RE: The President and the Pope

[Volokh, Eugene]

Title: Message

I'm sorry, but I just don't quite understand.  What is it that's supposedly permissible under this model, and supposedly impermissible?       Also, I take it that much Christian political rhetoric takes the form:  "Good Christians ought to [oppose racism / support sexual abstinence before marriage / protect the environment / support programs that help the poor / oppose war]."  The speakers often recognize that different Christian groups disagree on this, but their argument is that theirs is the right Christian perspective.  (This is pretty similar in this respect about arguments about what good liberals, or good conservatives, or good Americans, or just decent people should think.)  So I'm not sure that there is even much of a meaningful distinction between implicitly endorsing one set of varieties of Christianity (by saying that one attitude is good and another is bad, where the good attitude is endorsed by some Christian groups and opposed by others), and calling upon like-minded Christians to come to his support.   Bob O'Brien writes, responding to me: Eugene offered: >   Sorry to sound like a broken record, but I wonder how this would have played out in other contexts.  For instance, the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement, and various anti-war and other movements have involved political-religious alliances on controversial public policy questions.  (The abolitionist movement was of course indeed dangerous to the republic in the short term, though good in the long term.)    >If in 1963, a government official called on Christian ministers to oppose racism and segretation and support civil rights, and asked them to assert that good Christians should oppose racism and segregation and support civil rights, would this really have been unconstitutional?    Since Christian ministers differed on each of these issues (in the old South Christian ministers maintained Bibilical support for slavery; in the South of 1963 Chritian ministers continued to maintain Bibilical support for segregation), it seems to me that for the President to opine about the beliefs or actions of "good Christians" constitutes endorsement of one set of varieties of Christianity.  However, for the President to call upon all like-minded Christians to come to his support is another matter.     Bob O'Brien

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