A Time for Choosing

Do we want to be a conservative Christian nation or a secular one?

Photo by Worshae on Unsplash

Americans have a choice: We can be a country governed by far-right Christian conservatives according to their vision of a Biblical life. Or we can be a secular nation, where people are free to worship as they please, but where there is a hard and tall wall between personal religiosity and public life.

What’s not working is doing both — especially as powerful Christian conservatives use American democracy and the American ethos of religious freedom to impose their views on others. Unfortunately, though, even in progressive politics, there is little in the way of an aggressive defense of secularism — of what one of my favorite organizations calls freedom from religion.

One of those powerful actors seeking to exploit religious freedom in favor of religious rule is Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. He was recently caught on tape agreeing with an undercover operator that the nation should be returned to godliness.

“One side or the other is going to win,” Justice Alito said. “There can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.”

He’s right: There are differences on fundamental things that really cannot be compromised. And one of those things is whether we live under religious rule, or whether we live in a secular nation.

And his wife Martha Ann, who Alito has also blamed for flying the flags of conspiracy theorists and Christian nationalists outside of their shared homes, was even more explicit. “I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month,” she told the undercover journalist, who was posing as a Christian conservative. According to the New York Times, “She added that she would come up with her own flag, which would be white with yellow and orange flames and read, in Italian, ‘shame.’”

Read that again: In response to simply having to see a Pride flag, the wife of a Supreme Court justice wants to fly her own flag, featuring burning flames and the word “shame.”

She’s not alone.