The Stamford Advocate reports on Brown's tirade:
Playing off Abraham Lincoln's 1862 message to Congress, in which he said the United States was "the last best hope of Earth," Brown asked what the 13th president would think if he were to see the nation today. America, an increasingly secular culture in which only the trivial is tolerated, was formed by a religious conscience, Brown said. "When we move away from that, we change our whole conception of the most significant idea that America has to offer, which is this idea of human freedom and this notion of liberty," Brown said...
Brown said she wouldn't discuss justices or nominees, and talked about a growing hostility to faith and the expression of religion in America. It is pushed by atheistic humanism, which has changed the way Americans think about freedom, she said.
Atheistic humanism "handed human destiny over to the great god, autonomy, and this is quite a different idea of freedom," Brown said. "Freedom then becomes willfulness."
Trying to be tolerant of others is good, but multiculturalism has turned against any religion with an absolute sense of right and wrong, Brown said. "You can be spiritual. You can meditate as long as you don't have a book that says something about right and wrong," she said. "There seems to have been no time since the Civil War that this country was so bitterly divided. It's not a shooting war, but it is a war . . . These are perilous times for people of faith, not in the sense that we are going to lose our lives, but in the sense that it will cost you something if you are a person of faith who stands up for what you believe in and say those things out loud."
I wonder what Janice Rogers Brown has against autonomy? Does she really not think that people should be able to make autonomous decisions about their lives? Whom does she think should be in charge of people's lives?
Setting that aside, though, notice how Brown sets up an opposition between "people of faith" and "atheistic humanism." Are all of the Democrats and others who oppose people like her really "atheistic humanists"? Of course not. A great many are Christians; others are Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc. These are also "people of faith" whose faith is no less important than Brown's faith. Portraying them as "atheistic humanists" is an attempt to pretend that theirs isn't a "real" faith and, therefore, can be dismissed entirely.
Captain Ed is a good example of someone who dishonestly helps spread this idea:
Of course, the folks at PFAW and others already aligned against Brown will use this speech to claim that she is an extremist, one much too dangerous to put on a federal appellate bench. They might have a difficult time convincing the overwhelming majority of people who attend religious services on a regular basis that believing in God makes one an extremist, but they will do their best to do so nonetheless.
When was the last time any atheist was appointed to the federal bench? I doubt that an open atheist would manage, but even if a few have it would remain the case that the vast majority of judges have been theists — people who believe in God. Were they labeled "extremists" for that? No. Is Janice Rogers Brown an "extremist" merely for being a theist as well? No. Janice Rogers Brown is an "extremist" because of doctrines she advocates which go well beyond mere theism. She isn't criticized simply for being a "person of faith," and pretending otherwise is a lie. It's a necessary lie, though, because the truth is too hard to bear: Christians are not persecuted in America except by other Christians.
It's just like Christian Right leaders to act as though they are the only "real" religious people and only "real" Christians in America. It's a common tactic and, when used by a sitting judge, a sign that that judge is unfit for office — not just a higher one, but her current one as well. No atheist and no liberal religious believer can possibly appear before her and assume that she will be fair and impartial.
It's funny that Janice Rogers Brown should mention the Civil War like this. It's true that the Civil War was a time when America was deeply divided, but she doesn't seem to know that part of what divided America was religion. Christians arrived at radically different interpretations of the Bible on matters of race and slavery. One of the reasons they were willing to go to war and kill each other was because each side was convinced that God was on their side.
Not unlike Christian extremists such as Justice Brown today.
Whereas before the truth and reasonableness of Christianity were simply taken for granted, questions about slavery forced American Christians to take seriously the possibility that they were wrong in how they understood theology, revelation, scripture, and Christianity. In Theology in America: Christian Thought from Age of the Puritans to Civil War, E. Brooks Holifield writes:
“More than most other theological debates of the period...the slavery controversy displayed the extent to which cultural assumptions governed biblical interpretation. Especially visible was the intrusion into theology of assumptions about race. ...[T]he proslavery reading of scripture reflected the southern commitment to a hierarchical, organic social ideology that considered relations of dependence a necessary part of the natural ordering of things. This was one reason that the defenders of slavery so often linked their defense of slavery with their belief that children should be subordinate to adults and women should be subordinate to men.”
Because Christian theology was incapable of offering any sort of real resolution to the problem, Americans began to realize that they needed to seek out alternative ways of understanding society:
“To a segment of American intellectuals, the theological impasse meant that theology could no longer articulate the moral vision that held the culture together. ...[T]he slavery controversy among the theologians revealed...the inability of theology to unite Americans or to help them transcend the pull of economic and political interests. The cultural language that supposedly united Americans proved itself able to contribute even more forcefully to their division”
In a sense, then, the divisions of the Civil War are part of what helped create the secular culture in America today — just like the awful religious wars during the Reformation in Europe helped create the idea of secularism and a secular state in the first place. Now we have Janice Rogers Brown, though, trying to cite the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln as part of an argument against secularism.
Many devoutly religious people sincerely believe that their religion is a force for harmony and unity, but history demonstrates that religion is also a force for division, strife, and violence. That's why a secular government is necessary: when it's secular, the state is not taking sides in religious disputes and, therefore, helps prevent religious violence or discord from breaking out. Secularism isn't the cause of the division today, religion is — and more religion from the Christian Right will only make things worse, just as conservative religion helped make things worse in the 19th century by encouraging the belief that it was right own other human beings.
Brent Rasmussen comments on Brown's speech:
America is not a Christian Nation. No one religion should be treated better, or given special preference, than any other. However, Christianity has long held a preeminent spot in American society. This is not surprising given the absolute majority of Christian-identified believers in this country, and I do indeed understand that. However, the thing that makes our country, our way of life viable, is the way that our government is designed to be completely non-sectarian, even neutral, with regard to matters of religion and faith. That is not to say that government employees, judges, or politicians cannot be religious, or that all religious symbols must be eradicated from the "public square", or any other strawman argument that is made by political religious conservatives. But when they are acting in the name of our government they must remain scrupulously neutral on religious matters. Individual American citizens have the freedom of religion. Our government does not have that right. And by extension, when someone is speaking on behalf of our government, they must take pains to be completely neutral.
People like Janice Rogers Brown don't understand any of this. I think it's likely that she's part of Christian Dominionism, a religious movement designed to establish Christian theocratic control over all aspects of society. That may be why she was nominated for the federal judiciary in the first place — the Christian Right needs people like her on the bench in order to have any hope of winning some of their most important cases. Remember, the things they want most are unconstitutional, illegal, and a violation of the very principles of democracy. Only when there are Dominionist judges around can they hope that the law will be ignored in favor of what they think their God wants.
Timothy Sandefur disagrees with the above (and the below - new comments are in brackets).
First, he doubts that Janice Rogers Brown used the phrase "atheistic humanism." The newspaper attributes the phrase to her twice, though not in direct quotes [yes, this qualifies as evidence that she used it, even if it isn't definitive. Who else might she have claimed that "people of faith" are at "war" with in America?], and it's implausible that the article's author came up with it.
Second, he makes up his own definition of autonomy, saying "it means the “freedom” provided by the welfare state." I can't find a single dictionary that uses that definition or anything like it. Unless she used that definition in her speech, Sandefur is just making things up in order to defend the indefensible [even if Brown or some other conservative, like Humpty Dumpty in Wonderland, originally made up this definition, Sandefur never noted that and provides no citations of Brown using it in that way, so he has to take responsibility it].
Finally, he can't see how atheistic humanism is pushing hostility towards faith in America (and that there is a war between the two now) qualifies as religious extremism [and, no, it has not been a doctrine since the inception of Christianity that religion has been at war with secularism, much less atheistic humanism - secularism is a product of the 16th and 17th centuries]. He doesn't notice how the "people of faith" rhetoric is a creation of the Christian Right to further divide America into "real Christians" on one side and "atheistic humanists" on the other [and, no, this "war" rhetoric doesn't appear to be the belief of most Christians in America - especially given the fact that this rhetoric is aimed at many Christians themselves - but even if it were, the rhetoric would still qualify as extreme because the term means a lot more than "fringe."].
He can't see how her complaints about autonomy (as it is actually defined by everyone else) and secularism are a sign of Dominionism [which is not the same as saying that it's "proof" of Dominionism - that would be a fallacy]. Brown strikes me as someone more like Robert Bork than anyone else [being "more like" one person than like "anyone else" isn't the same as "melding" or "fusing" them into one - but then again, I'm using the dictionary definition of "conflate." Who knows what Sandefur means by the term?].
Shame on me? Shame on Timothy Sandefur for defending Janice Rogers Brown's nonsense because she has rendered a few decisions consistent with his libertarianism. Contra Sandefur, I am quite familiar with the internal dynamics of the Republican Party and I find it repugnant how conservative libertarians have gotten into bed with the theocrats [who aren't the same as those who merely use Christian premises in their conception of political philosophy].
Read More: