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.
Yes, we can win if we just stop whining.
We can use magic.
And magical thinking.
Yeah, that’ll work.
I am getting awfully tired of listening to Democrats finding ways to explain why they are going to lose an election before the election is held. We Dems can WIN this election if we can just stop whining.
I didn’t consider my comment to be a whine as much as an analysis of the current political climate.
By criticizing the right, I more than indicated my disdain for them. I am fully aware of how much worse off our country is under the Republicans. It’s only taken about 30 years for their failed economic policies to decimate the middle class, destroy the labor movement, and concentrate the wealth in the hands of a few.
But I don’t think any of this means we should just give the Democrats, including President Obama, a pass. The truth is that, thanks to corporations and Wall Street, the lines between the two parties get blurrier every day. It’s up to the Democratic base to hold the Democrats’ feet to the fire.
If we don’t, it will not matter which party is in control. The lines distinguishing one from the other will have been obliterated.
I understand the frustration, but let’s keep in mind how things would be if the Republicans were still in charge now. Things are absolutely better now than when the Repubs were in charge. Now is not the time to sit on your hands, now is the time to fight harder. Sitting on your hands only gives the Republicans more power. What do you think will happen with your agenda then? GET OUT AND VOTE!!!!! Or quit whining.
President Obama, by seeking bipartisanship as an end, rather than a means, and by staking out a center-right position, has alienated many in his base. This is especially true among progressives, who campaigned hard for the President and who expected more than the few crumbs he has thrown our way.
Also working against Democrats this primary season — and undoubtedly again this November — is the successful campaign the right has launched to marginalize the new commander-in-chief.
Taking their cue from Rush “I hope he fails” Limbaugh, conservatives have thwarted not only modest efforts on the administration’s behalf, but also wholly right-wing measures originating with Republicans (read: health insurance mandates).
By failing to take control of the narrative in the health care reform debate, Obama let not just the right but the crazies in the right define the terms. Thus did we witness the socialization/nazification/communization of reform legislation which reformed almost nothing and, in fact, catered to the corporate interests.
Given a choice between the eccentric (conservative crazies) and the evil (the Muslim, Kenyan terrorist occupying the White House), fringe voters and fencepost sitters are going to choose the whackos. Combine that with a depressed voter turnout among the Democratic base, and the result is a resurgent Republican party, whose bad governing and declining demographics should have spelled its demise, but which instead has risen, like a phoenix from the ashes, to soar once more.
It’s not hard for me to understand. We thought electing Democrats would effect a change, and it has not. A year for “health reform” that benefits the insurance companies that contribute to the crisis, financial reform that does nothing to prevent another crisis — and which is being watered down as we speak, no realistic idea when there will be an end of the wars, no policy to reduce or end dependence on foreign oil. In short: No Change.