Introduction
Last week I had the privilege of bringing the message at a monthly prayer meeting at the Pentagon. I was invited to participate in this meeting by Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, and he is also the one who had made the decision to start up this monthly prayer meeting in the first place. As a result of his fine example, similar meetings are now being held in other departments under other cabinet members.
Attendance at this prayer meeting is entirely voluntary. No one is required to attend. The meeting is held during lunch hour. There is no compulsion at all, not even a squidge.
Let me give you a contrary example of something that was not entirely voluntary, something that I witnessed 55 years ago, back when I graduated from boot camp in San Diego. We marched out there to rehearse the ceremony, I think the day before, and we came to the part where the chaplain was going to give the invocation. We were all firmly instructed that when the chaplain said, “Let us pray,” we were all to bow our heads together in unison, as one man. And the atheists were further instructed: “this is the moment when you will decide to examine your shoe shine.” Okay, that was not copacetic. The unbelievers should have just been told to remain respectfully at attention.
But this prayer meeting was nothing at all like that. And yet, to gauge by the reaction of some, you might think that we are being dragged into a constitutional crisis provoked by an authoritarian martinet, with the First Amendment—the sentences of which we have wrapped up in deeply fogged misunderstandings—starting to teeter as a result, and which is about to fall down into the clutches of Common Sense. And what will the results be then, people?
Enter CNN
And so, in the aftermath of this evangelical debauch, I was asked by CNN . . .
“. . . to respond to criticisms that [my] appearance is a broader part of the administration eroding the longstanding separation of church and state in the US. Please let me know if you’d like to provide a comment.”
Pamela Brown, asking on behalf of her fellow CNNers
To which I replied:
Hi, Pamela. Two things. First, I can give you a brief comment now. Second, depending on when that write up is published, my blog post on Monday morning [that being this one] is going to be a detailed discussion of this whole topic. The brief statement is this.
“The actions taken by the Secretary of War in starting this prayer service are disrupting the “longstanding separation of church and state,” but only if ‘longstanding’ is limited to recent decades. From the Founding of the republic it was not so. Worship services used to be held in the Capitol building, starting before the building was completed, and lasting up until the Civil War. Worshipers in that place included such worthies as Jefferson and Madison.”
Me, answering Pamela
So let us talk about all of this some more, shall we? It is quite apparent that we really need to. Can you believe it? Can you believe we still need to?
James Lindsay Swings and Misses
In the middle of the roistering and ongoing conversation that was Twitter on this topic, James Lindsay, who really ought to know better, said this in response to Joe Rigney:
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a 1A lawsuit hits either. That’s nothing. But I would be astonished if a 1A lawsuit got anywhere—even in today’s legal climate.
On this topic, that topic being religion, the First Amendment has two parts. The first is the Establishment Clause, where it says that Congress does not get to establish a Church of the United States. The second is the Free Exercise Clause, where it says that Congress does not get to interfere with the free exercise of religious liberty. The people who are whizzed up about this prayer meeting are basically trying to pit the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause against one another. They are saying that to allow Christians who work at the Pentagon to “exercise freely” is tantamount to establishing a religion. But you know, like, it isn’t.
It is also worth noting that the people who are whizzed up about this Christian prayer meeting would be ardent defenders of the whole thing if the object of the worship were Marduk, Chemosh, or a sub-Saharan goat demon.
Look. The Secretary of War is a Christian. He thinks it would be a good idea to hold a voluntary Christian prayer meeting every month in the Pentagon. He would like to attend something like that, honoring the true God, and is sure that others would like to attend it as well. He schedules it during lunch hour which means that not one of the worshipers there is doing so “on the clock.” We call this particular devotional activity a little “free-exercise-thereofing.”
But a number of Concerned People have now officially Furrowed the Brow. What is this? Deeply problematic. It is a behavior that Smokes to the Constitutional Sky, Blackening our Secular Sun.
But if this prayer meeting is unconstitutional, then the entire chaplain corps is unconstitutional. And if Lindsay’s dreadnaught of a lawsuit shows up, it would have to be based on an argument that the chaplain opened the meeting with prayer on a Tuesday instead of on Sunday, which is when the government pays him to do things like that.
What “Establish” Actually Means
I know that I have covered this territory before, but I don’t mind. It is kind of fun, actually. I call it Ducks in a Barrel, Ecclesiastical History Version.
To establish an official Church of the United States—a thing that Congress is forbidden to do—means that the following sorts of things would happen. A particular denomination of Christians would be selected, say, the Presbyterians, or the Anglicans, or the Congregationalists, and that church would be made the official denomination of the country. The bald eagle is the national bird, the national flower is the rose, the national anthem is The Star Spangled Banner, and the national denomination would be whatever church you chose. As a consequence, that church would receive official benefits, such as having their ministers paid by the state. Your tithe would be bundled into your tax payments.
The Founders determined, quite wisely, that we should not have one of these at the federal level. This is sturdy good sense, the most common kind of sense. The fact that the oriole is the state bird of Maryland and the eagle the national bird of the United States is unlikely to be a cause of dissension and war. But if the national government chose the Anglicans and some of the states had the Congregational Church as their state church, it is quite obvious that this would introduce civic instability. This is something they did not want to do. And good on them.
And so they left the question of whether to establish religion or not entirely up to the states. At this point, let me quote Jefferson—yes, that Jefferson—admittedly with something of an impish grin. I love quotes like this. The grin starts at the word rest and ends with States.
“No power to proscribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in religious discipline has been delegated to the Federal Government. It must, then, rest with the States.“
Thomas Jefferson
When they ratified the Constitution, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire all had established state churches, keeping them well into the 19th century. When Vermont came into the Union, after the Constitution was up and operating, they did so bringing their established church in with them. Nobody made them drop it. And these were examples of hard establishment, the thing which was forbidden to the Congress to do with the national government.
South Carolina was an example of soft establishment, the approach I much prefer. They simply said that the Protestant faith was the official faith of their state. This did not result in any tax monies being directed to one denomination over against the others. At the same time, it meant that the state of South Carolina was on record as believing that Jesus rose from the dead—which, it will please you to remember, He did.
An Important Aside
Now I am not in favor of established churches at any level. I would be opposed to an attempt to make a particular Christian denomination the official faith of Idaho. I think it is not a good idea. While I believe it is lawful in the eyes of God, knowing that good Christians can and do operate within the constraints of an established church, I believe that it is not the wisest course of action. You have your established church, and you may laud its heroes like Latimer and Ridley, and you are living out good deeds yourself, but time flies by, and you turn around to find some dame is the archbishop.
So while I don’t think hard establishment is a good idea at the state level, an originalist view of the Constitution means that it is not an unconstitutional idea. I would be opposed to such a thing politically, not constitutionally. I would have no constitutional argument against it at all.
And on top of everything else, if the House passed a resolution saying that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead, and then the Senate did the same, and then the president issued a proclamation to the same effect, this would not be a violation of the First Amendment, even though it occurred at the national level. It would establish no church. It would be an example of the kind of soft establishment I am after. And soft establishment at the national level is fully consistent with an originalist view of the Constitution also. Soft establishment is what would naturally happen when you simply acknowledge the existence of a broad Christian consensus.
Not only so, but our current secularist pretenses are not consistent with an originalist view. Secularist pretenses are just an open invitation to the goat demons. It really is Christ or chaos.
Tucker on Man Rampant
This is a separate point, but it will weave into the drama about the Pentagon prayer meeting in just a minute, promise.
A few months ago, Tucker and I were both in Phoenix in order to speak at Turning Point, and so we arranged to have Tucker sit down with me to record a special episode of Man Rampant. That was a good time, but the boys here in Moscow have been busy, so the episode finally dropped last week, right in the middle of the festivities over the Pentagon prayer meeting. Nancy and I finally got a chance the other night to watch the show, and I enjoyed it even more the second time around. I really appreciated Tucker’s demeanor, even in those places where we differed radically. I particularly appreciated his repeated denunciation of the kind of rancid acid that shows up in comment threads and on Twitter whenever the topic of Israel comes up.
However . . .
Tucker reminds me of a guy playing pick-up basketball, and he is really diligent to call his own fouls—apologizing when he gives way to a hateful comment, for example. There was a clear example of that in our discussion. And he is mystified that other conservatives can’t recognize that he is doing that, and that he really does reject Jew-hate on the personal level. But what he does not appear to be aware of is what a number of his fans in the stands—swarming harpies of both sexes—are chanting. His challenge is not just that friends of Israel think he hates Jews. It is that a bunch of people who hate Jews think that he hates Jews, and they have become a very noisy cheering squad.
Such out-of-control spectators don’t make any distinctions at all, still less careful distinctions. They seem to believe that it is not possible to argue for a robust Christian nationalism, as I have above, without dragging the Jews into it. They appear to think that Israel, and American policy toward Israel, is the central issue of our day, and that getting Israel right is the linchpin of the entire Christian nationalist discussion. Which is absurd.
American policy toward Israel is a major issue for Israel, sure. And it is a major issue for all those who have the Jew Floo, and are running a temperature of 104. It is a huge deal for them. But as a piece of the whole, it is a distraction and sideshow.
Running the Risk of Provoking Some More Rabbi Douglas Memes
Now as a matter of policy, I would like to see us put an end to all foreign aid, and this would include aid to Israel. I think that is a realizable goal, and a good one, and we should make a plan to get there. That’s my position.
Many of these folks focus on all the Jewish money in American politics, which is a reasonable thing to talk about, sure, but Jewish involvement in American politics is trivial compared to American involvement in Israeli politics. And Jewish involvement over here is minor, while our involvement in their politics is existential.
And in the meantime, on average, U.S. foreign aid to Israel amounts to about 0.05% of the U.S. budget, and roughly 3% of Israel’s budget. And aid to Israel represents about 5% of our total foreign aid to all countries. Keep in mind these figures fluctuate in accordance with the crisis-of-the-day. But to turn this into some sort of mega-crisis, a wedge issue that should divide the conservative movement on our country, has been the height of absurdity. And I write this not as an argument for a continuation of the aid (see the first paragraph of this section), but rather as an argument for maintaining a sense of proportion and priorities.
When it comes to what fish we ought to fry, I know the difference between a ten-foot sturgeon and a frying pan with six minnows in it. Obsession with Israel and the Jews is bad for your soul, and it is stupid politics.
Back to Christian Nationalism and the Pentagon Prayer Meeting
So what does this little Tucker/Israel excursus have to do with the topic at hand, to wit, the influence of Christian nationalism on the current administration? And the Pentagon prayer meeting?
Some of the comments coming from the nickel seats ran along these lines: “If you libs think that Wilson is scary, just wait until you see who’s next.” I showed up in Washington, bringing along my little Tinker Bell version of Christian nationalism, but just wait. Just wait until administration officials start inviting in the Maleficent version of Christian nationalism—you know, the kind of guys who would argue for beheading a few woke rabbis and Episcopal priests on the National Mall. They will argue for anything so long as the requisite number of bots from Abu Dhabi call it based. “So just you wait for what comes after Wilson.”
Okay, I’ll wait. You guys can hum the Jeopardy tune while you wait. Then wait some more. We will wait and wait until conditions in the country get so desperately bad that the people will cry out, with one voice, “It is time for us to resort to the Unhinged! Perhaps they can save us!”