Blogs > Cliopatria > Lithwick on Religion

Aug 22, 2004

Lithwick on Religion




Dahlia Lithwick is one of my favorite columnists--her Supreme Court commentary for Slate is both penetrating and consistently hilarious.

Lithwick has used her month-long perch on the Times op-ed page well (although she's toned down her humor), and in this morning's column, she makes as compelling a case as I have seen in a short piece for the church/state wall.

Her comparison with the 1920s is one that I have used in class, although the events over the last couple of years have caused me some pause. At Brooklyn, I teach a course on US history, 1914-1950; in my lectures on 1920s domestic politics, I generally argue that cultural clashes formed the key (domestic) dividing line between the parties, but that these issues were displaced by the coming of first the Depression and then the international crisis--along, of course, with the political skill of FDR.

By this model, the 9/11 attacks and subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should have moved us beyond the culturally polarizing politics of the late 1990s and the 2000 election, as occurred after 1932. That, of course, has not happened--and if anything the cultural polarization has become more extreme as new issues, such as gay marriage and stem cell research, have been introduced. I wonder how historians two decades from now will explain why the 1920s pattern did not repeat itself.

I disagree, however, with one of the examples that Lithwick uses:

A Republican congressman called for a civil rights investigation last week, after the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill declined to recognize a Christian fraternity for refusing to accept non-Christian members. Every other student group on campus is held to the university's nondiscrimination policy. The basis of the complaint: Such policies discriminate against Christians' right to religious freedom and association.

This question, at the very least, is more complicated than Lithwick suggests. FIRE, for instance, has strongly condemned UNC's actions, which seem to violate common sense: if a Christian fraterneity cannot confine itself to Christians, what is the point of the Christian fraternity--especially since, as FIRE points out, UNC has, quite appropriately, allowed campus organizations associated with views on the other side of the political spectrum to confine their memberships to those that agree with them. This issue seems to me less like Lithwick's other examples of religion improperly intruding into the public sphere and more like examples that FIRE has fought for years in which campus student life administrators have one set of rules for organizations that they believe reflect"diversity" and another for organizations that they perceive as anti-"diversity."



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Robert KC Johnson - 8/22/2004

I agree that this a quite reasonable policy--ensuring that all sides are treated fairly. It doesn't appear to be UNC's.

This issue, of course, is a difficult one, because by their very nature racial, religious, or ideological groups are "exclusive."


Ralph E. Luker - 8/22/2004

One private liberal arts college with which I am familiar takes this position: that no campus organization can be officially recognized or receive student fees imposed on all students which is not open to membership by all students. That's a tough but I think reasonable policy. It means, for example, that fraternities and sororities are banned for gender discrimination and that Hillel and Christian clubs alike are not acceptable. Such organizations may exist, but they have no official recognition and they do not receive any subsidies from student fees collected by the college's financial office.