This is unfortunate, but fortunately actionable. For more, go here and here.

This is, most likely, overzealous avoidance of any whiff of endorsement, which is an unfortunate byproduct of the the "subjectivism" encouraged by Sandra Day O’Connor’s First Amendment jurisprudence. When my son was in first grade, his teacher tried to persuade him that on his Thanksgiving poster (to be displayed in the hallway), he shouldn’t say that he was thankful for his church. I almost went nuclear (since "private" religious expression in response to an assignment is clearly permissible), but the teacher was sensible enough to consult the principal and the principal actually was at least vaguely familiar with U.S. Department of Education guidelines.

Here’s a passage from the Interfaith Alliance’s document supporting its opposition to William Pryor’s Appeals Court nomination:

Even though Mr. Pryor properly executed a court order demanding the removal of a controversial monument dedicated to the Ten Commandments in the Alabama Judicial Building, it would be severely misguided to extrapolate this action by the chief law enforcement officer of the State of Alabama as a change in philosophy and temperament on the proper separation of religion and government.

Despite Mr. Pryor’s compliance with a court-ordered injunction, nothing has changed in regard to Mr. Pryor’s personal feelings on the public display of the Ten Commandments. As a matter of fact, in an August 23, 2003 statement regarding the removal of the monument, he closed with the following sentence, “The rule of law means that when courts resolve disputes, after all appeals and arguments, we all must obey the orders of those courts even when we disagree with those orders. The rule of law means that we can work to change the law but not to defy court orders.” It is exactly this type of judicial activism from a Justice Pryor that we seek to avoid.

Gee, what more could they ask? Pryor’s recognition of the difference between adjudication and legislation (an understanding that is the very antithesis of "judicial activism") is turned against him, fueled by an unspecific fear, backed by no real evidence (and indeed controverted by the evidence), of how he would behave as a judge.

For more on the Interfaith Alliance, go here and here.

Update: For the record, here is part of an email I received today (Tuesday, May 25th, after the, ahem, compromise) from the Interfaith Alliance:

As you know by now, the US Senate reached a compromise last night around the pending “nuclear option” and several of the president’s judicial nominees. The Senate compromise is a victory for the rules of the Senate and the separation of powers. While I am pleased that this deal takes the unprecedented “nuclear option” off the table, I am very disappointed that it still allows some of President Bush’s most extreme judicial nominees such as William Pryor to move forward.

The Interfaith Alliance will continue urging Senators to thoroughly examine the merits of each judicial nominee and to oppose those who are a threat to religious liberty in America. Using the language of the compromise itself, I hope a majority of senators will reject Mr. Pryor’s nomination because he represents an “extraordinary circumstance” through his failure to support religious diversity and his lack of commitment to maintaining the institutional separation of religion and government.

I hope this compromise ensures that the integrity of future Supreme Courts remains protected from the undue influences of a vocal, radical faction of the right that is completely out of step with mainstream America.

I am particularly pleased that the senators involved in the compromise specifically cite the U. S. Constitution’s requirement that the President must seek the advice and consent of the Senate. Along with those Senators, The Interfaith Alliance will encourage President Bush to return to the time-honored, constitutional process in which the President of the United States consults with Republican and Democratic Senators and considers their advice before making nominations.

The Interfaith Alliance will also continue to urge the president to realize that nominees who are clearly out of the mainstream of our nation’s judicial philosophy will fail to inspire trust and confidence in the American people.

Ken Masugi calls our attention to this essay by Richard Reeb. Here’s a taste:

Undoubtedly, religious enthusiasm has energized our politics, even as it has increased votes for Republicans. Its healthy influence owes much to our Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion and, in this land of multiple denominations, its official non-sectarianism. Moreover, revealed religion made common cause with practical wisdom in the Declaration’s affirmation of the equal rights of all. America’s common political language, therefore, arises from the "self-evident" truths that Tom McClintock, following Lincoln, draws upon in his political rhetoric.

So says Ellen Johnson, national president of American Atheists, quoted in this article (hat tip: NRO’s The Corner).

I was reminded of this passage from Edmund Burke’s Thoughts on French Affairs:

Boldness formerly was not the character of Atheists as such. They were even of a character nearly the reverse; they were formerly like the old Epicureans, rather an unenterprising race. But of late they are grown active, designing, turbulent, and seditious.

The article examines the organizational challenges faced by atheists as they "advocate for godlessness."

"Still, it’s a great time to be an atheist," said [David] Fitzgerald, who was raised a Baptist in Fresno. "Five hundred years ago, we’d be burned for what we were thinking. Fifty years ago, we’d lose our jobs. But today, we’re free to be atheists.

"Our thing is that we’re just not that organized," he said. "It’s our strength and our weakness."

Here’s an op-ed that appeared in today’s WaPo:

First, do the embryos used for stem cell research and therapy have rights? They are clumps of a few dozen cells, biologically more primitive than a mosquito. They have no consciousness, are not aware that they exist, and never have been. Nature itself creates and destroys millions of these every year. No one objects. No one mourns. In most cases no one even knows. If my life is worth no more than the survival of one of these clumps, then it is terribly unfair that I can plead my case on the op-ed page, and they can’t. But I have no trouble feeling that the government should value my life more than the lives of these clumps. God may disagree. But the government reports to me and to other adult Americans, not to God.

I don’t know where to begin. The author, Michael Kinsley, suffers from Parkinson’s, and so has both my sympathy and an interest in finding a cure. To justify satisfying his interest by means of stem cell research, he has to find some way of denying the potential of the blastocysts. Is it the lack of consciousness, the lack of sophistication, the lack of relationship with other conscious beings? Of course, if they were "endangered species," none of these considerations would be dispositive. We’d have to preserve them. But "endangered species" is a human label, one that can be withdrawn almost as easily as it was given. We, then, are the sources of value and protection, which is pretty much what Kinsley concedes in the closing sentence of the paragraph. In matters of assigning moral value, worth, and protection (at least by government), it doesn’t matter what God thinks; it only matters what we think.

Gee, I wonder who would have appreciated that line of argumentation during the slave era?

And then there’s Kinsley’s "sensitive" medical ethics catch-all:

I guess it’s not cricket to use a woman’s unwanted eggs to cure dreadful diseases without her permission. But if this is what alarms Kass, the solution is a simple release form.

You can’t use my "stuff" without my consent. Not exactly deep and profound thought.

This article is long and full of the kind of off-hand political and policy judgments you’d expect from the New York Times, but Santorum’s character and principles do come through.

Update: Jeff Sharlet thinks that the piece was insufficiently critical. I’ll go part of the way with him on his characterization of the Founding (not as Christian as Santorum would have it, nor as "deistic" as Sharlet would), but will quarrel mightily with him on the relationship between absolutes and prudence, not to mention apologetics and the oft-demanded "public reason":

A moral absolute can only derived from an absolute authority, beyond the realm of argument. Santorum "rejects" the very absolutes he claims to uphold by offering reasons -- i.e., the non-absolute work of human minds -- in their behalf. Once Santorum engaged in the debate over gay marriage by suggesting that one reason for opposing it was that it could, in his imagination, lead to bestiality, he abandoned the concept of a moral absolute, a truth so self-evident it requires no explanation.

An absolute authority need not be inexplicable; it can be accompanied, explained, and illustrated by other arguments. And when absolutes are not universally acknowledged, one may have to engage in "apologetics" to procure understanding. What’s more, of course, absolutes, as any good student of St. Thomas Aquinas would acknowledge, still have to be applied to particulars, which requires the fallible application of prudence. God might know what’s right in every instance. Human beings can know the universal rules (natural law), but not necessarily what’s right in any given instance.

As Lucas Morel notes below,President Bush spoke to the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast yesterday. It is a relatively short talk. Bush touched on many of the themes mentioned in Joe Knippenberg’s blog below.

You only have to look at the first line of the talk to see why there is peace in the United States and war in the Middle East. Bush opened: "Thank you for that warm reception -- especially for a Methodist." And the Catholics roared with laughter. When an Israeli can draw laughter from an Islamic crowd like that, then we will have peace in the Middle East.

Here’s a review of the movie I saw today with my son, my friend, and his son. The adults appreciated some of the action but loathed most of the incredibly stilted and pretentious dialogue; the boys, of course, cared mostly for the action. This movie isn’t as bad as the first two, but it serves really only to explain how we get to the only movies that really matter.

The President’s critics must be disappointed. His speech was pitch perfect, focusing heavily on Tocquevillian themes that are not specifically religious, mostly reading religion through Tocquevillian lenses, and also offering the inevitable (for Calvin) reference to Abraham Kuyper.

Those concerned about "theocracy" should consider this characterization of Kuyper’s thought:

The most characteristic feature of Kuyper’s political thought is the principle of soevereiniteit in eigen kring, usually referred to in English as...simply "sphere sovereignty." Sphere sovereignty implies three things: (1) ultimate sovereignty belongs to God alone; (2) all earthly sovereignties are subordinate to and derivative from God’s sovereignty; and (3) there is no mediating earthly sovereignty from which others are derivative.

I am no Kuyper expert, but even this very strong statement implies a separation of various earthly institutions, and not the "church" ruling "the state." Indeed, it could be taken largely as a "pluralistic" gloss on Romans 13:1.

Here is Bush on Kuyper:

Kuyper was a Dutchman who would be elected his nation’s prime minister, and he knew all about the importance of associations because he founded so many of them -- including two newspapers, a political party, and a university. Kuyper contrasted the humanizing influence of independent social institutions with the "mechanical character of government." And in a famous speech right here in Grand Rapids, he urged Dutch immigrants to resist the temptation to retreat behind their own walls -- he told them to go out into their adopted America and make a true difference as true Christian citizens.

The President reads Kuyper through a Tocquevillian lens, emphasizing his pluralism and reliance on separate social institutions, over against government.

The most that can be said is that President Bush implicitly responded to his critics by reminding them that the (Kuyperian) principles of Calvin College call them to active service in support of their fellow human beings, not to relying solely on a monolithic, "mechanical" government. The anticipatory criticisms of Bush were more "political" than his response, which put the ball squarely back in the courts of those who are called by their college and their denomination "[to offer their] hearts and lives to do God’s work in God’s world."

For more on the speech and its reception, go here and here.

Update: Here’s a "neo-Calvinist" endorsement of Bush’s remarks on Kuyper. Note also the last photo in the slide show you can find here.

Update #2: This WaPo article suggests greater support for Bush at Calvin than had previous press accounts. Elizabeth Bumiller suggests that the anticipated protests cut a 45 minute speech to a non-partisan fifteen. I’m dubious. As a professional commencement attender, I’ve never seen anyone exceed about 25 minutes, and people start squirming at 20. Bush speechwriters would know this and wouldn’t be so insensitive as to damage the cause of their employer, right?

In his signature article as new First Things editor, Joseph Bottum posits a conservative meet up against all the talk--most of it from the logorrheic Andrew Sullivan--of a conservative crack-up. Here are the central paragraphs (and no, I haven’t counted):

Down somewhere in the deepest understanding of what America is for—somewhere in the profound awareness of what it will take to reverse the nation’s long drift into social defeatism—there are reasons that one might link the rejection of abortion and the demand for an active and moral foreign policy. Things could have fallen into different patterns; our current liberal-conservative divisions are not the only imaginable ways to cut the political cake. But neither are they merely accidental.

The opponents of abortion and euthanasia insist there are truths about human life and dignity that must not be compromised in domestic politics. The opponents of Islamofascism and rule by terror insist there are truths about human life and dignity that must not be compromised in international politics. Why shouldn’t they grow toward each other? The desire to find intellectual and moral seriousness in one realm can breed the desire to find intellectual and moral seriousness in another.

FOX Sports provides a top ten list of the greatest individual streaks in sports history. Topping the list, of course, is Joe D’s 56 game hitting streak. Lance Armstrong gets short shrift , receiving only honorable mention.

This article covers the run-up to tomorrow’s commencement address nicely and even-handedly. I’m not at all surprised that David Hoekema is one of the signatories of the much-ballyhooed letter.

For more coverage, go here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Two thoughts: first, some of the brouhaha (far from all of it, to be sure) was stirred up by a Calvin alumna with connections to John Podesta’s Center for American Progress. So the Bush Administration’s "outside agenda" isn’t the only one on the ground in Grand Rapids. Let me ask those who were paying closer attention back then (or who have better memories) whether the President’s Notre Dame commencement address of a few years ago also stirred up such a hornets’ nest. Presidents give commencement addresses all the time. That GWB is only giving two this year suggests to me not that he isn’t willing to give more or that he’s simply politically calculating about this one, but rather that most prominent colleges and universities are likely more willing to countenance this sort of performance than any sort of speech by the current President.

Second, it is worth remembering that both Calvin College and the wider world of evangelicals are divided politically, which is as it should be. I expect tomorrow’s speech to acknowledge that and to celebrate what people of faith (and not just theologically conservative "Judeo-Christian" faith) have or ought to have in common. The speech, I predict, will be statesmanlike, not crassly political.

There apparently is another open letter ad, signed by students, alumni, and staff, in today’s Grand Rapids Press, but I can’t find its text on-line. If anyone does stumble across it, please send it my way.

Update: Here’s the letter:

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH FROM ALUMNI, STUDENTS, FACULTY AND FRIENDS OF CALVIN COLLEGE

Dear President Bush:

We are alumni, students, faculty and friends of Calvin College who are deeply troubled that you will be the commencement speaker at Calvin on May 21st. In our view, the policies and actions of your administration, both domestically and internationally over the past four years, violate many deeply held principles of Calvin College.

Calvin is a rigorous intellectual institution, and a truly Christian one. Since its inception in 1876, Calvin has educated its students to use their minds and hearts to transform the world into a "beloved community" where no one is an outcast and all of God’s children are cared for. Calvin teaches its students to work for peace and justice, and to be good stewards of God’s creation.

By their deeds ye shall know them, says the Bible. Your deeds, Mr. President--neglecting the needy to coddle the rich, desecrating the environment, and misleading the country into war--do not exemplify the faith we live by.

Moreover, many of your supporters are using religion as a weapon to divide our nation and advance a narrow partisan agenda. We are deeply disappointed in your failure to renounce their inflammatory rhetoric.

We urge you not to use Calvin College as a platform to advance policies that violate the school’s religious principles. Furthermore, we urge you to repudiate the false claims of supporters who say that those who oppose your policies are the enemies of religion.

A former student stopped by my office for a chat. Back in the day, she was a prominent campus Democrat, working at the state legislature and moving in state party circles. She went to law school here, an experience that, if anything, should have confirmed her party affiliation, despite the presence of this guy on campus.

Not one to beat around the bush, so to speak, I asked her if she was still a Democrat. She chuckled and said, "well, I’m a Zellocrat." She voted for GWB last fall, for reasons that are perfectly intelligible to anyone who pays attention to these matters. She has two handsome and lovely children, ages six and eight, so the "parent gap" comes into play. And she attends this church. So, in addition to the other cultural sticking points that make it difficult for her to return to the Democratic fold, there’s abortion and gay marriage. She might have voted for Joe Lieberman, she said, so she’s not exactly a "theocrat."

This morning President Bush spoke briefly at the 2nd Annual Catholic Prayer Breakfast. The president’s remarks demonstrate his clear understanding of the connection between the nation’s founding principles and the religious convictions of the American people. While some may be troubled by his appearance before a sectarian religious group (a Roman Catholic prayer breakfast), his remarks show he understands the need to speak to a nation of many faiths. That said, he also is not ashamed to speak as a man of faith to a nation that includes citizens with little or no faith. Here’s a sampler: