By Michael Gerson
Columnist
Yesterday at 4:44 p.m. EDT
Among the many disturbing revelations in the post-2020-election text-message correspondence between Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is their tone of religious certainty.
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“This is a fight of good versus evil,” wrote Meadows. “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing.” In another, Thomas threatens: "You guys fold, the evil just moves fast down underneath you all.”
News story: Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election, texts show
There is an air of absurdity in attributing a win to God only when Donald Trump is victorious. But Thomas and Meadows were deadly earnest. It is not enough to exercise power in their attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election. Their efforts must be covered in a thick goo of spirituality. The conspirators believed they were doing God’s work. But really, they were attempting to make the Creator of the universe into a partisan hack who favored their (half-baked) political ambitions. In the process, they demonstrated the manifold dangers of the religious impulse in the public realm.
Some of the problem is simple hypocrisy. In the aftermath of Jan. 6, Thomas wrote an apology of sorts to her husband’s former clerks. “I have likely imposed on you my lifetime passions,” she explained in an email. This month, she said in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon that “a democratic system like ours needs to be able to discuss and debate rationally in the political square. I fear we are losing that ability.”
Karen Tumulty: Clarence Thomas has some good advice for his wife
In her texts with Meadows, however, we see a significantly different attitude toward democratic dissent. Thomas passed along a report that had circulated on right-wing websites that the “Biden crime family” and “ballot fraud co-conspirators” were being arrested and sent to barges floating off Guantánamo Bay for eventual judgment by military tribunals. “I hope this is true,” she added.
It might be difficult to conduct rational debate above the din of waves near Gitmo. But given another sentiment Thomas passed along, it is probably not necessary. “The most important thing you can realize right now,” the text read, “is that there are no rules in war.” This was Thomas’s Christian contribution near the center of a political crisis fraught with threats of violence: “There are no rules.”
Jennifer Rubin: The Supreme Court must protect itself from Clarence and Ginni Thomas
If not rules here, there might be some lessons to be taken from the Thomas-Meadows exchanges. They illustrate many of the reasons that people — including religious people — get disturbed by an outsize role of faith in politics.
· The Christianization of politics makes people in a democracy less persuadable. It is more difficult to question your cause if you regard it as a holy cause. And it becomes harder to see any glimmer of truth in your opponents’ views.
· A religious certainty on uncertain matters can blind people to difficult and complex debates. Look how conservative religion has encouraged, of all things, skepticism about vaccines. It is the deification of ignorance.
· Religious passion in politics can easily become tribal, as opponents are transformed into infidels. And this can provide an opening for racism and antisemitism.
· Religious passion can lower the standards to which we hold leaders, since the only real political choice is between a favorable strongman and the social abyss. This can reveal and encourage a dangerous authoritarian streak.
· Religious passion in politics can encourage an apocalyptic tone that drives out real deliberation. (To Thomas, we were seeing “the end of America… the end of Liberty.”)
I say all this as a religious person. I say all this because I am a religious person. I believe that religion can raise the moral sights of politics (see the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.) and root our belief in human dignity. But it is the very power of religious conviction that can make people co-opt it with their own passions and beliefs. Instead of being judged and challenged by the best of their faith, they use their faith to judge others. And they move closer and closer toward blasphemy.
The Christian writer and lay theologian C.S. Lewis wrote: “I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. … The inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust for power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely more because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.”
The problem, of course, is that this furor is rooted primarily in a theological error. And there is very little that government can do to address it (except for the healthy maintenance of democratic institutions). Oddly for a secular age, our country might be waiting on a theologian equal to the moment.
Columnist
Yesterday at 4:44 p.m. EDT
Among the many disturbing revelations in the post-2020-election text-message correspondence between Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is their tone of religious certainty.
Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
“This is a fight of good versus evil,” wrote Meadows. “Evil always looks like the victor until the King of Kings triumphs. Do not grow weary in well doing.” In another, Thomas threatens: "You guys fold, the evil just moves fast down underneath you all.”
News story: Virginia Thomas urged White House chief to pursue unrelenting efforts to overturn the 2020 election, texts show
There is an air of absurdity in attributing a win to God only when Donald Trump is victorious. But Thomas and Meadows were deadly earnest. It is not enough to exercise power in their attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election. Their efforts must be covered in a thick goo of spirituality. The conspirators believed they were doing God’s work. But really, they were attempting to make the Creator of the universe into a partisan hack who favored their (half-baked) political ambitions. In the process, they demonstrated the manifold dangers of the religious impulse in the public realm.
Some of the problem is simple hypocrisy. In the aftermath of Jan. 6, Thomas wrote an apology of sorts to her husband’s former clerks. “I have likely imposed on you my lifetime passions,” she explained in an email. This month, she said in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon that “a democratic system like ours needs to be able to discuss and debate rationally in the political square. I fear we are losing that ability.”
Karen Tumulty: Clarence Thomas has some good advice for his wife
In her texts with Meadows, however, we see a significantly different attitude toward democratic dissent. Thomas passed along a report that had circulated on right-wing websites that the “Biden crime family” and “ballot fraud co-conspirators” were being arrested and sent to barges floating off Guantánamo Bay for eventual judgment by military tribunals. “I hope this is true,” she added.
It might be difficult to conduct rational debate above the din of waves near Gitmo. But given another sentiment Thomas passed along, it is probably not necessary. “The most important thing you can realize right now,” the text read, “is that there are no rules in war.” This was Thomas’s Christian contribution near the center of a political crisis fraught with threats of violence: “There are no rules.”
Jennifer Rubin: The Supreme Court must protect itself from Clarence and Ginni Thomas
If not rules here, there might be some lessons to be taken from the Thomas-Meadows exchanges. They illustrate many of the reasons that people — including religious people — get disturbed by an outsize role of faith in politics.
· The Christianization of politics makes people in a democracy less persuadable. It is more difficult to question your cause if you regard it as a holy cause. And it becomes harder to see any glimmer of truth in your opponents’ views.
· A religious certainty on uncertain matters can blind people to difficult and complex debates. Look how conservative religion has encouraged, of all things, skepticism about vaccines. It is the deification of ignorance.
· Religious passion in politics can easily become tribal, as opponents are transformed into infidels. And this can provide an opening for racism and antisemitism.
· Religious passion can lower the standards to which we hold leaders, since the only real political choice is between a favorable strongman and the social abyss. This can reveal and encourage a dangerous authoritarian streak.
· Religious passion in politics can encourage an apocalyptic tone that drives out real deliberation. (To Thomas, we were seeing “the end of America… the end of Liberty.”)
I say all this as a religious person. I say all this because I am a religious person. I believe that religion can raise the moral sights of politics (see the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.) and root our belief in human dignity. But it is the very power of religious conviction that can make people co-opt it with their own passions and beliefs. Instead of being judged and challenged by the best of their faith, they use their faith to judge others. And they move closer and closer toward blasphemy.
The Christian writer and lay theologian C.S. Lewis wrote: “I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more dangerous I think it both to rulers and to the subjects. Hence Theocracy is the worst of all governments. … The inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust for power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely more because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience and his better impulses appear to him as temptations.”
The problem, of course, is that this furor is rooted primarily in a theological error. And there is very little that government can do to address it (except for the healthy maintenance of democratic institutions). Oddly for a secular age, our country might be waiting on a theologian equal to the moment.
