An overused saying—really a reminder of the obvious—informs us there are no religious tests for office in America. Most frequently, those words jump from the foamy mouths of Democrats.
If the Supreme Court nomination hearings hammered home one thing, however, it’s that there are indeed religious tests for office. The American philosopher Sidney Hook distilled the definition of liberalism down into a single unintentionally ironic drop: “faith in intelligence.”
Religious belief in worldly things is a feature, not a bug of modern liberalism, which, as it turns out, is a dogma, too. Although I am generally annoyed by the GOP’s judicial strategy and ambivalent about Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, it’s easy to see her recent confirmation hearings amounted to a protracted religious test.
“Sexual preference,” a term used by Barrett during the hearings, “is offensive and outdated,” complained MSNBC producer Kyle Griffin. “The term implies sexuality is a choice. It is not. News organizations should not repeat Justice Barrett’s words without providing that important context.” Barrett swiftly paid her penance. “I certainly didn’t mean and would never mean to use a term that would cause any offense in the LGBTQ community,” she said.
Next, Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) came to perform the rite of anti-racism. “You condemn white supremacy, correct?” he intoned gravely. “Yes,” responded Barrett emphatically, defusing the emotional bomb that is Booker.
None of this is new. Recall that in the early days of Black Lives Matter rioting this summer, whites knelt before blacks all across the country, begging for forgiveness.
“Father God we asked for forgiveness from our black brothers and sisters for years and years of racism,” prayed a white man in Minneapolis before an audience of the aggrieved.
“We have cared more about damaged property than damage to people. We have burdened our black and brown brothers and sisters with taking care of our feelings of discomfort,” said Rev. Katy Shedlock, a white woman, before a crowd of kneeling and prostrated white parishioners in Spokane, Washington. “Forgive us, we pray.”
In San Antonio, Texas, a prominent local pastor named Max Lucado kissed his knees to the ground on a Sunday to beg forgiveness for the acts of racism and indifference by his ancestors.
“I am sorry that I have been silent. I am sorry that my head has been buried in the sand,” Lucado said. “My brothers and sisters are hurting and I am sorry. I have made them to feel less than. I did not help. I did not hear. I did not see. I did not understand.”
Car horns reportedly sounded off across the parking lot to support Lucado’s preaching, like trumpets at Jericho signaling the collapse of what little dignity whites have left. White attendees made sure to wear their masks and comply with social distancing protocols as they praised the unproductive criminal class rioting arm in arm across the country.
Even those who consider themselves conservatives are adherents of our national religion to some degree or another. They take Martin Luther King, Jr. as their icon. King, who “looked on, laughed and offered advice” while his friend, a Baptist minister forcibly raped a parishioner, is a saint to many conservatives, and his saintly caricature is many Americans’ moral center.
After months of rioting, many conservatives saw no problem with the Trump Administration promising more criminal justice reform, and, among other things, handing over $500 billion in affirmative action cash at the behest of Ice Cube to placate the Black Lives Matter crowd. A man who thinks America is terrible, hates cops, produces music about killing cops, who called for President Trump’s arrest, now has more influence over policy than Angel Moms whose children were murdered by illegal aliens. And conservatives are celebrating this partnership more than anything else at the moment because it is a good demonstration of the faith.
White conservatives also are among the leading voices for destroying monuments to American heritage and replacing them with likenesses of figures such as MLK, Harriet Tubman, Chadwick Boseman, even Prince. After rioters looted countless stores, attacked myriads of people, and murdered innocents, Rich Lowry, National Review’s editor, demanded that whites disabuse themselves of feeling any obligation to see Confederate monuments preserved.
What is unique about Barrett’s case is that it shows one must actively partake in the votives of modern liberalism as a condition for holding office. It is the equivalent of conquered people paying the jizya for employment and for the sake of being treated with civility. One must show his fidelity, or at least gentle acquiescence to, all of modern liberalism’s brave and stunning pieties. And it’s not going to get better unless enough Americans, and whites specifically, get off their knees.