If there’s a common denominator linking the Trump-packed Supreme Court’s most recent assaults on the republic, his name is Jesus. Indeed, this may be his most active foray into the realm of American jurisprudence to date.
If that claim seems a might odd, consider the muscular Christo-politics at work in the court’s recent 6-3 rulings on not one, but four patently religious issues: abortion; school prayer; public funding for private religious schools, and; religious displays on government grounds. Taken on the whole these decisions don’t constitute a full-blown 21st century American theocracy; but they should serve as a reminder the rightwing narrative of a rightwing Jesus, defender of true Christian faith in the civic square, is alive and well in the highest court in the land.
These four rulings in particular signal a court majority wedded to the toxic theology that undergirds their regressive agenda. More troubling, as Religion News Service’s Robert P. Jones suggests in an op-ed from earlier this month, the six conservatives have an even more expansive vision for Christo-politics on the court: “As troubling as these decisions are, there is an even more dangerous common thread connecting them. This court is systematically erecting a new judicial standard based on an invocation of “history and tradition” that is rooted in a vision of a mythical 1950s white Christian America.”
Jones backs up that observation by referencing Kennedy vs. Bremerton School District, the case involving a former football coach fired for leading postgame prayers at midfield: “If the Christian coach Kennedy had been Hindu coach Patel, it is highly unlikely that this case would have been filed or even granted certiorari by this court. Ultimately, the new standard doesn’t protect religious liberty; it privileges Christian religious expressions over others.”
If Jones is right, context doesn’t seem to bother the six conservatives all that much. Nor does the lived reality that in every case mentioned above, the Jesus of Christo-politics alone holds the center. What seems to matter most is unfettered access to the religious practices of the religious majority - this court’s code for theological chauvinism.
Progressives can draw at least two hard lessons from these dreadful and dangerous opinions: 1. The judicial branch is absolutely subject to the same Red-Jesus Christo-politics that have infested nearly every other institution we can name. Nothing should surprise us from here on out; 2. Leverage to preserve other religion-related amendments and laws will have to come from without, not within the court. And that task will assuredly fall to we the people, not a congress almost certain to turn from blue to red come November.
There’s an old saw told in progressive theology circles: Conservatives want their Jesus to change Americans; liberals want Americans to change their Jesus. Never has that quip applied more.
Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister living in Hendersonville, N.C. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.
From The Progressive Populist, August 1, 2022
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