A Stitch in Haste

"[T]he Founders of our Republic knew the fearsome potential of sectarian religious belief to generate civil dissension and civil strife. And they also knew that nothing, absolutely nothing, is so inclined to foster among religious believers of various faiths a toleration — no, an affection — for one another than voluntarily joining in prayer together, to the God whom they all worship and seek."
--Lee v. Weisman, 505 U.S. 577 (1992) (Scalia, J., dissenting)

When it comes to radical Evangelicals, I'm still a bit unclear as to what isn't an "abomination" —

A Hindu clergyman made history Thursday by offering the Senate's morning prayer, but only after police officers removed three shouting protesters from the visitors' gallery.

Rajan Zed, director of interfaith relations at a Hindu temple in Reno, Nev., gave the brief prayer that opens each day's Senate session. As he stood at the chamber's podium in a bright orange and burgundy robe, two women and a man began shouting "this is an abomination" and other complaints from the gallery.
...
For several days, the Mississippi-based American Family Association has urged its members to object to the prayer because Zed would be "seeking the invocation of a non-monotheistic god."

The question of whether there should even by taxpayer-funded Congressional chaplains, or opening prayers by a round-robin rotation of assorted clerics, isn't the real issue here. The important point is that when radical Evangelicals speak of "God," they mean their God, and no one else's. When they say "religion," they mean their religion, and no one else's.

Exhibit B is of course Mitt Romney — who, you may recall, is Satan.

Which is not to say that Evangelicals aren't duplicitous about the subject when it suits them. Whenever it's convenient for them, they will of course speak of one big happy Christianity — including Mormons and Catholics and lots of other franchises (but not the U.C.C.!). Indeed, in public the theocratic sects go to great lengths to speak publicly (i.e., in mixed company) of "Judeo-Christian" values, even though there is no such thing as a practicing Judeo-Christian; the word is a self-contained oxymoron.

The pinnacle of this inanity was of course Justice Scalia's hopelessly bizarre, indeed disturbed, dissent in McCreary County v. ACLU, 545 U.S. 844 (2005), in which he jumped the shark and advocated granting special rights to "monotheists" at the expense of atheists' (and — one must conclude — Hindus', Buddhists', pagans' and Wiccans') Establishment Clause claims — as if Muslims were as a group more interested in picnicking with Jews than with annihilating them.

So, if the Christian malcontents who disrupted the Senate had chosen to sue rather than to shout, then at least one high jurist would have agreed with them and held that the First Amendment could accommodate, not only having congressional chaplains and prayers, but also limiting them to clerics of "God-seeking" monotheism — the Founders' apparent "one true religion" religious supercategory.

More thoughts at Dorf on Law, Wall of Separation.