The Court of Disbelief: The Constitution’s Article VI Religious Test Prohibition and the Judiciary’s Religious Motive Analysis.

April 30, 2011 By francisbeckwith Leave a Comment

That is the title of an article I published in 2006 in the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly 33.2 & 3, pp. 337-360. I bring this to your attention because I cited it in a recent exchange I had with a friend on my Facebook wall.  Here’s how the article begins:

In several federal cases concerning whether particular statutes or policies violate the First Amendment’s prohibition of religious establishment, both the United States Supreme Court and other federal courts have rejected the constitutionality of these laws and policies on the grounds that they have an exclusively religious purpose. Part of the courts’ analyses in some of these cases rely on the apparent religious motives of the statute’s or policy’s sponsors and/or citizen-supporters as the basis by which the courts infer that the law or policy in question has a religious purpose.

I argue in this paper that this sort of analysis may violate the no Religious Test Clause section of Article VI of the U. S. Constitution as well as the prohibition of punishing or rewarding citizens based on their beliefs. I also argue that the judiciary’s failure to appreciate these possible violations is the result of embracing a mode of analysis, when applied to the origin and purpose of statutes and policies, that is based on a conflation of the terms “motive” and “purpose” as well as a mistake in thinking that the reasons employed to justify laws and policies are the same as the beliefs that motivate the persons who support them. And because of these confusions, the judiciary in effect limits the enumerated powers of legislators and provides a perverse incentive for both citizens and legislators to pretend that their motives are not religious in order to convince a skeptical judiciary that the laws and policies they support have secular purposes. Learning from the judiciary’s example, activists now draw pejorative attention to the apparent religious motives of citizens and legislators in order to shore up popular support against, and influence future cases on, legislation they think violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

In order to make my case, I present an analysis of (I) the No Religious Test Clause and the First Amendment, (II) the difference between motive and purpose, and (III) the distinction between belief and action. I then (IV) review two cases in which federal courts employ a religious motive analysis. I conclude that this mode of analysis targets beliefs and thus violates Article VI when applied to lawmakers and is an illegitimate assessment of belief when applied to either legislators or ordinary citizens.

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The Epistemology of Political Correctness

April 29, 2011 By francisbeckwith 2 Comments

That’s the title of an article I published in the October 1994 issue of Public Affairs Quarterly (8.4, pp. 331-340). It is now available online, and you can find it here. It begins this way:

On university and college campuses today there is a movement popularly known as “political correctness.” Although difficult to define precisely, I think it is fair to say that political correctness refers to a web of interconnected, though not mutually dependent, ideological beliefs that have challenged the traditional nature of the university as well as traditional curriculum, standards of excellence, and views about justice, truth, and the objectivity of knowledge; while simultaneously accentuating our cultural, gender, class, and racial differences in the name of campus diversity. On some college campuses it takes on the status of an orthodoxy. Typically, the politically correct (PC) movement is politically leftist, although some of its harshest critics are also on the political left, just as many critics of McCarthyism were on the political right.

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Filed Under: Philosophy, Political Correctness, politics Tagged With: , , 2 Comments

The National Day of Reason Doesn’t Have A Prayer

April 29, 2011 By francisbeckwith Leave a Comment

That’s the title of my latest column over at The Catholic Thing. It begins this way:

May 5, 2011, is the National Day of Prayer. It has been an annual American observance since Congress enacted it in 1952. The law simply states: “The President shall issue each year a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals.”

Since 2003, secular groups in the U.S. have called for a “National Day of Reason,” to be held on the same day as the National Day of Prayer, “to raise public awareness about the persistent threat to religious liberty posed by government intrusion into the private sphere of worship.” These secular groups also oppose the National Day of Prayer for several reasons, one of which is that: “it makes those who don’t pray feel like second-class citizens. Why set aside a national day that needlessly excludes?”

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Filed Under: American Culture, atheism, Constitutional Law, politics Tagged With: , Leave a Comment

Edith Schaeffer, me, and April 29

April 28, 2011 By francisbeckwith 3 Comments

Four years ago tomorrow, April 29, 2007, I was publicly received into the Catholic Church at 11:00 am at St. Joseph’s Parish in Belmead, Texas. The day before, I participated in the sacrament of confession for the first time in over 30 years. Oddly, 25 years ago, on April 29, 1986, I met Edith Schaeffer, the widow of Francis A. Schaffer. I tell the story of our encounter in my book, Return to Rome: Confession of An Evangelical Catholic (Brazos Press, 2009):

During my second year in New York City I had the opportunity to meet Edith Schaeffer, the widow of the Presbyterian theologian, Francis A. Schaeffer (1912–1984), whose published works were influential in my decision to pursue graduate work in philosophy. Mrs. Schaeffer was in New York for a book-signing event at the massive Christian Book Distributors retail outlet in Midtown Manhattan. When I arrived there in the mid-afternoon, the crowds had dissipated and Mrs. Schaeffer was sitting alone at a table. I introduced myself to her and told her about her late husband’s influence on me. She seemed sincerely interested in my story. She then kindly asked if I wanted her to sign one of her books. I said “yes,” and handed her a copy of Common Sense Christian Living. She then opened up the book to the first blank page and proceeded to draw a sketch of the Swiss Alps, with birds flying between the mountains and a small flower at the base. (For years, her and her husband lived in Switzerland where they founded the ministry, L’Abri). She then wrote in large letters [photograph of the inscription is below]:

April 29, 1986

To Francis with love, Edith Schaeffer. I’ve written many notes to another Francis—-I do pray your life may be as significant in History.

It was only when I reread Mrs. Schaeffer’s inscription while writing this book that I realized that the day of her written prayer for me is the same day that in 2007 I was publicly received back into the Catholic Church, April 29. This is one of those “coincidences” that really spooks me, but in a good way.

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Filed Under: Catholicism, Christianity, Edith Schaeffer, Evangelicalism, Francis A. Schaeffer Tagged With: , , , 3 Comments

South Park’s prophetic depiction of the atheist wars

April 28, 2011 By francisbeckwith Leave a Comment

Here’s the low-down on what’s happening in real time between factions of contemporary atheists. Thankfully, South Park has given us a vision of what the future would be like if dominated by such atheist conflicts. You can view it here. (Warning: some salty language)

Filed Under: atheism, South Park Tagged With: , Leave a Comment

John Paul II and Evangelicals: An Ecumenism of Reason and Life

April 27, 2011 By francisbeckwith 3 Comments

That is the title of an essay I just published at HeadlineBistro.com, “a service of the Knights of Columbus dedicated to bringing readers the top, daily headlines that Catholics need to know.”  My essay is one of several published this week by HeadlineBistro.com in celebration of the May 1, 2011 beatification of the late Pope John Paul II. My essay begins:

As we reflect on the life of John Paul II at the eve of his beatification, we should remember the ways in which the late pontiff touched those outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church. I am thinking specifically of Evangelical Protestants, our separated brethren with whom we as Catholics share the same concerns about the nature of theology and the sanctity of human life.

Although Evangelicals and Catholics disagree on certain theological questions, they agree that theology is a knowledge tradition. What does that mean? It means that theology, like other disciplines such as physics, history or literature, consists of a body of knowledge that can provide us real insight. To many of our contemporaries, this is a strange way to think, for they believe that theology – because it is the articulation of the content of faith – cannot have anything to do with reason.

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Filed Under: Catholic, Catholicism, Christianity, Culture of Death, Culture of Life, Evangelicalism, faith and reason, Pope John Paul II Tagged With: , 3 Comments
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