In fairness, the religious aspect was brought in, as you point out, by the judge, not the NYT. And just to stay with the most obvious line of thought, critical to the US is the separation of church and state. Literally invoking the Bible or any other faith-based justification when the judge is speaking from the bench is absolutely analogous to a surgeon saying “I removed little Johnny’s kidney because Apollo whispered I should in my ear.” The appalled reaction is appropriate.
You can be fairly appalled by what he said, but not by the fact that he invoked the Bible. Our whole legal infrastructure rests on a moral foundation derived from Judeo-Christian values. One thing many contemporary Americans fail to understand is that the separation of Church and State was not to protect the government from religion, but to protect religion from the government (I rely on legal scholar Stephen Carter for this). Who was it that was whispering in Abraham Lincoln's when he said "if slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong?" A banker on Wall Street?
I don’t think there is any place where Lincoln claims that Jesus told him to declare war. Verbiage matters, and when a state official declares they are the scourge of God on earth, you’re in real trouble.
Well, you're right that Lincoln was not a Jesus man (he's notably absent from his writings). And he wasn't a regular churchgoer, either. (Actually, as a kid he entertained friends by mocking people like that Alabama judge, and he once cleverly responded to charges of heresy while running for Congress by saying he could never support a man "whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion." (Key word of course is "open.") But in his Second Inaugural he quotes the Gospel of John to say that the Civil War was God's punishment to North AND South for the sin of slavery. Can't get more Biblical than that. (I can also imagine the mother or widow of a fallen Union soldier being pretty pissed off by what could be called blaming the victim.) I get it: I lack proportion here, focusing my ire on the Times rather than that Court. Yes. But I still think I have a point, however minor.
In fairness, the religious aspect was brought in, as you point out, by the judge, not the NYT. And just to stay with the most obvious line of thought, critical to the US is the separation of church and state. Literally invoking the Bible or any other faith-based justification when the judge is speaking from the bench is absolutely analogous to a surgeon saying “I removed little Johnny’s kidney because Apollo whispered I should in my ear.” The appalled reaction is appropriate.
You can be fairly appalled by what he said, but not by the fact that he invoked the Bible. Our whole legal infrastructure rests on a moral foundation derived from Judeo-Christian values. One thing many contemporary Americans fail to understand is that the separation of Church and State was not to protect the government from religion, but to protect religion from the government (I rely on legal scholar Stephen Carter for this). Who was it that was whispering in Abraham Lincoln's when he said "if slavery is not wrong, then nothing is wrong?" A banker on Wall Street?
I don’t think there is any place where Lincoln claims that Jesus told him to declare war. Verbiage matters, and when a state official declares they are the scourge of God on earth, you’re in real trouble.
Well, you're right that Lincoln was not a Jesus man (he's notably absent from his writings). And he wasn't a regular churchgoer, either. (Actually, as a kid he entertained friends by mocking people like that Alabama judge, and he once cleverly responded to charges of heresy while running for Congress by saying he could never support a man "whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion." (Key word of course is "open.") But in his Second Inaugural he quotes the Gospel of John to say that the Civil War was God's punishment to North AND South for the sin of slavery. Can't get more Biblical than that. (I can also imagine the mother or widow of a fallen Union soldier being pretty pissed off by what could be called blaming the victim.) I get it: I lack proportion here, focusing my ire on the Times rather than that Court. Yes. But I still think I have a point, however minor.