox.

What's perhaps most notable about this quote, if one is looking for historical precedent for contemporary conservative Christians, is the sense that it's "experts" who are the problem. "Experts" who, through an exercise in "tyranny," have lead humanity away from both light and freedom. There's a deep strain of anti-intellectualism in American history, of course, and that's been of significant aspect of religious experience throughout the history. Machen states it so succinctly, here, and puts experts up as the most basic problem.

Notable, also, are the two politically issues Machen highlights. These are the "signs" he sees in America in the 1930s. In the piece, he mentions the international situation, decrying Mussolini by name and Hitler by reference. Domestically, however, Machen sees the end of civilization and betrayal of Reformed Christian truths in a) national parks, and b) federal child labor laws.

Two peculiar issues, if ever there were.


This was, after all, the beginning of Franklin D. Roosevelt's first term, the depth of the Great Depression and the beginning of the New Deal.


Overall, Machen wasn't particularly interested in politics. Certain less than his "warrior children." Here, though, in 1933, he does for a moment speak politically, and chooses out of all the issues of the day to take a stand against national parks and child labor laws. There's probably an explanation for why these could have seemed so pressing from a particular cultural position. To first sight, though, the choice of issues highlights certain characteristics of this worldview, and goes to show how strange many political fights seem from a distance.

The only National Park in Maine in 1933, as far as I can tell, was Arcadia National Park, the first National Park east of the Mississippi. A system of carriage trails through the park were then being built by John D. Rockefeller Jr., and that seems to have particularly offended Machen. In one of his books he wrote,

When I first went there it was about the sweetest and most beautiful lake and mountain region that could possibly be imagined. It really seemed as though no human being would have the heart to destroy the delicate charm of those woods. But then came Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Lafayette (later Acadia) National Park, and all was changed. Huge roads now scar practically every mountainside and skirt the shores of practically every lake. The woods near the roads have been ruthlessly ‘cleaned up.’ The natural beauty of the region has been systematically destroyed. When I go into that National Park, with its dreary regularity and its officialdom, I almost feel as though I were in some kind of penal institution .... Certain it is at any rate that the best way to destroy true recreation is for government to go into the business of promoting it.

I don't know how it looked in '33, but today, to be sure, Machen's assessment that "the sweetness of the woods and hills is being destroyed" seems strange.

I can imagine other reasons he might have had for opposing the park -- libertarian principle, perhaps, or just privileged annoyance that what one enjoys is now widely available -- but the argument he makes is somewhat bizarre.

The constitutional amendment that Machen references as the other "sign of the times" was ratified by 13 states in 1933, but never acheived the necessary 2/3 majority. The Child Labor Amendment is technically still pending approval. The amendment reads: "The Congress shall have power to limit, regulate, and prohibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age." The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 -- a key piece of New Deal lesgislation -- succeeded where the ammendment failed.

Machen seems to have opposed the amendment specifically for being too general, and not specifying what sort of child labor congress might be interested in prohibiting or limiting. He said, in another piece on the topic, that the amendment was "the most sinister attack upon American institutions and the sanctity of the American home that has been made for half a century."

Further, he made the sort of limited government, anti-government argument that's standard on the right:

[The amendement] would take by far the most important part of human life out of the hands of state legislatures in touch with local conditions, and put it into the hands of the army of government agents, which any exercise of the powers to be conferred by the amendment would require. There could scarcely be a more disastrous blow at the very foundations of American freedom.

Though few conservative Christians in America would, today, make an argument against child labor laws, the logic Machen employs about the privacy and the sanctity of families, that "the family" constitutes a seperate sphere that ought to be autonomous, the federal government represents a kind of hideous, alien aberration of the normal order of things, is quite common.

That's the way it seems to work: the signs of the times change; the interpretations of said signs are consistent, though, across time.

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Rodney Stark's strange interview w/ Kathryn Jean Lopez

I can't remember the last time I've seen an interview as strange as the one National Review published recently, where Kathryn Jean Lopez asks sociologist Rodney Stark about his new book on the evidence of the benefits of religious adherence. 

This really reads like an interview where something has gone horribly wrong:

LOPEZ: Religion can keep me from mental illness? My inbox suggests it is evidence of my mental illness.
STARK: Several hundred studies are unanimous that frequent church-attenders are far less likely than non-attenders to suffer from mental illness — I devote many pages to the matter.  

LOPEZ: The 'higher the church membership of a city, the lower its crime rates.' What evidence do you have for this contention?
STARK: I cite many published studies. 

LOPEZ: How can you prove that 'religious parents are better parents, who raise better-behaved and better-educated children'?
STARK: I cite a very large research literature.

It continues from there, with Lopez asking strange questions that seem -- best I can guess -- to be bad imitations of the kinds of questions she thinks atheists and/or liberals would ask. The gag, maybe, is that all of these things are obvious, and so obvious as to obviously not need evidentiary support. But now there is statistical evidence ... so, hahaha. Or something.

Stark, who's done some important work in the sociology of religion but has also been sharply criticized for some of his work, and, generally, seems way over-defensive when questioned about the conclusions he draws from his facts, gives answers that equal the questions in oddity. With some answers, he sounds like your standard resentful conservative ("the media are dominated by the irreligious. So are universities". With others, Stark sounds as cranky someone with a toothache listening to a baby cry.

One of his answers, literally, is "See Scandinavia."

I suspect there are serious problems with this book. The whole thing appears to be based on a basic misunderstanding of evidence, and the kinds of correlation-causation confusions that one would hope an accomplished sociologist would understand and avoid. I'm disinclined to read the book and find out if that's the case, though, after this very weird case of book "promotion."

Update:
Via twitter, Per D. Smith suggests that it's been hard to take Stark seriously as a sociologist for more than a decade, citing the article "Atheism, faith, and the social scientific study of religion" in the Journal of Contemporary Religion from 1999.

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Science wins small symbolic victory in Georgia vote

A bit of a political protest is becoming apparent as the ballots are tallied in one North Georgia congressional district: a protest on behalf of science.

According to the Athens Banner-Herald, Charles Darwin received nearly 4,000 write-in votes in one of the 24 counties that make up the state's 10th Congressional District, where the unopposed Republican incumbent had declared the theory of evolution to be the work of Satan. How many write-in votes went to Darwin in the 23 other counties of the district is not clear, as not all of the counties report write-ins, yet the symbolic protest was sizable enough to attract the attention of national news outlets and, Darwin supporters hope, attract a real challenger to the race in 2014. 

Broun's broad dismissal of science -- from evolution to the Big Band to embryology -- at a political rally in a Baptist church was especially inflammatory because he sits on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee. In the viedo released by the church, Broun stood in front of a wall of mounted deer heads, and said that science was opposed to the Bible, which is the "manufacturer's handbook."

Echoing the ideas of Christian Theonomists such as R.J. Rushdooney, who taught that the world is divided into four spheres and that God is king of all four, Broun explained that science is a blasphemous attempt to displace God. He told the audience he doesn't accept the authority of science, but of the Bible, which "teaches us how to run our lives, individually, how to run our families, how to run our churches. But it teaches us how to run all of public policy and everything in society. And that's the reason as your congressman, I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions for how I vote in Washington D.C."

The brouhaha that followed the congressman's version of theocratic government was turned into a symbolic protest at the polls, last week, in part due to the work of a UGA professor. 


Jim Thompson of the Athens Banner-Herald reports:

"A campaign asking voters to write-in Darwin’s name in the 10th Congressional District, which includes half of Athens-Clarke County, began after Broun, speaking at a sportsmen’s banquet at a Hartwell church, called evolution and other areas of science 'lies straight from the pit of hell.'

"Jim Leebens-Mack, the University of Georgia plant biologist who started a 'Darwin for Congress' Facebook page in the wake of Broun’s remarks, said the number of Darwin votes cast in the race were 'in the ballpark, a little bit more' than he had expected.

"The Darwin votes, Leebens-Mack added, made it 'clear to me, and I hope everybody, that Paul Broun is vulnerable' in terms of continued re-election to Congress. Broun was first elected in a special 2007 election, and won re-election in 2008, 2010 and again on Tuesday in a newly drawn 10th District, reconfigured as part of congressional reapportionment." 

Broun won re-election fairly easily, though, garnering more than 200,000 votes in his district, more than he won in 2006, 2008 or 2010. 

Even in 2008, in the context of the massive turn-out for Democrats inspired by Barack Obama's first election, Broun managed a decisive win. The Democratic challenger Bobby Saxon won only about 39 percent of the vote.

Nevertheless, the write-in votes can be read as a core of opposition to Broun, or to conservative evangelical candidates more generally, even in the deeply Republican districts of deeply Republican states like Georgia.

The Flagpole, the University of Georgia Athens paper, reports that in addition to the votes for Darwin, there were about 2,000 other write-in votes in the congressional race in Athens-Clarke County. Another 23,000 voters reportedly ignored that part of the ballot entirely.

Other write-in votes from those dissatisfied with Broun included votes for: "Carl" Marx, Burning Bag of Dog Shit, Doritos, Michael Stipe, Ron Paul, Satan, Stephen Colbert, and Taylor Swift. A fictitious candidate from a previous protest against Broun, "Pete McCommunist," also won more than 100 write-in votes. An actual person who also ran a write-in campaign, Brian Russell Brown, won 238 votes.

Bill Nye the Science Guy, who has come out in opposition of teaching creationism to children and slammed Broun for his anti-science statements, also won some of the one county's write-in votes.

Not all of the opposition to Broun, notably, was from the left. Georgia's libertarian-leaning talk show host Neil Bortz, who's most significant political foray to date was probably promoting fellow Georgian Herman Cain, came out strongly in opposition to Broun. Bortz said Republicans like Broun were "hurting the brand," making the party look like it consisted of un-evolved Neanderthals and redneck hicks.

The radio show host encouraged listeners to write-in Darwin.

The coalition of libertarians, UGA faculty and students and others who want their government officials to accept science didn't carry the day, in North Georgia, but the small symbolic protest was nonetheless noted when they went to the polls in Athens-Clarke County.

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A political 'evolution' on social conservative issues

Has Mitt Romney evolved?

According to the conservative Christian group Family Research Council, Romney has changed positions on five key issues between the Republican primaries and the general election. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that says candidates tack to the center during general elections, and become more moderate to appeal to independents and swing voters, Romney has apparently strengthened his case with social conservatives since winning the Republican party nomination.

Where once he was squishy, apparently, on the issues the FRC cared about, now he's firm. Where once the FRC judged the Mass. governor to be only 50 percent in line with the positions of "values voters," he now has a perfect score.

Of course it's possible it's not Romney who has changed.

As noted by Christianity Today in a piece on Christian voter guides last week, the FRC guide released during the primaries highlighted significant areas of disagreement with Romney: stem cell research, cloning, the estate tax, employee non-discrimination, and "strict constitutionalist" judges. On half the issues held to be important by the conservative group started by evangelical child-rearing guru James Dobson, Romney was represented as being on the wrong side.

That voting guide showed him to be a less desirable candidate than Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, or Rick Perry. Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul didn't have perfect scores -- both differing from the FRC on the question of a federal ban on human cloning -- but they still were more in line with the group's position than Romney.

Correction: than Romney was.

According to the FRC voting guide being distributed right now as church bulletin inserts, Romney has changed his position on all five of these issues, and is now in complete agreement with the conservative Christian positions on everything that's politically important.

In at least one case, though, Romney has managed this remarkable transformation without actually changing his position. The FRC footnotes their sources for the statements about candidates' positions, and though the earlier guide and the later guide represent Romney as having different positions on stem cell research, the sources cited say the same thing in both cases. He's for stem cell research, but opposed to embryos created specifically for such studies, and opposed to federal funding of these studies.

As Romney himself explained the position in 2007, "There are different levels of stem cell research."

That nuanced position was presented by the FRC as having a "mixed" record on the issue. It is now being presented as opposing the federal funding of stem cell research, which is true, but has actually always been Romney's position. His statements on the issue, cited by the FRC, are consistent from 2005 to today. It's the FRC's representation of that position has changed.

So perhaps it's the Family Research Council that has evolved?

In another case, the records cited by the FRC show Romney has in fact changed his position, but that change happened long before either voting guide was published. Romney's current position on federal protection of gays and lesbians against employer discrimination has been represented in two diametrically opposite ways.

It's true that in 1994 Romney pledged his support for EDNA, the "Employment Non-Discrimination Act" that the FRC calls "SPECIAL EMPLOYMENT RIGHTS BASED ON SEXUAL BEHAVIOR." Romney instituted a non-discrimination policy that included sexual orientation as one of the protected classes when he was organizing the hosting of the 2002 Olympics. In 2007, though, Romney announced that he'd adjusted his position, and now felt that protecting people from discrimination was the states' job, not the federal government's. He told Tim Russert, "I think it makes sense at the state level for states to put in provision of this .... I would not support at the federal level, and I changed in that regard because I think that policy makes more sense to be evaluated or to be implemented at the state level."

During the primaries, that 2007 position was characterized by the FRC as support for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act." That same position is now characterized by the FRC as opposition.

The word for this is duplicitous.

Much has been made of Romney's inconsistencies and how his only guiding principle seems to be his own desire for power. Especially when it comes to the social issues that concern conservative Christians. That, it turns out, may not be a problem for those who claim to represent these Christians, but rather a key a point of commonality.

The FRC voting guides show that Romney has strengthened his position with at least some conservative Christian groups -- but only because they too are more committed to political victories than anything else.

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Did Billy Graham just try to convert Mitt Romney?

Billy Graham has been challenged, many times, on his relationship to power. The famed evangelist has "met with every sitting American president from Harry Truman to President Obama," as the Washington Post puts it, and has, at least on some occasions, been used politically by powerful figures, made into a  religious fig leaf for presidents without much faith of their own.

His relationship to Nixon, especially, has been criticized. It was said his presence as Nixon's spiritual adviser served to lend tacit if not explicit approval of the administration. His presence implied his blessing.

Graham has, in recent years, admitted he made some mistakes in this regard. He's said if he could do it again, he'd do it differently. Yet, his argument has always been and continues to be that he would go anywhere, talk to anyone, accept any audience, as long as he could preach the gospel.

He told Christianity Today in 1974:

"I have said for many years that I will go anywhere to preach the Gospel, whether to the Vatican, the Kremlin, or the White House, if there are no strings attached on what I am to say. I have never had to submit the manuscript to the White House or get anybody's approval. I have never informed any President of what I was going to say ahead of time. They all know that when I come to preach, I intend to preach the Gospel."

A year ago, he reiterated this, telling the magazine that he was "grateful for the opportunities God gave me to minister to people in high places; people in power have spiritual and personal needs like everyone else, and often they have no one to talk to."

This context of "no strings attached" might inform how one views yesterday's closed-door meeting between the now 93-year-old Graham and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.  Of course there are many reasons Graham might have wanted the 30-minute meeting to be private, allowing only for a few pictures at the end, but one also has to wonder: Did Graham preach the gospel to the Mormon Mitt Romney?

Did Graham ask Romney if he'd been born again, or tell Romeny he needed Jesus in his life, to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior?

And what did Romney say?

L-R: Romney, Billy Graham, Franklin Graham.

Reporters were given an official statement at the meeting, a statement that said nothing about Jesus or the cross or Graham's position on the Church of Jesus Christ of the Later-day Saints, and whether or not Mormons are, from his Baptist perspective, saved. Rather, as reported by the Washington Post, "Mitt Romney asked the Rev. Billy Graham for his prayers Thursday and the ailing evangelist came through by praying with the Republican presidential candidate and offering his support."

Politically, the point of the meeting was to get Graham's support for Romney and hopefully sway leery religious right voters, assuaging any lingering fears they have about Romney's religion, and his soft and shifting commitment to religious right issues such as abortion. The meeting came, after all, only a day after Romney told the Des Moines (Iowa) Register that his administration would not make banning abortion a priority. If one believers, as many conservative evangelical Christians do, that babies are being slaughtered wholesale across America, and that this is the crucial moral struggle of the age, Romney's inconsistent and lackadaisical stance on the issue is not confidence-inspiring. Getting a public statement of support from a conservative evangelical as respected as Graham, then, could be important.

And Graham gave the benediction the Romney camp was looking for. Campaign staff told the press that Graham said, "I'll do all I can to help you. And you can quote me on that." Graham's organization released a statement in his name after the meeting that said as much. As CNN reported it, the statement read:

"What impresses me even more than Governor Romney's successful career are his values and strong moral convictions. I appreciate his faithful commitment to his impressive family, particularly his wife Ann of 43 years and his five married sons .... It was a privilege to pray with Governor Romney—for his family and our country. I will turn 94 the day after the upcoming election, and I believe America is at a crossroads. I hope millions of Americans will join me in praying for our nation and to vote for candidates who will support the biblical definition of marriage, protect the sanctity of life and defend our religious freedoms."

The politics of the meeting were pretty much the focus of the news reports, along with some things Romney said at the end of the meeting as pictures were being taken about his father's death. The idea is that "The 30-minute meeting between the world-renowned Christian leader and Romney could provide the former governor with a major boost among evangelical Christians skeptical of supporting the first Mormon nominated for president."

Perhaps Graham's meeting and endorsement will work to encourage evangelical support.

I suspect, though, even if it does that, it will also raise this issue: Did Graham present the gospel to Romney?

The religious right has always had very strong utilitarian tendencies in their voting patterns. From the beginning, when they formed as a bloc to support the ambiguously religious Ronald Reagen over Jimmy Carter, the very first self-declared evangelical in the White House, policies have mattered more than a candidate's personal faith. I don't see that changing just because Romney's Mormon. His bigger weakness with this voting bloc is that he hasn't convincingly demonstrated a deep commitment to the things that are important to the religious conservatives. His personal ballast seems to be political expediency. That has little to do directly with whether he's been "born again," in evangelical terminology.

Franklin Graham -- Billy Graham's son and successor -- made this point during the Republican primaries, when he supported Rick Santorum. The younger Graham said he wasn't opposed to Romney, and thought that "He would be a good president if he won the nomination because I think he’s got the strength, business-wise, politics-wise. He’s sharp guy. And he's proven himself."

That comment, though, came in the context of Franklin Graham saying that Romney was not a Christian, but a Mormon. Pressed on whether Mormonism wasn't part of the broader, "Judeo-Christian faith," Franklin Graham said "Most Christians would not recognize Mormons as part of the Christian faith."

The Billy Graham Evangelical Association, for the record, lists Mormonism as a cult.

For the Grahams, as for evangelicals generally, this question of Christianity is the most important question. While it may not be necessary to be a good president that one have accepted Jesus, prayed the prayer, asked for sins to be forgiven, it is the most important thing, eternally. It is the most important thing for an individual. Which is why Billy Graham dedicated so much of his life to exactly that message. As much as the Grahams really do care deeply about these other issues, personal salvation and internal transformation are more important.

So one wonders about those 30 minutes, and those closed doors.

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How the religious right really thinks?

In some quarters this Ralph Reed questionnaire is being reported as evidence of the true Religious Right zeitgeist. How things really are. This is how Reed frames the issue, the "Obama question" and this coming election, and that's supposed to mean that's how it really is for those Reed supposedly can get out to vote.

Reed is, after all, "Romney's best hope for rallying evangelical voters."

Or not.

I'm not much impressed by the Freudian-slip school of interpretation.


See this document that way, as accidental-true-secret-revealed, you miss the way this is also an argument being made specifically because there's some sizable group of the target audience that doesn't think this election is a big deal.

And you miss the way this is Reed trying to position himself as a relevant operative who should always get Republican money thrown at him.

How do we know this isn't just Reed mau-mauing, as much as it's anything?

As Tom Wolfe described the practice, when a different sort of "militant minority" was shaking down pols for contracts, it sure sounds a lot like Reed and this questionnaire of his:

"Going downtown to mau-mau the bureaucrats got to be the routine practice [...]. There was one genius in the art of confrontation who had mau-mauing down to what you could term a laboratory science. He had it figured out so he didn't even have to bring his boys downtown in person. He would just show up with a crocus sack full of revolvers, ice picks, fish knives, switchblades, hatchets, blackjacks, gravity knives, straight razors, hand grenades, blow guns, bazookas, Molotov cocktails, tank rippers, unbelievable stuff, and he'd dump it all out on somebody's shiny walnut conference table. He'd say 'These are some of the things I took off my boys last night ... I don't know, man ... [...] And they would lay money on this man's ghetto youth patrol like it was now or never ... [and] the bureaucrats felt like it was all real [...] like they were reaching all those hard-to-reach hard-to-hold hardcore hardrock blackrage badass furious funky ghetto youth.

Replace those furious funky ghetto youth with "the Religious Right" and the crocus sack of weapons with a reference to people thinking Obama is worse than Nazis, and Reed's your "one genius" at the Romney offices. Which must have worked OK, since this is a $10 million campaign.

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Ted Cruz & the Texas Ten Commandment Monument case

Ted Cruz -- Texas Republican nominee for US Senate, hailed now as a leader and intellectual force for the Tea Party movement -- made his time as Texas' Solicitor General a foundational piece of his image and campaign. In that role he argued several First Amendment cases before the Supreme Court.

Van Orden v. Perry, also known as the Texas Ten Commandments Monument case, is particularly interesting.



As I read it, Cruz et al defended the monument on three grounds:

1. The monument is primarily not religious (the most standard and yet counter-intuitive argument in these cases)
2. A reasonable observer would correctly understand 1. (this probably being the real crux of the issue)
3. Even if it were religious or were misunderstood as religious, there's nothing coercive about a monument, and thus religion isn't established (a position that's been advanced by Justice Clarence Thomas)

To a large extent, the arguments in the Texas Ten Commandment Monument case as similar to what one sees elsewhere. There were some that struck me as notably different, though.

For example:

"In its museum-setting context, this monument would not convey to the reasonable observer any official endorsement of religion. This is simply not a context in which the State is reasonably understood to be taking sides. The many monuments commemorating veterans do not communicate disapproval of pacifists; the Tribute to Children does not reflect negatively on older Texans; the Hiker and horse-riding Cowboy monuments send no message concerning motorized transport; and the Volunteer Firemen monument reflects no official disapproval of those who pursue firefighting as a paid profession. The monuments, memorials, and commemorative plaques on the Capitol Grounds are not reasonably perceived as creating 'insiders' and 'outsiders' in the Texas political community."

The argument here's pretty clever. Essentially, Cruz et al are saying that a monument can't make an exclusive claim. That monuments are always innately pluralistic, recognition of one thing never meaning or reasonably implying de-recognition for something else.

Presumably, though, the monument to hikers, the monument to children and the other monuments don't say anything like "I AM the LORD thy God / Thou shalt have no other gods before me,"  where the religious one has those words exactly. Which seems like a quintessentially exclusive claim.

The Supreme Court decided otherwise, though, ruling that the law,

"requires that we neither abdicate our responsibility to maintain a division between church and state nor evince a hostility to religion by disabling the government from in some ways recognizing our religious heritage."

And, thus,

"The inclusion of the Commandments monument in this group [of monuments] has a dual significance, partaking of both religion and government, that cannot be said to violate the Establishment Clause."

In a 2011 speech, Cruz gave his own gloss on the court victory, citing it as an example of "how we re-take our country," by "standing on principle" -- "we," in that case, being specifically identified as "conservative Christians."



Some other notes:
-- Van Orden who brought the suit against Texas because of the monument, was, incredibly, a homeless Unitarian with a suspended law license.

-- Cruz' advisor at Princeton was Robert P. George.

-- In a smart analysis of Cruz's triumph, Abby Rapoport argues his win has little to do with ideology, much less the advent of a new era of Tea Party power, and has been widely and wildly mis-read.

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