In God We ‘God’
Theocracy is another form of dominance.
I didn’t say this. The founding fathers did.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.. (Source: Amendment 1, US Constitution) (1)
America is somewhat unique in that her founding fathers did not come from a dominant religion, nor for that matter did some come from any organized religion.
Here’s the breakdown:
Deists
Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson
Non-practicing Christians influenced by Deism
George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin
Practicing Christians
John Jay, Patrick Henry (2)
If one were to imagine a fully engaged “originalist” Supreme Court drama and the justices taking on the roles of founding fathers, how could we cast them? 6 hail from a dominant religion, Catholicism, a Jew (Kagan), and a Protestant (KBJ). All but one are practicing Christians. (3)
Some serious miscasting here.
Former Village Voice writer and Medium contributor, Lucian Truscott IV recently cited a George Orwell essay entitled “Notes on Nationalism.” In it Orwell provides a parallel between theocracy and autocracy, what he calls “nationalism.”
“…there is a habit of mind which is now so widespread that it affects our thinking on nearly every subject, but which has not yet been given a name. As the nearest existing equivalent I have chosen the word ‘nationalism’, but it will be seen in a moment that I am not using it in quite the ordinary sense, if only because the emotion I am speaking about does not always attach itself to what is called a nation — that is, a single race or a geographical area. It can attach itself to a church or a class, or it may work in a merely negative sense, against something or other and without the need for any positive object of loyalty.
By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled ‘good’ or ‘bad’.[1] But secondly – and this is much more important — I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.” (4)
In the current idiom, consider Associate Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs:
“Justice Alito took pains to present the majority’s conclusion as the product of pure legal reasoning engaged in by judges standing majestically above the fray of Americans’ “sharply conflicting views” on the “profound moral issue” of abortion, as he put it in the opinion’s first paragraph. And yet that very framing, the assumption that the moral gravity of abortion is singular and self-evident, gives away more than members of the majority, all five of whom were raised in the Catholic Church, may have intended.” (5)
Writes Linda Greenhouse in a more recent New York Times Opinion piece,
“The U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision that erased the constitutional right to abortion was an alert, too, of course, leaving Republicans scrambling to distance themselves from the fruits of the court they had populated with such glee only a few years earlier. The fact that religious doctrine lay at the heart of Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was perfectly clear, as I observed then. Dobbs is usually discussed today as a conservative power play, however, rather than as a projection of a religious view of fetal life onto both a largely unwilling public and the Constitution itself.” (6)
At one junction in my mixed job seeking career, I answered the invitation of a fellow practicing Christian to visit his midtown Manhattan corporate office and share a brown bag lunch. After sharing some views about engineering, patents, and product design, the conversation slipped towards religion.
I was being groomed. Not for another middle manager job — I would later learn that my labor predilections and corporate career didn’t mix — but for my religious beliefs.
Was I a believer?
I recall stumbling over my answer that as a practicing Christian of course I was, but like most sinners, needed reinforcement and sought guidance. His patronizing air should have clued me in. But was I a “true believer?” Seen through today’s theocracy-in-process veil, I would have dismissed his questioning as intrusive. Then, I tried to sound polite but reluctant to position my belief intensity to someone who addressed me as a stranger.
“Sounds like you are not sure.”
I was being faith bullied.
Like Chief Justice Tom Parker’s efforts that we regard frozen embryos as “little people,” and Justice Samuel Alito’s musings about the role of government in ministering religious dogma, America is being faith bullied.
Religious dogma will be the glue that holds together Dobbs as America’s states lurch further into reproductive contraception, available reproductive and family emergency care, funding interstate transportation.
The list goes on.
And the good Catholics on the Supreme Court are fine with that.
March 4
Notes
1-For a robust examination and interpretation of the ‘free exercise clause’ of the first amendment, visit https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/free_exercise_clause
2- Source: study.com, Steve Wiener, Nate Sullivan, contributors, “Deism & the Founding Fathers: Definition, Religion & Beliefs”
Deism is the belief in a creator god who created an orderly universe governed by the law of physics and thereafter, left it to run on its own like a well-manufactured clock. Deists posit that the existence of God can be discerned through human reason, but not through any supernatural events, scriptural authority or ritual. — Study.com
So fervent was the adoption of deism, that of its two adoptees among the founding fathers, Thomas Paine, on viewing his tombstone, directed the stone mason to scratch out the word “God.”
3- Of the Catholics on the Supreme Court — Roberts, Alito, Coney-Barrett, Gorsuch, Thomas and Sotomayor — Sotomayor identifies as “liberal Catholic.”
4- George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism,”
Comment: The context for Orwell’s observation is worth delving into here. He begins with Byron’s distinguishing the use of the French word longeur, for which there is no English translation:
Somewhere or other Byron makes use of the French word longueur, and remarks in passing that though in England we happen not to have the word, we have the thing in considerable profusion. In the same way, there is a habit of mind which is now so widespread that it affects our thinking on nearly every subject, but which has not yet been given a name.
For Orwell’s read of Byron, the literal meaning/usage of the term longeur is “be on the same wavelength;” in the current vernacular, “mindset,” or “culture.” Orwell further stipulates this context by noting that the French definition results in the use of the word, whereas the English definition results in the claim, the thing, as Byron dryly comments.
5- Linda Greenhouse, “Religious Doctrine, Not the Constitution, Drove the Dobbs Decision,” July 22, 2022, The New York Times
6- Linda Greenhouse, “Let’s Thank the Alabama Supreme Court,” March 1, 2024, The New York Times
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