Progressives Deploy Religious Ignorance and Bigotry to Stop Amy Coney Barrett

Efforts to block the highly qualified Barrett from the Supreme Court because of her faith betray our nation’s founding ideals.

If you ever need much evidence that the growing “God gap” in American politics fosters an immense amount of ignorance and occasionally outright bigotry, look no farther than the concern — the alarm, even — that Amy Coney Barrett is on President Trump’s short list to replace Anthony Kennedy on the United States Supreme Court.

The alarm isn’t about her credentials. She’s checked every box of excellence — law review, appellate-court clerkship, Supreme Court clerkship (with Justice Scalia), elite law-firm experience, law professor at an elite law school, and now experience as a federal judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. She’s a young, brilliant woman at the apex of her profession.

So, beyond her obvious originalist judicial philosophy (shared to varying degrees by every person on Trump’s list of potential nominees), what’s the problem with Judge Barrett. Why do some progressives single her out forparticular scorn?

It turns out that she’s a faithful Christian who lives a Christian life very similar to the lives of millions upon millions of her fellow American believers.

No, really, that’s the objection.

Of course there was the infamous moment during Judge Barrett’s 2017 confirmation hearing for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals when Senator Dianne Feinstein imposed an obvious religious test on her nomination. “When you read your speeches,” Feinstein said, “the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you. And that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for, for years in this country.”

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