On Saturday night, I celebrated Passover, the holiday commemorating the Jewish people's liberation from slavery in Egypt, with my family in northern Virginia. On Sunday morning, Bill Frist, majority leader of the U.S. Senate, took to the airwaves alongside a group of evangelical leaders, headed by Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, for a "Justice Sunday" telecast, which was designed to show that those who oppose the right's agenda on the federal judiciary are discriminating against "people of faith."
On one level, this is funny. The appeal to identity politics is like a crude parody of some of liberalism's darker moments from decades past, complete with the deployment of the Newspeak term "people of faith." Even in imitation mode those on the right can't seem to muster a modicum of serious thought about what they're doing, blindly copying the "people of color" construction (despite the fact that "religious people" is -- unlike "colored people" -- a perfectly workable substitute).
On another level, however, it's rather frightening, and the principles being invoked here could plunge religious minorities into a new form of bondage. We got a preview of the method some time ago during the initial battle over the nomination of William Pryor to serve as a circuit-court judge. His opponents didn't want to confirm him because they thought he would be a bad judge whose decisions would be at odds with the law and the Constitution of the United States. His friends sought to portray his opponents as "anti-Catholic," notwithstanding the fact that many of his antagonists in the Senate are members of the Church. The charge, however, was not that Ted Kennedy and Pat Leahy harbor prejudices against co-religionists. Rather, Pryor's supporters argued that because his legal views are grounded in religious faith, it is illegitimate to hold these views against him.
The consequences of accepting this opinion would be both absurd and horrifying. Catholicism teaches that it is always wrong not only for a woman to have an abortion but also for a married couple to use contraceptives, for a gay couple to have sex, or for privately financed scientists to engage in research on embryonic stem cells. All of these things are, needless to say, legal in the United States. Some Catholics take the view that these are articles of faith to be adhered to in one's private life, but not legitimate grounds on which to base public policy. Others, however, argue that adherence to the faith requires politicians to seek to render these views into law.
Either view is acceptable from a legislator, though I wouldn't vote for someone who took the latter approach. But for a judge, the second approach is clearly unacceptable. A judge's job is to make rulings in accordance with the actually existing law, not his or her personal opinions, faith-based or otherwise, as to what the law should be. Consider the consequences if this were not the case: Are we going to have Quaker generals who refuse to fight? Hindu ranching regulators banning the slaughter of cattle? Jews are disproportionately represented on the federal bench, but my co-religionists have not, historically, sought to use the authority thereby gained to ban the consumption of leavened bread on Passover week.
The absurdity of the view that judges must be permitted to act in this manner was underscored some years ago by a participant in the Sunday telecast, Al Mohler of the Southern Baptists Theological Seminary. One of the Democratic Party's new Internet gnomes recently brought to my attention Mohler's previously expressed view that the Roman Catholic Church "is a false church and it teaches a false gospel … the Pope holds a false and unbiblical office." Mohler doesn't have a special beef with Catholics; one of the problems with the late Pope John Paul II was that he "has actually embraced all monotheists, both Jews and the followers of Islam, as long as they're sincere within the penumbra of the gospel," a view that is "just unbiblical."
The point of the e-mail dispatch was, I think, to try to make Mohler look like an intolerant person. But I think Mohler's right: Catholics do preach a false gospel, just as I think Mohler's gospel is false, as is the gospel of the Quakers, and of the Hindus and the Muslims. That's how religion works: You only get to have one. Nobody gets to represent "faith" as such. When Republicans seek to advance their political agenda, they are doing just that -- practicing politics -- as are their Democratic opponents. Statements to the contrary are pure cynicism, less an effort on Frist's part to bludgeon the opposition than to position himself as the choice of right-wing Protestantism in the 2008 primaries. But his embrace of this view should give everyone cause for concern.
That Mohler believes that his faith is the true path to redemption is unexceptional. That he believes that any effort to stop judges who want to turn their faith into the law of the land is discriminatory and should be rectified by eliminating procedural restraints is exceptional. That a leading light of the American government is telling him he's right is frightening.
Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.
