Posted on 05/10/2010 8:47:46 PM PDT by Alex Murphy
If Elena Kagan – a Jew – replaces Justice John Paul Stevens – a Protestant – on the Supreme Court, the court will consist of six Roman Catholics and three Jews. Protestantism, still the country’s majority religion, will be completely shut out for the first time in American history.
An obvious reason is that religious affiliation has become far less important in politics than it once was. As recently as 1960, Protestant clergymen were alarmed that John F. Kennedy would be in cahoots with the Vatican if elected president. (They should have been more worried about him being in cahoots with a string of floozies.)
But no one’s been seriously attacking national candidates on the basis of religion as long as I can remember. Protestants – who split roughly between conservative evangelicals and members of more liberal “mainline” denominations – don’t speak with one voice, if they ever did. The evangelicals certainly don’t seem to be complaining about the five Catholics who constitute the conservative wing of the court. Whatever their theological differences, they can’t quarrel with results.
But why the disappearance of actual, certifiable Protestants? The mainline brand-name denominations – Episcopalians, Methodists, etc. – have been collectively shrinking in size and becoming far less of a factor in the country they once dominated.
Yet the ranks of evangelicals (I'm loosely including fundamentalists and Pentecostals) have been growing apace. Where the heck are they?
One clue might be found in the educational background of Supreme Court justices. Stevens is a graduate of Northwestern, but all of the others – including Kagan, if confirmed – are graduates of either Harvard’s law school or Yale’s. The real common denominator of the court is a degree from the nation’s two most prestigious schools. Presidents, senators and the legal establishment still apply a test of faith when they fill seats in the upper echelons of the judiciary; they believe in Ivy Leagueism.
Evangelicals need not apply. This is an oversimplification, but Ivy League campuses and other high-prestige schools are not particularly hospitable to conservative Protestants. In fact, the professoriat in general seems hostile to evangelicals. I don’t think professors dislike their beliefs per se so much as they view them as political Neanderthals who vote for the likes of George W. Bush.
Check out this 2007 survey by the Institute for Jewish & Community Research. It suggests that a large percentage of college faculty members positively despise evangelicals, an attitude that can’t help but affect the atmosphere on campus and spill over into the classroom.
I’m guessing that such attitudes are just a little more evident at places like Yale and Harvard than at the University of Idaho or Central Washington University, though evangelicals have been pushing back in the Ivy League lately.
Demographically, evangelicalism is where the action is at in American Protestantism. A bad fit between evangelicals and the elite schools is bound to affect the pipeline of prospective jurists. There used to be a “Jewish seat” and a “Catholic seat” on the Supreme Court, to ensure representation of these once-marginalized groups. Who knows – someday there may be a “Protestant seat” to ensure representation of the country's largest religious tradition.
Evangelicals need not apply. This is an oversimplification, but Ivy League campuses and other high-prestige schools are not particularly hospitable to conservative Protestants. In fact, the professoriat in general seems hostile to evangelicals. I don’t think professors dislike their beliefs per se so much as they view them as political Neanderthals who vote for the likes of George W. Bush.
Check out this 2007 survey by the Institute for Jewish & Community Research. It suggests that a large percentage of college faculty members positively despise evangelicals, an attitude that can’t help but affect the atmosphere on campus and spill over into the classroom.
Most of them believe in the constitution...which disqualifies them from SCOTUS in the eyes of progressives.
One has to ask themselves, where the hell did Protestantism in America go? Conservative Southern Baptist is a different thing though. With main line Protestant churches committing suicide by belonging to the National Council of Churches, dropping real Christianity, embracing a secular homosexual mindset, supporting abortion as a humanistic right it’s no wonder that the Gospel of Christ has been replaced by the social gospel of Marx.
“The only difference between a “humanist” and a Satanist is that the Satanist knows who he’s working for.”
I reckon the trend must no doubt lay at the feet of Protestant presidents.
Freegards
Same thing that happened to mainline Protestants, they corrupted their doctrine until it meant nothing, they’d probably do the same thing with the Constitutions.
Democrats have turned their backs completely on Christians, becoming the party of feminists, homosexuals, communists, etc.
Country club Republicans aren’t interested in Christians either.
Hence the Tea Party.
And yet there is very little commonality between many streams of Protestantism —> Lutheranism differs from Anglicanism which differs from Calvinist thought (Presbyterianism etc) and they all differ from Pentecostalism. I won’t even go into the differences between these and Christian Scientists or even to an extent the Salvation Army or Quakers
That's hilarious, Cronos! And what about those crazy Rastafarians, huh?
Reflecting the culture as a whole. The Evangelical Christian churches not represented (Baptists, Pentecostals, Presbyterians) are more demanding that professing believers walk the talk. You can't fit into the "mainstream" today and profess Jesus as your Savior.
Are you seriously trying to equate Christian Scientists to Protestants?
Even though the soteriology of some of those other groups differ, most of them hold to the solas of the Reformation.
Have a lot of denominations fallen into error? Absolutely. And thus begins the rise of Evangelical non-denominational Christianity.
1) Today, each Protestant is his own church of one, therefore, they are easily made irrelevent.
“There are as many sects now and beliefs as there are heads. This fellow has nothing to do with baptism. Another one denies the sacraments. A third believes there is another world between this one and the last day. Some teach that Christ is not God. Some say this, some say that. There is no rustic so rude that if he dreams or fancies anything believes it must be the whisper of the Holy Spirit and that he himself must be a prophet.”(Martin Luther)
Theodore Roosevelt when he paid a visit to South America at the turn of the 20th century said: "While these countries remain Catholic," he said, "we will not be able to dominate them."
2) Today there are no real Catholic governments, and 98% or more of Catholics are CINO’s.
1+2 = The world is wide open for the taking.
Protestantism is a big fat mess.
I was born into a 500-year Lutheran family, with one excommunicated RC grandpa. I was raised in a Congregational (Puritan) church which merged with the UCC.
Everything everyone in my family believed and taught is gone.
The only appealing thing about protestantism is that it makes me important. As I approach 60, that is inadequate.
Yours is a thought-provoking post.
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