Government of lies.
The topic for today’s article comes from reader NP, who suggests that Trump’s ascendancy “is almost entirely attributable to the subjective and objective effects of the COVID years.” These effects, he suggests go beyond economic factors to include
… fearfulness and trauma that Trump tried to deflect to The Other; the hatred of “elites” who were blamed for lockdown, and, of particular import, shutting down schools, which led … to the explosion of “parental control” of schoolboards, curricula, etc., which [in turn] fed anti-trans fever…. [I]t’s no accident … that the online bro-culture, hyper-masculinity, sports and health supplement culture was fertile ground for ivermectin-esque challenges to what “they” were telling you about COVID, including, of course, vaccines (and of which Trump was a prominent part, which explains his current Cabinet appointments, who were people, like him, that the “elites” mocked). There’s also an intersection … with evangelicalism: recall the flurry of cases where public health rules were challenged on religious freedom grounds. And … even though Trump was in power when much of this was going on, he was a conspicuous critic of his own government’s response, thus cementing the paradox of Trump as Outsider while running the government.
So with that framing, let’s begin.
The word “evangelical” is derived from the Greek euangelion, which in classical Greek meant “the reward for bringing good news.” In New Testament times the sense of the word was transferred to mean the good tidings themselves. The 2nd century Church Fathers began referring to the authors of the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – as Evangelists, “bringers of the “good news” of Jesus Christ.
Martin Luther used “evangelical” to describe his theology when he separated from the Catholic church in the 16th century in part over his belief that sins are forgiven based on faith alone, and not “works” – acts performed with the expectation of a reward.
“Evangelical” became associated with the first “Great Awakening,” in eighteenth century America where under the influence of Puritan Jonathan Edwards, among others, it represented the “good news” of salvation through Christ, emphasizing the need for a personal conversion experience. It was the latter that can be identified with the phrase “born again.” As the emphasis on conversion extended to converting outsiders evangelicalism became associated with revivalism. In its focus on spiritual rebirth and individual devotion American evangelicalism drew on the doctrine of pietism, which rejects political control of spiritual affairs, in the words of James Emery White, rejecting the “compulsory and cultural” in favor of the “voluntary and personal.”
The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) was founded in 1942. By its own account the timing did not seem particularly auspicious for the creation of an ecclesiastical organization. The US was just emerging from the Great Depression, and had suffered through two world wars, which, along with advances in organic chemistry, astronomy and anthropology, called into question the existence, power, and goodness of a deity.
On day two of Amy Coney Barrett’s Senate confirmation hearing , Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham asked, “You say you’re an originalist. Is that true?” “Yes,” Barett replied. “What does that mean in English?” Graham continued. “… [T]hat means that I interpret the Constitution as a law, that I interpret its text as text, and I understand it to have the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it. So that meaning doesn’t change over time and it’s not up to me to update it or infuse my own policy views into it,” Barrett replied, reciting a now familiar mantra.
Some time later that day Senator Mike Lee of Utah probed further: “Tell me why textualism and originalism are important to you.” “… I think originalism and textualism, to me, boil down … to a commitment to the rule of law," Barrett said, "to not disturbing or changing or updating or adjusting ... in line with my own policy preferences what that law required.” “And is it the subjective motivation, the subjective intent of an individual lawmaker or drafter of a constitutional provision that we’re looking at?” Lee continued, “Or is it original public meaning? And if so, what’s the difference between those two?” “It’s original public meaning, not the subjective intent of any particular drafter,” Barrett predictably replied. “So one thing I have told my students in constitutional law is that the question is not what would James Madison do? We’re not controlled by how James Madison perceived any particular problem. That’s because the law is what the people understand it to be, not what goes on in any individual legislator’s mind.”
These exchanges present the rote formulation of originalism and textualism – legal jargon that has seemingly improbably found its way into popular media. Writing in 2011 on the occasion of members of the House of Representatives reading the Constitution aloud at the opening of its legislative session, University of Chicago’s Eric Posner noted with some surprise at the ascendance of originalism signaled by the House’s homage. “Although originalist ideas have floated around since the Founding,” Posner wrote in the New Republic, “the modern theory was produced by a small group of mostly marginalized (conservative) academics, whose ideas were rarely taken seriously by the most influential (liberal) scholars in the top law schools.”
