Letters from an American - February 22, 2024
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February 22, 2024
The Alabama Supreme Court on February 16, 2024 decided that cells awaiting implantation
for in vitro fertilization are children and that the accidental destruction of such an embryo falls under the state's
wrongful death of a minor act. In an opinion concurring with the ruling, Chief Justice Tom
Parker declared that the people of Alabama have adopted the theologically based view of the sanctity of life and said that human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed
without incurring the wrath of a holy God. Peyton Armstrong of media watchdog Media Matters for
America reported today that on the same day the Alabama decision came down, an interview Parker
did on the program of a self-proclaimed prophet and QAnon conspiracy theorist
appeared. In it, Parker claimed that God created government and called it
heartbreaking that we have let it go into the possession of others. Parker referred to the Seven Mountain
Mandate, a theory that appeared in 1975, which claims that Christians must take over the seven
mountains of U.S. life, religion, family, education, media, entertainment, business, and government.
He told his interviewer that,
�We�ve abandoned those seven mountains and they�ve been occupied by the other side.
God is calling and equipping people to step back into these mountains right now,� he
said.
While Republicans are split on the decision about
embryos after a number of hospitals have ended their popular IVF programs out of fear of
prosecution, others, like Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, agreed that embryos,
to me, are babies. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican of Louisiana, identifies himself as a Christian,
has argued that the United States is a Christian nation, and has called for biblically sanctioned
government.
At a retreat of Republican leaders this weekend, as the country is grappling with both the need to
support Ukraine and the need to fund the government, he tried to rally the attendees with what some
called a sermon, arguing that the Republican Party needed to save the country from its lack of
morality. As Charles Blow of the New York Times put it, if you don't think this country is sliding toward theocracy, you're not paying attention.
In the United States, theocracy and authoritarianism go hand in hand.
The framers of the Constitution quite deliberately excluded religion from the U.S. Constitution.
As a young man, James Madison,
the key thinker behind the Constitution, had seen his home state of Virginia arrest itinerant
preachers for undermining the established church in the state. He came to believe that a man had
a right to the free exercise of religion. In 1785, in a memorial and remonstrance against
religious assessments, he explained that what was at stake was not just religion, but also
representative government itself. The establishment of one religion over others attacked a fundamental human right, an unalienable right of conscience.
If lawmakers could destroy the right of freedom of conscience, they could destroy all other
unalienable rights. Those in charge of government could throw representative government out the
window and make themselves tyrants. In order to make sure men had the right of conscience,
the framers added the First Amendment to the Constitution. It read,
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting
the free exercise thereof. Madison was right to link religion and representative government.
In the early years of the nation, Americans zealously guarded the wall between the two.
They strictly limited the power of the federal government to reflect religion,
refusing even to permit the government to stop delivery of the U.S. mails on Sunday
out of concern that Jews and Christians did not share the same Sabbath, and the government to stop delivery of the U.S. mails on Sunday out of concern that
Jews and Christians did not share the same Sabbath and the government could not choose
one over the other.
The Constitution, a Congressional report noted, gave Congress no authority to inquire and
determine what part of time, or whether any, has been set apart by the Almighty for religious
exercises. But the Civil War marked a change. As early as the 1830s, Southern white enslavers
relied on religious justification for their hierarchical system that rested on white supremacy.
God, they argued, had made black Americans for enslavement and women
for marriage, and society must recognize those facts. A character in an 1836 novel written by a
Virginia gentleman explained to a younger man that God had given everyone a place in society.
Women and black people were at the bottom
subordinate to white men by design all women live by marriage he said it is their only duty
trying to make them equal was a cruelty for my part the older man said i am well pleased with the established order of the universe
i see subordination everywhere and when i find the subordinate content and recognizing his place as
that to which he properly belongs i am content to leave him there the confederacy rejected the idea
of popular government maintaining instead that a few
Americans should make the rules for the majority.
As historian Gaines Foster explained in his 2002 book, Moral Reconstruction, which explores
the 19th century relationship between government and morality, it was the Confederacy, not
the U.S. government, that sought to align the state with God.
A nation was more than the aggregation of individuals, one Presbyterian minister preached.
It was a sort of person before God, and the government must purge that nation of sins.
Confederates not only invoked the favor and guidance of Almighty God in their constitution,
they established as their motto, Deo Vindicae, or God will vindicate. The United States,
in contrast, was recentering democracy during the war, and it rejected the alignment of the federal government
with a religious vision. When reformers in the United States tried to change the preamble of
the U.S. Constitution to read, we, the people of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty
God as the sources of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the
ruler among nations, and his revealed will as of supreme authority in order to constitute a
Christian government and in order to form a more perfect union. The House Committee on the Judiciary
concluded that the Constitution of the United States does not recognize a supreme
being. That defense of democracy, the will of the majority, continued to hold religious extremists
at bay. Reformers continued to try to add a Christian amendment to the Constitution,
to add a Christian amendment to the Constitution, Foster explains, and in March 1896 once again got so far as the House Committee on the Judiciary. One reformer stressed that turning the Constitution
into a Christian document would provide a source of authority for the government.
That, he implied, it lacked when it simply relied on a voting majority.
implied it lacked when it simply relied on a voting majority. A religious amendment asks the Bible to decide moral issues in political life, not all moral questions, but simply those that
have become political questions. Opponents recognized this attempt as a revolutionary attack
that would dissolve the separation of church and state and hand power to a religious minority.
One reformer said that Congress had no right to enact laws that were not in
harmony with the justice of God and that the voice of the people should prevail only when it was right.
Congressman then asked who would decide what was right and what would
happen if the majority was wrong. Would the Supreme Court turn into an
interpreter of the Bible? The committee set the proposal aside. Now once again we
are watching a minority trying to impose its will on the majority with leaders
like House Speaker Johnson noting that,
I try to do every day what my constituents want. But sometimes what your constituents want does
not line up with the principles God gave us for government. And you have to have conviction
enough to stand up to your own people.
enough to stand up to your own people.