In The Atlantic, Emma Green reports on Democratic and Republican reactions to the San Bernardino shootings, and how a noticeable number of liberal/progressive commentators are "shaming" people who've expressed the sentiment that "our prayers are with those affected." For example, she quotes a Think Progress editor and pretty aggressive atheist named Zack Ford, who tweeted, "Stop thinking. Stop praying. Look up Einstein's definition of 'insanity.' Start acting on gun violence prevention measures." Green thinks there's a developing pattern here indicative of the changes in religion and politics:
There are many assumptions packed into these attacks on prayer: that all religious people, and specifically Christians, are gun supporters, and vice versa. That people who care about gun control can’t be religious, and if they are, they should keep quiet in the aftermath of yet another heart-wrenching act of violence. At one time in American history, liberals and conservatives shared a language of God, but that’s clearly no longer the case; any invocation of faith is taken as implicit advocacy of right-wing political beliefs.
I certainly hope that the "shamers" are in the minority; I hope that for the sake of the left, which (to say it for the umpteenth time) has no hope of making progress in America if it divorces itself from religious inspiration. I'd hope that many of those who attack prayer alone as insufficient, and want action, are reflecting something of the attitude of the prophet Amos (see 5:21-23, NRSV):
I hate, I despise your festivals, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies....
Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
If you are impatient with unaddressed matters of justice, and you think that religion can throw up pious distractions from those matters, you have the Biblical prophets on your side. As Green points out, praying and acting are far from inconsistent. See the familiar list of social-justice movements the left commends, from abolition to women's suffrage to civil rights, that have been inspired by preaching and prayer. I think that most Americans on the left still recognize that--although unfortunately, Green is likely right that more and more do not.
Thursday, November 26, 2015
Here. The money quote is Levin's: “Ecclesiastes 9:11 should be stamped on luxury cars and Harvard degrees.”
Happy Thanksgiving!
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
"... You'd better hope there's someone to help you [then]." This new John Kasich ad gives Trump everything he deserves for his shameful litany of bigoted statements.
Thanks to Marc for posting about Anthony Trollope's The Warden, which is indeed a lovely novel. Trollope is one of my favorites, because his social criticism--which is definitely there--is tempered with a wryness and wide-ranging sympathy that often eluded Dickens. Trollope seems to trend every once in a while (I remember years ago when the series based on the Palliser political novels was big on Masterpiece Theatre). And according to Adam Gopnik recently in the New Yorker, he's trending again. Marc's post reminded me of Nathaniel Hawthorne's great assessment (which Gopnik quotes) of Trollope's novels:
“Just as real as if some giant had hewn a great lump out of the earth and put it under a glass case, with all its inhabitants going about their daily business, and not suspecting that they were made a show of.”
Three cert petitions were recently filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in an important case involving school choice and religious rights in Colorado. The local school district in Douglas County adopted a neutral program of scholarships for families to use for sending their children to any private school, religious or nonreligious. But the Colorado Supreme Court held that religious schools and families must be singled out for exclusion from this program; 3 of the 4 justices in the majority relied on Colorado's Blaine Amendment, the constitutional provision that prohibits aid to "sectarian" schools. The petitions argue that the Colorado court's ruling requiring this exclusion (1) ignores the 19th-century animus and prejudice against Catholics that motivated Colorado's and other states' anti-aid provisions, and (2) independent of this historical taint, violates the First Amendment by singling out religious choices for discriminatory denial of aid. (Here is one of the petitions, the school district's, with links to petitions by the state and by intervening parents.)
There's now an amicus brief from the Christian Legal Society, the Becket Fund, and others supporting the cert petitions. We expand on the argument about the prejudice-tainted background of state Blaine Amendments. We also show why the passage of time since their enactment does not immunize them from constitutional review based on their discriminatory motivation and the discrimination they are accomplishing today.
Finally, we explain why the Court ought to take this case: (1) among other things, state judges and other officials have (wrongly) come to think they have carte blanche to exclude people choosing religious options from generally available state benefits, and (2) the federal government bears partial responsibility for these discriminatory provisions because it pressured states joining the Union in the late 1800s and early 1900s to include such provisions as a condition of admission.
The University of St. Thomas Religious Liberty Appellate Clinic, which I direct, wrote the amicus brief. Thanks to my student Dan Burns for doing a significant amount of the drafting.
Fingers crossed on this case! It's obviously always difficult to get cert; and school choice cases are hard to bring before the Supreme Court. But the historical evidence of anti-Catholic animus in Colorado is as strong as that in any state. This may be the case that gets the Court's attention on how state constitutional provisions are being used to require insupportable discrimination against religiously grounded schooling.
Tuesday, November 10, 2015
At the Notre Dame Law Review's excellent symposium Friday (thanks Rick and others!), I presented these remarks using the idea of "partly acculturated religion" as a way of understanding some of the most controversial current free-exercise cases. I then gave the same talk the next day at a Yale Law/Divinity Schools' joint conference on law, religion and politics (thanks to Prof. Patrick Weil of Yale for the invitation there). A couple of samples from the talk:
Many of today’s most vexing problems concerning the accommodation of religious conscience involve religious groups and activities that straddle the perceived boundary of the public versus private. For example, in disputes over same-sex marriage and religious liberty, it’s generally agreed that churches and clergy should be able to refuse to host or perform a marriage, because they fall within the private sphere. But religious activities that reach out to provide services to the broader public provoke much more controversy. Think of religious adoption agencies that decline to place children with same-sex couples—or evangelical anti-trafficking program that refuses to provide abortion referrals—or the religious social services that have sought exemption from the HHS contraception mandate.
To many critics, accommodation is plainly improper in such cases. They say that when a religious organization hires people outside the narrow confines of its faith, or becomes a significant social-service provider, it should not be allowed to continue to act on norms that the government has deemed unjust. Once an organization reaches out to others, it must follow all the rules no matter how much they burden religion....
My project is to argue for protection in these cases too, relying on the idea that they involve cases of “partly acculturated religion.” These faiths fall in between two poles.... They are “acculturated” in that they seek to reach out to the broader society and provide services that people of all beliefs value: education, health care, social services of all kinds. But they’re “unacculturated” in that some of their doctrines and practices sharply clash with the dominant secular values in their relevant sphere. These organizations make a claim to be able to continue to provide services and still follow their countercultural doctrines and practices, which often reflect the core values that inspire their service in the first place.
I then present two arguments why the law should make meaningful efforts to accommodate partly acculturated religious activity:
First, equality among religions—a fundamental principle of the First Amendment. Service is an essential component of much religion, of course; but more than that, it is a perfectly legitimate way of being religious for an organization to reach out to serve or employ others will still maintaining adherence to its distinctive religious standards.... [The law] should avoid forcing all organizations into two rigid categories of unacculturated or acculturated.
Second, social capital and civic virtue. Partially acculturated religious organizations tend to create a great deal of social capital and volunteer energy in service of others, and if their works shrinks or ends because of legal conflicts, it will be a loss to society. The sociological and political-science writings of Robert Putnam and David Campbell, John DiIulio, Steven Monsma, and others support this claim.
I'll be developing this into a full-length article. Comments welcome--i.e. wanted!
Tom
Friday, October 16, 2015
Here's a piece, informative but with biased snark, from the Washington Post (generally fairer on these things in its news columns) about how some congressional Democrats are joining Republicans in resisting the D.C. Council's push to end the voucher program. As a previous Post story put it:
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in a statement that private school vouchers are needed because the D.C. public school system, “often cited as one of the worst in the country, is absolutely failing these children.” He was joined by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.)
As usual, the political battle is being fought mostly over whether school choice is helpful to educational performance. Behind it, however, are the questions whether parents should be able to receive K-12 educational benefits even when they choose a religiously grounded education for their children--and whether participating schools should have to follow all the nondiscrimination requirements applicable to public schools.
Friday, October 9, 2015
Here. Despite the headline, the story doesn't give any evidence that she's "Pope Francis's latest convert." Here's an interesting profile on her combination of "liberal" and "conservative" views and how it gets most of her political friends mad at her. (Is it really only, as the profile says, "roughly 25 percent of U.S. voters who harbor a balance of conservative and liberal beliefs"?)
