Fred Thompson's Christian Nationalist Pander
Our founders established an independent federal judiciary to decide cases, not social policy. Yet more and more that is exactly what it is doing. Roe v. Wade is a classic example. And nowhere is it more apparent than with regard to the issue of church and state. We can see lots of red flags fluttering in the breezes of former Senator Thompson's rhetoric. But I want to focus on just two. The demonization of federal judges has a long and ignoble history going back to the segregationist definace of then Alabama Governor George Wallace. Thompson, like fellow GOP contender Mitt Romney, is situating himself squarely in the judiciary-baiting tradition of Wallace. On July 4, 1964, George Wallace announced that he would seek the Democratic nomination for president. He declared:
Today, this tyranny is imposed by the central government which claims the right to rule over our lives under sanction of the omnipotent black-robed despots who sit on the bench of the United States Supreme Court. The second point I want to highlight is Thompson's tired canard that the "founders were protecting the church from the state and not the other way around." The underlying argument refers to Thomas Jefferson's famous letter to the Danbury Baptists. Some Christian nationalists claim that Jefferson mean that the wall between church and state was to be "one directional." The best known proponent of this view is Christian nationalist propagandist and longtime Texas GOP official David Barton -- whose claim about the "one directional wall" was directly debunked more than ten years ago by Brent Walker of the Joint Baptist Committee for Religious Liberty -- but it lives on as a Christian nationalist talking point and the stuff of urban legend.
Barton mentions church-state separation as flowing from Thomas Jefferson's 1802 letter to the Danbury Connecticut Baptist Association. He asserts that later in the letter Jefferson made it clear that he wanted only a "one directional wall" to prevent the government from harming religion, not to prevent religion from capturing the government. Walker's classic debunking of Barton has never been rebutted. Those who continue to repeat the talking point are engaged in a coarse kind of pandering. The federal courts have long functioned as the guarantors of our constitutional rights; enforcing advances in civil equality. I suspect that Thompson knows and appreciates this. But in his his attacks on the federal judiciary, making transparent if coded appeals to the old guard of white supremacy, and its kissing cousin, religious supremecism.
Joe Conn, writing at the Wall of Separation blog has a good take down of Thompson's CNP pander: Here are the facts: There are no federal judges who are trying to "eliminate God" from the public schools or the public square. The Supreme Court's decisions on religion and public education simply say that parents, not politicians or educators, get to decide what prayers children learn and what holy scriptures they study devotionally. Conn also reports that Thompson was to be introduced at the CNP meeting by none other than Richard Land, a leader in the fundamentalist cabal running the Southern Baptist Convention -- who is now positioning himself as moderate. Thompson made sure that the leaders and activists of the religious right got the message. But other than veteran religious right watchers like Joe Conn, these things barely get noticed let alone effectively addressed. Conn is right. It is rediculous for Thomson to assert that judges trying to eliminate God from the public schools or the public square. It is also rediclous for Thompson to assert that the founders intended for the state to stay out of the church, not the other way around. Mainstream pols and pundits ought to be able to make short work of stuff like this. But for whatever reason, they don't. If we are serious about regaining political ground lost to the religious right, and advancing civil and constitutional rights in our time, more of us are going to need to get much better at rebutting the Christian nationalist talking points being adopted by presidential candidates. The struggle for control of the narrative of American history is well underway. I wrote recently that we can tell the story of our nation with a strong, clear narrative of our own: one that discusses the role of religion in public life; one that tells the moving story of overcoming religious persecution and oppression; one that explains why there is no mention of God in the Constitution; one that appreciates the meaning of separation of church and state as a necessary prerequisite for religious freedom.
Fred Thompson's Christian Nationalist Pander | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)
Fred Thompson's Christian Nationalist Pander | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)
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