Thom Stark wrote the following on Facebook:
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, if someone didn’t like the Constitution of the U.S., they criticized it. In the 21st century, if someone doesn’t like it, they claim that it says what they’d rather it say. That’s because the Constitution has become a religious text.
I think he is right, and would just add that this typical way of approaching religious texts is also problematic in and of itself. What we need is not just for people not to approach the Constitution they way they do their religious texts, but also to dare to criticize the religious texts themselves, not as something that can only be done as a criticism of religion, but as something that can be an expression of religious piety.
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