Robert George

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Press braces for the Supreme Court's big one: Religion and abortion (phase I)

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Press braces for the Supreme Court's big one: Religion and abortion (phase I)

In late July the U.S. Supreme Court's in-box was clogged with dozens of secular and religious briefs that oppose its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which established women's right to abortion, further defined in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey case.

Next up, watch for briefs that back the high Court's existing abortion-rights regime, which are due by mid-September. There should be keen journalistic interest in which religions decide to bless "pro-choice" policies and why, with likely contentions that 1st Amendment religious liberty requires legalized abortion even as other Christian and Jewish thinkers disagree.

The media are well aware that the Court's upcoming decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health case (docket #19-1392) will be epochal, and the new briefs show the issue is as politically contentious as ever.

Dobbs involves rigid abortion limits even before fetal "viability" as legislated by Mississippi.

In response, fully 25 of the 50 states, all with Republican attorneys general, are asking the Court to scuttle Roe and Casey. Also, 87% of the Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate, from 40 states, want the two decisions overturned "where necessary" while lower courts clean up legal muddles. Also filing on this side are 396 legislators in 41 states.

Briefs also come from "pro-life" or religious physicians, nurses, and attorneys, "pro-family" organizations, and notable intellectuals like John Finnis of the University of Oxford, Robert George of Princeton University (click here for his recent tweetstorm), and Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School.

Also Dr. Ben Carson, the world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon and Donald Trump Cabinet member. He argues not from his Seventh-day Adventist faith but from embryology, saying the existence of a "new unique human life" at conception is "objective scientific fact. " He considers life to be a "natural right" that "does not depend on theology."

Writers will find a similar approach in the most important religious organization brief.


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Catholic bishops, politicos and Holy Communion: Little has changed in this old debate

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Catholic bishops, politicos and Holy Communion: Little has changed in this old debate

The questions that haunted the Pontifical Academy for Life conference were familiar, controversial and exhausting, since Catholics and their bishops had been arguing about them for years.

The year was 2006, but little has changed in 2021.

What should bishops do when prominent Catholics -- even presidential candidates -- defended and promoted abortion rights? What if they said they accepted churched teachings on the sanctity of human life, while their actions suggested otherwise?

Would it violate the "separation of church and state" if bishops denied them access to Holy Communion? What if bishops asked these politicos to go to Confession?

"This is silly," said scholar Robert P. George, addressing that Vatican gathering. A Catholic shepherd "acting on his authority as a bishop to discipline members of his flock, who commit what the Church teaches are grave injustices against innocent human beings" would be "exercising his own constitutional right to the free exercise of religion. …

"Freedom is a two-way street. No one is compelled by law to accept ecclesiastical authority," stressed George, an outspoken Catholic layman and professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University. Thus, a bishop has "every right to exercise spiritual authority over anyone who chooses to accept it. There is a name for people who do accept the authority of Catholic bishops. They are called 'Catholics.' "

At that time, most debates centered on Sen. John Kerry, the Democratic Party's presidential nominee in 2004.

Cracks inside the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops widened with the election of President Joe Biden, a rosary-carrying Catholic who -- in word and deed -- has evolved into a fierce defender of abortion and LGBTQ rights. Biden quickly dropped his longstanding opposition to the federal funding of abortion, after criticism from the left in the 2019 primaries.


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Cornel West and Robert George keeping fighting for tolerance in public square

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Cornel West and Robert George keeping fighting for tolerance in public square

America is so divided that 50% of "strong liberals" say they would fire business executives who donate money to reelect President Donald Trump.

Then again, 36% of "strong conservatives" would fire executives who donate to Democrat Joe Biden's campaign.

This venom has side effects. Thus, 62% of Americans say they fear discussing their political beliefs with others, according to a national poll by the Cato Institute and the global research firm YouGov. A third of those polled thought their convictions could cost them jobs.

That's the context for the efforts of Cornel West of Harvard University and Princeton's Robert George to defend tolerant, constructive debates in the public square. West is a black Baptist liberal and George is a white Catholic conservative.

"We need the honesty and courage not to compromise our beliefs or go silent on them out of a desire to be accepted, or out of fear of being ostracized, excluded or canceled," they wrote, in a recent Boston Globe commentary.

"We need the honesty and courage to recognize and acknowledge that there are reasonable people of good will who do not share even some of our deepest, most cherished beliefs. … We need the honesty and courage to treat decent and honest people with whom we disagree -- even on the most consequential questions -- as partners in truth-seeking and fellow citizens, … not as enemies to be destroyed. And we must always respect and protect their human rights and civil liberties."

They closed with an appeal to Trump and Biden, reminding them that "victories can be pyrrhic, destroying the very thing for which the combatants struggle. When that thing is our precious American experiment in ordered liberty and republican democracy, its destruction would be a tragedy beyond all human powers of reckoning."

It's distressing that this essay didn't inspire debates in social-media and the embattled opinion pages of American newspapers, noted Elizabeth Scalia, editor at large of Word on Fire, a Catholic apologetics ministry. After all, West and George are influential thinkers with clout inside the D.C. Beltway and they spoke out during a hurricane of anger and violence -- literal and verbal -- in American life.


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Mark Hemingway: Campus free-speech fights almost always include religion landmines

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On one level, arguments about free speech on secular college and university campuses are “secular” arguments.

However, if you know anything about the First Amendment wars in recent decades you know that topics linked to religion — especially when they involve the Sexual Revolution — are frequently in the mix. Things also get dicey when religious believers start talking about salvation, heaven, hell, etc.

Someone like Mark Hemingway totally gets that. As a former GetReligionista, Mark (click here for obligatory 30 Rock nod to Hemingway) knows the landscape of media coverage in the battlefield where fights about religious liberty and free speech frequently overlap.

This brings me to a RealClearInvestigations.com piece that he wrote recently that ran with this headline: “A Push in States to Fight Campus Intolerance With 'Intellectual Diversity' Laws.” Here is a key passage:

In March of last year, President Trump issued an executive order making federal research funding contingent on universities having adequate free speech protections. At the state level, Texas last year became the 17th state since 2015 to enact legislation protecting First Amendment rights on campus. Currently, the conservative National Association of Scholars is working with four states – Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Arizona – to go further: pass laws to increase “intellectual diversity” at public universities.

South Dakota has already done so, and the law’s requirements amount to the most sweeping campus reforms in the country. It was triggered last year by a minor controversy over the stifling of a planned “Hawaiian Day” on one campus -- a last straw for critics of cultural hypersensitivity, which revived intellectual diversity legislation opposed by the state Board of Regents.

Under intellectual diversity laws, not only must dissenting views be tolerated, but college administrations are required to actively take steps (yet to be specified) to ensure that students are exposed to competing cultural and political viewpoints.

So what would “competing cultural” viewpoints look like in campus debates about gender, sex and marriage? Is it more accurate to say that there are “Republican” beliefs involved there doctrines linked to traditional forms of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.?

It was on Twitter that I saw Hemingway connect some dots in ways that I thought would be of interest to religion-beat writers and religion-news readers. For example:


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Got bias? Pompeo gave a 'divisive' speech, which implies two kinds of insiders were divided

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Let’s just say that I saw — in social media and in personal emails — two very different kinds of comments about the recent speech that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered on the subject of human rights.

Quite a few people, as always, wanted to argue about the contents of the speech itself, especially its urgent emphasis on religious freedom. That’s understandable, in light of waves of images coming out of China of blindfolded Uighur Muslims being shipped off to training camps.

Others were upset about the nature of the relatively short New York Times report about the speech, which ran with this rather blunt lede:

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered a divisive speech … calling for the United States to ground its human rights policy more prominently in religious liberty and property rights.

To cut to the chase, some folks were upset by the inclusion of the word “divisive,” saying that this was a loaded, biased word to use in a lede framing the contents of a hard-news story.

Meanwhile, I was actually intrigued by the word “divisive” for a rather different reason, one directly linked to debates about objectivity and fairness in journalism.

You see, if a speech is “divisive” that would imply that people who heard the speech were divided, in terms of their views of its contents. It’s hard to cover a “divisive” speech without presenting accurate, fair-minded content about the views of people on both sides of that divide. Does that make sense?

The problem with the Times peace — #DUH — is that it contains zero input from people who support the views presented by Pompeo and, thus, would be willing to provide information and input that would explain the speech from their point of view.

Maybe this is one of those cases in which there was only one point of view worth quoting, in terms of reacting to Sec. Pompeo’s words?


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Podcast: Looking for progress after George Floyd killing? Look in pews, not political fights

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In the wake of the killing of George Floyd, news consumers have been reading all kinds of reaction quotes from all kinds of important people, including religious leaders, on the left and right sides of American public life.

During this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in), host Todd Wilken and I tried to look past the recent headlines and focus on where coverage of this national tragedy could be going in the weeks ahead, especially in terms of religion-beat news.

With that in mind, let me start with the following question. Who said this, in reaction to the hellish video and subsequent revelations about Floyd’s death?

This makes me sick to my stomach. … To watch a police officer kill an unarmed black man — with no concern on his face, his hand in his pocket, indifferent to the bystanders begging for something to be done to help the man — is so disturbing. He and the other officers on the scene refused to listen and refused to respond. I hope they have deep regret and remorse for their actions. Police are not the judge and jury. These officers will have to stand before God and the authorities on this earth for what they have done.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson? The Rev. Martin Luther King III? That final line about divine judgment is strong enough for both of those preachers.

Actually, the answer is the Rev. Franklin Graham.

Yes, I also saw Graham’s statement bashing liberal clergy for their harsh reactions to President Donald Trump’s photo op with the Bible. But let’s try, try, try to stay focused on the racism discussions, for a moment. Graham’s Floyd statement could have been endorsed by others.

I asked Wilken some questions about America’s discussions of institutional racism and the potential for reform in police departments.

I asked if Wilken expected progress in talks between:

(1) Trump and Democrat Joe Biden? The answer is obviously “no,” said Wilken. I agreed.

(2) Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill? Wilken gave the same answer. Me too.

(3) African-American and white cops and the organizations in which they are involved?


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Home, home on the rage: And seldom was heard an unpredictable word in Trump Bible wars

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Let me just shout a quick “Amen!” in response to the sentiments offered on Twitter by my colleague Bobby Ross Jr.

Here’s the quote: “Too. Much. News.”

For the past three decades or so, Tuesday has been the work day when I try to hide away and write my “On Religion” column, which I ship to the Universal syndicate on Wednesday morning (this week: black preachers, Old Testament prophets and centuries of pain).

Nevertheless, during the past day or so I have been following the Trumpian Bible battles on Twitter. I saw, of course, quite a few people — including conservative Christians — addressing President Donald Trump’s Bible-aloft photo op. I wondered, frankly, whether we would hear from many of those people in the mainstream press coverage that would follow. Uh. That would be “no.”

So raise your hands if you were surprised that the Episcopal Church leadership in Washington, D.C., was outraged? Their comments were essential, of course, because the story unfolded in front of the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church near the White House (site of a fire a day earlier). So you knew religious progressives would get lots of hot ink, as in the Washington Post piece that opened with the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, Episcopal bishop of Washington:

“I am the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and was not given even a courtesy call, that they would be clearing [the area] with tear gas so they could use one of our churches as a prop,” Budde said.

She excoriated the president for standing in front of the church — its windows boarded up with plywood — holding up a Bible, which Budde said “declares that God is love.”

“Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence,” Budde of the president. “We need moral leadership, and he’s done everything to divide us.”

Let’s keep reading. Raise your hand if you are surprised that predictable evangelicals said predictable things — which is also a valid part of the story:

Johnnie Moore, a spokesman for several of Trump’s evangelical religious advisers, tweeted favorably about the incident as well.

“I will never forget seeing @POTUS @realDonaldTrump slowly & in-total-command walk from the @WhiteHouse across Lafayette Square to St. John’s Church defying those who aim to derail our national healing by spreading fear, hate & anarchy,” he wrote. “After just saying, ‘I will keep you safe.’ ”


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After the Cakeshop case: Justice Kennedy cites need for First Amendment guidelines -- then punts

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It's the question that journalists have to be asking right now, along with the legal pros on both sides of future First Amendment clashes between sexual liberty and religious liberty. 

Now what?

To be blunt, was the 7-2 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop, LTD v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (.pdf) a signal (a) to religious believers of all stripes that it's open season, in terms of rejecting LGBTQ customers or (b) to blue-zip-code politicians that they are free to stomp on the First Amendment rights of traditional religious believers, only while using cool, calm legal logic rather than the heated prose used in Colorado?

As always, the key lines to parse were written by Justice Anthony Kennedy. Here is the essential material, as quoted by USA Today:

Kennedy acknowledged that business owners generally cannot deny equal access to goods and services under a neutral public accommodations law. Otherwise, he said, "a long list of persons who provide goods and services for marriages and weddings might refuse to do so for gay persons, thus resulting in a community-wide stigma inconsistent with the history and dynamics of civil rights laws."

"The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts," Kennedy said. "These disputes must be resolved with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market."

It's interesting that Baptist Press, when focusing on the same bottom line, made a strong effort to note the degree to which Kennedy once again affirmed LGBTQ rights:

"Our society has come to the recognition that gay persons and gay couples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth," Kennedy said. "For that reason the laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect them in the exercise of their civil rights. At the same time, the religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression."

He wrote, "The outcome of cases like this in other circumstances must await further elaboration in the courts, all in the context of recognizing that these disputes must be resolved with tolerance, without undue disrespect to sincere religious beliefs, and without subjecting gay persons to indignities when they seek goods and services in an open market."

So reporters, what phrases jump out at you, as you look to the future of this story?


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As more journalists report on Iceland's circumcision saga, the country gets a rabbi

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Iceland, pop. 348,580, is smaller than many U.S. counties but it often makes news totally out of proportion to its size. I recently reported on the country’s attempt to become the first nation in the world to ban circumcision.

The post was inundated with a wave of comments from anti-circumcision activists who ignored the journalism question raised in my post. Tmatt says he spiked at least two dozen of these messages. So, before you read any further, please restrict any comments to the quality of news coverage on this issue, not your own views on the legal and religious issue itself.

But do read my article and the lengthy response by Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson on what the true issues are in Iceland about circumcision.

Then I learned a few days later that Chabad Lubavitch, possibly the most outreach oriented Orthodox Jewish group out there, plans to send a rabbi and his family (pictured above) to Reykjavik sometime next fall. Most of the coverage came from Jewish media, such as this piece by the Jewish Telegraph Agency: 

The Chabad movement is sending a rabbi and his wife to Iceland, an island nation with 250 Jews where ritual slaughter of animals is illegal and circumcision is likely to be outlawed as well.
Rabbi Avi Feldman, 27, of Brooklyn, New York, and his Sweden-born wife Mushky, are slated to settle with their two daughters in Reykjavík, the world’s northernmost capital city, later this year, the couple told JTA last week.
The country is not known to have had a resident rabbi servicing an active Jewish community there since 1918, the year it gained independence from what was then the Kingdom of Denmark.

The piece then updated readers on the circumcision debate in Iceland, then quoted Feldman’s response.

“We hope to bring awareness of the relevance and importance of brit milah,” the rabbi told JTA, using the Hebrew-language word for Jewish ritual circumcision, which is typically performed on boys when they are eight days old. “We hope to bring this awareness to local Icelandic people and especially to lawmakers in their decision on rules, which we hope will have a religious exemption clause.”

Chabad.org has by far the most details on the new rabbi and Iceland’s sparse Jewish history. 


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