This post is another warning about the grave threat that Christian nationalist control of the Supreme Court poses to secular law, democracy, civil liberties, civil tolerance and pluralism.
Alito recently spoke at the Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Initiative in Rome. Alito is the most, or one of the most radical of the Christian nationalists on the Supreme Court. His comments clearly reflect the CN propaganda lie that Christians are being seriously persecuted in America today. The Freedom from Religion Foundation writes:
“It is hard to convince people that religious liberty is worth defending if they don’t think that religion is a good thing that deserves protection,” Alito claimed. “The challenge for those who want to protect religious liberty in the United States, Europe and other similar places is to convince people who are not religious that religious liberty is worth special protection. That will not be easy to do.”
Patronizingly, he then offered, as though it were original, the obvious idea of finding “common ground” with nonreligious people on the topic of religious liberty, such as by pointing out that religious liberty promotes domestic tranquility.Alito also opined during his talk that you can “not extinguish the religious impulse.” He added: “Our hearts are restless until we rest in God. And, therefore, the champions of religious liberty who go out as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves can expect to find hearts that are open to their message.”
FFRF Co-President Dan Barker notes that the verse in Matthew 10:16 that Alito cites describes how Jesus sends out disciples as sheep in the midst of wolves. In other words, Alito is portraying non-Christians and nonbelievers as wolves and threats to “sheep.” The two verses preceding the cited passage say that if a city doesn’t welcome Christians, then the city’s punishment will be “worse than Sodom and Gomorrah on Judgment Day.” The verses following warn that the followers of Jesus will be dragged out and flogged in the synagogues and by councils, governors and kings.
“The whole context of this passage is that Christians are being persecuted by non-Christians,” comments Barker, a former evangelical minister and author of many books about religion, including Godless. “This is a highly disturbing message coming from a justice of the Supreme Court.”
Alito’s arrogance and mendacity are blatant.
The article argued that most early calls for slavery abolition, women’s rights to vote, contraception and abortion rights, and humane treatment of the mentally ill came from people who were not from Christians because God and the bible was generally deemed to oppose rights like that. Both the old and new testaments, explicitly sanction slavery. The Bible was repeatedly used to justify chattel slavery. Other than Quakers and some Universalists, most American denominations came late to the abolition movement. The Southern Baptist denomination was founded explicitly pro-slavery.
Like other Christian nationalist elites, Alito lies about history and slanders people who are deemed by God to be unworthy. He has no interest in finding common ground. God’s word is infallible and compromise is serious sin.
A prominent Republican politician once said in the 1960s:
“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”
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