With Senate confirmation hearings of Trump’s motley crew of Cabinet-level nominees, one issue Democrats will need to confront right away is when and whether the appointees’ often-exotic religious views are an appropriate subject for discussion. I offered some simple guidelines at New York:
Amid all the hotly disputed allegations that he has a history of excessive drinking and inappropriate (or even abusive) behavior toward women, Donald Trump’s defense-secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth, has another potential problem that’s just now coming into view: His religious beliefs are a tad scary.
Early reports on Hegseth’s belligerent brand of Christianity focused on a tattoo he acquired that sported a Latin slogan associated with the medieval Crusaders (which led to him being flagged as a potential security problem by the National Guard, in which he served with distinction for over a decade). But as the New York Times reports, the tattoo is the tip of an iceberg that appears to descend into the depths of Christian nationalism:
“’Voting is a weapon, but it’s not enough,’ [Hegseth] wrote in a book, American Crusade, published in May 2020. ‘We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must …’
“In his book, Mr. Hegseth also offered a nod to the prospect of future violence: ‘Our American Crusade is not about literal swords, and our fight is not with guns. Yet.’”
His words aside, Hegseth has chosen to associate himself closely with Doug Wilson, an Idaho-based Christian-nationalist minister with a growing educational mission, notes the Times:
“[After moving to Tennessee two years ago] the Hegseth family joined Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, a small church opened in 2021 as part of the growing Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. The denomination was co-founded by Doug Wilson, a pastor based in Moscow, Idaho; his religious empire now includes a college, a classical school network, a publishing house, a podcast network, and multiple churches, among other entities …
“In his writings, Mr. Wilson has argued that slavery ‘produced in the South a genuine affection between the races,’ that homosexuality should be a crime, and that the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote was a mistake. He has written that women should not ordinarily hold political office because ‘the Bible does say that when feminine leadership is common, it should be reckoned not as a blessing but as a curse …’
“Mr. Hegseth told [a] Christian magazine in Nashville that he was studying a book by Mr. Wilson; on a podcast Mr. Hegseth said that he would not send his children to Harvard but would send them to Mr. Wilson’s college in Idaho.”
All this Christian-nationalist smoke leads to the fiery question of whether Hegseth’s religious views are fair game for potential confirmation hearings. Would exploration of his connections with a wildly reactionary religious figure like Doug Wilson constitute the sort of “religious test … as a qualification to any office or public trust” that is explicitly banned by Article VI of the U.S. Constitution? It’s a good and important question that could come up with respect to other Trump nominees, given the MAGA movement’s cozy relationship with theocratic tendencies in both conservative-evangelical and traditionalist-Catholic communities.
Actually, the question of the boundary between a “religious test” and maintenance of church-state separation came up conspicuously during the first year of Trump’s earlier presidency in confirmation hearings for the then-obscure Russell Vought, whom Trump nominated to serve as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget (he later became director of OMB, the position to which Trump has again nominated him for the second term). Bernie Sanders seized upon a Vought comment defending his alma mater, Wheaton College, for sanctions against a professor who said that Christians and Muslims “worship the same God.” Sanders suggested that showed Vought was an Islamophobic bigot, while Vought and his defenders (included yours truly) argued that the man’s opinion of the credentials of Muslims for eternal life had nothing to do with his duties as a prospective public servant.
This does not, to be clear, mean that religious expressions when they actually do have a bearing on secular governance should be off-limits in confirmation hearings or Senate votes. If, for example, it becomes clear that Hegseth believes his Christian faith means echoing his mentor Doug Wilson’s hostility to women serving in leadership positions anywhere or anytime, that’s a real problem and raising it does not represent a “religious test.” If this misogyny was limited to restrictions on women serving in positions of religious leadership, that would be another matter entirely.
More generally, if nominees for high executive office follow their faith in adjudging homosexuality or abortion as wicked, it’s only germane to their fitness for government offices if they insist upon imposing those views as a matter of public policy. Yes, there is a conservative point of view that considers any limitation on faith-based political activism in any arena as a violation of First Amendment religious-liberty rights. But those who think this way also tend to disregard the very idea of church-state separation as a First Amendment guarantee.
Critics of Christian nationalism in the Trump administration need to keep essential distinctions straight and avoid exploring the religious views of nominees if they are truly private articles of faith directed to matters of the spirit, not secular laws. It’s likely there will be plenty of examples of theocratic excesses among Trump nominees as Senate confirmation hearings unfold. But where potential holders of high offices respect the lines between church and state, their self-restraint commands respect as well.
Lott said “when Strom Thurmond ran for President, we voted for him.” The “we” meant white Mississippians, since black Mississippians in 1948 were carefully dissuaded from voting by poll taxes and outright intimidation. Lott, who voted against the Voting Rights Act in Congress, sounded particularly interesting on that line.
Republicans have been trying to excuse Lott on the ground that he was just being nice to Thurmond on his birthday, but that won’t wash one bit. Thurmond was not entitled to be told on his birthday that he deserved to win the 1948 election, particularly since he had long since repudiated his segregationism. Logically, that means that even Strom Thurmond no longer claimed the candidate of the States Rights Party should have defeated Harry Truman.
And Lott wasn’t exactly whispering in Thurmond’s ear. The Senator, who was on camera and whose remarks were being recorded, had no right to tell everybody else in America, while ostensibly talking only to Thurmond, that a segregationist victory would have improved their lives. Many such victories in the south hadn’t improved the lives of southerners. They didn’t improve Medgar Evers’s.
Finally, Republicans attacking Reid now claim Democrats “brought Lott down.” Democrats had as little power to take away Lott’s post as Majority Leader as Republicans now have to take away Reid’s. It was his own party members who turned on Lott at that time, including President Bush. Non-racist Republicans, too, were appalled (particularly Bush, who had been energetically trying to erase his party’s racist reputation).
And as I look around various comments sections, I notice that those who identify themselves as African Americans overwhelmingly say they weren’t offended at all — that Reid spoke the truth. They aren’t focused on the word “negro,” they’re focused on the facts. Yes there is something called a black dialect (an entire academic discipline, Ebonics, is devoted to its study). Yes, white people are indeed more likely to vote for a lighter skinned black man who sounds more like themselves. And yes, Obama does sound more southern before certain audiences. So did Hillary Clinton.
Some of the reaction to this event is simply pusillanimous. Even Harold Ford Jr. tied himself into a pretzel on Chris Matthews trying to defend and attack Harold Reid simultaneously. I’ll be really glad when Obama campaigns for Reid if he lams into Michael Steele’s hypocrisy. And if the President can also find a thing or two to say regarding John Cornyn’s pretensions to be a defender of black America, that would be simply lovely.