The recently heard Ten Commandments cases before the Supreme Court and the like decision favoring keeping the monuments in place--at least in some measure--are a pretty clear signal that "The Great Backlash" is not over. In fact, judging from the tone of the arguments, I would venture the guess that at this point in American history, theocratic rule the day.
What suggests this to me is that the supporters of state entrenched Christianity are longer willing to settle for simply winning the argument. They are now determined to win the argument on their own terms.
This was most clearly demonstrated the behavior of Justice Scalia during the debate. While the various State Attorneys General and the Solicitor General tried the old stand by arguments that these types of symbols (tablets and crosses) are actually secular, historical symbols related to the nation's predominantly religious past. Scalia, probably knowing the ideological state of affairs in the court far better than his connections in the moral majority, would have none of it. When the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, argued that unlike a six foot wooden cross, the ten commandments sends a secular message, Scalia excoriated him. "But it's not a secular message! If you're watering it down to a secular message I can't agree with you," says Scalia.
It get worse.
As the day went on, it became more and more clear that there was coup in the works. While the opposition argued that "government can't make some people feel like insiders and some like outsiders'" swing voter Justice Kennedy was heard muttering statements like "seems like hostility to religion" and to wonder at society's “obsessive concern with any mention of religion.” There's was no "balanced dialogue" on the subject. Let the atheists cover their eyes, he suggested.
Speaking of balanced dialogues, one wonders what he then thought of Scalia's 15th centuryesque statement proclaiming for the first time his belief that our government had no right to exist but for God's forbearance.
Erwin Chemerinsky represents Thomas Van Orden, a Texas man who lives in a tent and survives on food stamps and doesn't like Austin's big old Ten Commandments. Van Orden briefed and argued his way all the way to the federal appeals court before handing the case over. Chemerinsky tells the court the commandments are an overtly "religious symbol." Justice Anthony Kennedy mutters over this "obsessive concern with religion."
Chemerinsky points out that the text on the Texas monument is not the Jewish version and thus alienating. But what about religions that don't accept the commandments at all? "Imagine a Muslim or a Buddhist," he begins. Justice Antonin Scalia cuts him off: "Muslims believe in the Ten Commandments," he says. "No, they don't," replies Chemerinsky. Scalia looks horrified, but without missing a beat he adds: "I think 90 percent of Americans believe in the Ten Commandments. And I bet 85 percent couldn't tell you what the 10 are." (This statistic is supported by the excited utterances of my cab drivers both to and from the court this morning.) Scalia's point here: "When someone walks by the commandments, they are not studying the text. They are acknowledging that the government derives its authority from God."
Scalia appears to have come to a philosophical epiphany. He seems now to understand that in arguing that religious symbols on state property are nothing more that secular or historic monuments, the supporters of the religion are actually doing God no favors. Indeed, they are robbing religion of its force or as Scalia put it, "watering it down."
Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic's literary editor, gave perhaps the most articulate explanation of the dangers these arguments represented for religion. He wrote last August,
Some of the individuals to whom I am attributing a hostility to religion would resent the allegation deeply. They regard themselves as religion's finest friends. But what kind of friendship for religion is it that insists that the words "under God" have no religious connotation? A political friendship, is the answer. And that is precisely the kind of friendship that the Bush administration exhibited in its awful defense of the theistic diction of the Pledge. The solicitor general stood before the Court to argue against the plain meaning of ordinary words. In the Pledge of Allegiance, the government insisted, the word "God" does not refer to God. It refers to a reference to God.
...There is no greater insult to religion than to expel strictness of thought from it. Yet such an expulsion is one of the traits of contemporary American religion, as the discussion at the Supreme Court demonstrated. Religion in America is more and more relaxed and "customized," a jolly affair of hallowed self-affirmation, a religion of a holy whatever. Speaking about God is prized over thinking about God. Say "under God" even if you don't mean under God. And if you mean under God, don't be tricked into giving an account of what you mean by it. Before too long you have arrived at a sacrilege cynicism: In his intervention at the Court, Justice Stevens recalled a devastating point from the fascinating brief submitted in support of Newdow by 32 Christian and Jewish clergy, which asserted that "if the briefs of the school district and the United States are to be taken seriously," that is, if the words in the Pledge do not allude to God, "then every day they ask school children to violate [the] commandment" that "Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord in vain." Remember, those are not the Ten Suggestions. It is a very strange creed indeed that asks its votaries not to reflect too much about itself.
If the behavior of Scalia is any signal, there can be no further quarter with the religious right. Now in control of all three branches of government, and actively working to further entrench their power, they believe they are going in for the kill. They still fail to understand the danger they face.
The Religious Right in its determination to gain the government's support and enforcement for their interpretation of moral life fails to understand how vulnerable they make the values they hold dear. Its fine to involve the government in your religion while your party is in power, but what will then happen to your religion when the opposition takes power and now has influence over your faith as never before.
In the end, involvement with government has never been good for religion. Once it is entrenched in the levers of government, corruption and hypocrisy become a foregone conclusion as church positions become ever more powerful. Scalia would be wise to read up on his church's history before he so stridently claims the necessity of religion's involvement in state activities.
The court will eventually rule on this case and, if indications hold, find in favor of the states. And in the end, as Kennedy argued, it is probably really not that big a deal. But my hope is that the manner in which this case is decided brings more clarity to the issue, rather then, as seems likely, less.
Let's just hope Scalia doesn't write the decision.
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