After Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives, the New York Times pronounced him part of the Christian nationalist movement. Then it hastened to find a sociologist who agreed that Johnson fit the pattern, including “being comfortable with authoritarian social control and doing away with democratic values.”
I have no idea whether Johnson is comfortable being called a Christian nationalist. My point is simply that the Times was guilty of journalistic malpractice in gratuitously linking him to the views just quoted. Johnson opposes abortion and same-sex marriage, but the New York Times avidly supports both. That does not entitle the paper to smear the man.
Clearly, the unexpected elevation of a very conservative Southern Baptist whose religion shapes his politics has rattled the liberal establishment. But the choice of a Speaker liberal in politics and agnostic in religion would undoubtedly have been hailed by the Times and other organs of the left.
Evidently, the time is ripe for some basics on religion in a religiously pluralistic country.
Start, then, with the inescapable fact that the Constitution bars a religious test for public office. Unless it be clearly established that an individual holds and, given opportunity, would act upon tenets of a violently antisocial nature, his or her theological views by themselves should not be the basis for granting or withholding access to office.
That said, it should also be clear that a candidate should be comfortable with the great political solvent called compromise as a fundamental negotiating tool of political life. This does not mean selling out or betraying principles. It means working for and accepting the best deal possible in the circumstances, while reserving the right to seek a better deal if one appears achievable at a later date.
Note, however, that not every issue is open to solution by compromise. Asked how he would approach abortion if he were to become president again, Donald Trump said, “I would sit down with both sides and I’d negotiate something and we’ll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years.”
That is naïve, to say the least, given that the right to life of the unborn has absolute value in the eyes of prolifers just as the ‘right to choose’ has been similarly absolutized by abortion proponents. But even supposing that some temporary agreement were possible—for example, designating a point in pregnancy after which abortion isn’t allowed—the two sides would surely resume fighting before the ink was dry.
In its piece on Speaker Johnson, the Times made much of the fact that he opposes views on church-state separation that are commonly held by secularists. It quoted him as saying that in forbidding an “establishment” of religion, the founders sought to “protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.”
As an attorney with the public interest law firm Alliance Defending Freedom, Johnson had considerable success advancing that view in the courts. Granted, it assumes a debatable reading of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, but it is no less intellectually defensible on that account. Besides which, it’s a good summary of what many religious Americans—not just conservative Protestants either—see as the history of secularist aggression against religious faith in our ongoing culture war.
If the new Speaker of the House of Representatives intends to bring that view with him to the lofty office he now occupies, I for one say more power to him.
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The bias of the so-called mainstream media on the topic of religion is appalling. The NYT sets the tone and the others follow like sheep.
Very insightful, and educational to me, I like staying in the loop, globally what is going on out there these days
It raises the question whether anyone who practices a religion should be barred from holding office.
If a candidate runs for office and practices a religion, the first qualification is that he or she is a person of integrity and not a hypocrite. If they are sincere in their belief, one would presume that their religion informs their entire outlook on life. A person of integrity is not going to artifically try to compartmentalize their religion from their world outlook and political views. Such a separation is not possible for a person of integrity (this is the problem with the Pelosis, the Bidens, the Kennedys, the Cuomos, etc. i.e. the religion says one thing and they hold political views contrary to their religion).
If persons of faith are barred from holding office, then it’s left to those without religion to dominate the political scene. But, even in this case, one could make an argument that anti-religionism is a form of religion.
If you allow persons who profess to practice a religion to hold office but their political positions are sometimes in conflict with their religion, I’d make the argument that these politicians are insincere, lack integrity and are duplicitous in which case they’d make lousy political leaders.
There’s no easy answer. Those pundits who refer to the “Separation Clause” don’t understand what that meant. It was written with the expressed intent that government should not interfere with the practice of religion (not that religion should not inform government policy and laws).
I guess the way the USA is going which is increasingly hostile to God and religion, it doesn’t have long to survive. After all, without a Divine Lawgiver, there is no reason to abide by any law since each person is a law unto themself. Even in law courts when a person giving testimony swears to tell the truth, what does that mean if one is not swearing an oath before God? I’d say that currently swearing an oath to tell the truth is meaningless. If you don’t believe in God, it makes no sense to tell the truth other than the fact that the government can force the truth out of you. But that’s the beginning of totalitarianism.