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Let me add to my esteemed colleague’s remarks. There is also no evidence that Catholics, Jews, Muslims, or other religious minorities, have been making life difficult for yet other religious minorities. Those who have chronicled the treatment of religious minorities in this country since, say,1962 or thereabouts, appear to be unanimous in identifying the bullies as evangelical Protestants. Conservative Jews, conservative Catholics, conservative Muslims and other religious conservatives (other than evangelical Protestants) are different from evangelical Protestants. The fact that they might have all come together on one issue, or even a few issues, does not gainsay the larger, and more important point made by these chroniclers. I suspect that these non-evangelical conservatives have not completely forgotten or overlooked their own status as religious minorities, and have not completely forgotten their history in America as religious minorities. (Although I must confess that some have.)
Recall Santa Fe ISD where the courts had to protect the identity of the Catholic and Mormon plaintiffs. Does one really suppose that the culprits trying to unmask the plaintiffs in that case were conservative Catholics and conservative Jews, not to mention conservative Muslims?
No, the Protestant Empire lives, with a little help from its conservative friends in or from other religious traditions, but the basic contours of the “work” of that Empire are set by, well, Protestants, and the bullying of religious minorities seems to be almost entirely an evangelical Protestant work of art.
If this is wrong, someone needs to provide solid historical or other evidence which establishes (1) a pattern of a more ecumenical approach to the crude and belligerent bullying of religious minorities over the last 40-45 years, and (2) that people like Alley and Barner-Barry simply have the facts wrong. (I will grant that non-evangelical conservatives might well have had a hand in the Hialeah case, and I will grant that Mormons have been charged, on occasion, with being bullies, in effect, in some common school religion cases. But exceptions tend to prove the rule, somebody once said.)
On a different matter, I predict that the Ten Commandments cases will be decided by O’Connor, Breyer, and Kennedy. I predict that Souter, Ginsburg and Stevens will say that both displays violate the EC, and that Scalia, Thomas and Rehnquist will say that neither display violates the EC. As for the other three (or at least two of the three), I have no idea. Although I tend to think, as do others on this listserv, that O’Connor will split the difference, holding that context (perhaps with intention thrown in, shades of Jaffree,) controls the outcome. I doubt that the case will actually shift or move the law terribly much in one direction (strict separationism) or another (accommodationism).
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Ok, but I've not seen Catholics or Jews or Muslims pushing for: prayers starting school prayers at football games using religious arguments as superior to positive law young-earther anti-evolution creationism creches
I do not recall seeing any Catholics or Jews pushing this as part of their agendas, either.
No doubt some, perhaps many, even most Catholics and perhaps many, perhaps most Jews support it -- but they are not the ones pushing it. I stand by my comment as made.
On Wednesday, March 2, 2005, at 06:06 PM, Berg, Thomas C. wrote:
-- Prof. Steven D. Jamar vox: 202-806-8017 Howard University School of Law fax: 202-806-8567 2900 Van Ness Street NW mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Washington, DC 20008 http://www.law.howard.edu/faculty/pages/jamar/
"I do not at all resent criticism, even when, for the sake of emphasis, it for a time parts company with reality."
Winston Churchill, speech to the House of Commons, 1941 |
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