I was catching up on some TV the other day and caught Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America, on PBS’ “NOW” with David Brancaccio. (C&L has a clip from the show.)
There was one part of the interview that was stunning, even by today’s religious right standards.
Brancaccio: So in my efforts here to understand, sort of, where your limits are on this, you wouldn’t support a state that wanted to establish an official religion would you?
LaRue: Well, you know, the interesting thing is that the founding of our country, there were state churches. That’s what it’s all about, in a country where the people get to rule, and if you, you know, you’re in a state you don’t like then you get to move to another state. I think that’s highly unlikely, in this day and age, where we’re gonna have any state church.
As a rule, in 21st century America, when someone asks you on national television if you’d support a state establishing an official religion, the right answer is, “No.” But for the chief counsel of a leading religious right group, the answer is to defend the idea and argue “that’s what it’s all about” in a majority-rule dynamic.
After all, to hear LaRue argue the point, if you live in a state where they pick the wrong religion, you can “move to another state.” If your faith tradition is left out of every state, presumably LaRue would expect you to simply leave the country altogether.
LaRue’s argument is almost too ridiculous to generate a response, but it’s worth noting that colonial America did have states choosing official religions, but the Founding Fathers, when crafting the Constitution, found the practice so fundamentally at odds with the idea of democratic pluralism and the ideals of the new nation that it quickly abolished the practice. LaRue seems to lament the bygone era, but she’s defending a rejected idea that didn’t work and that contradicts every principle of the Constitution.
It’s also worth noting that LaRue may have radical ideas about religious liberty and the rights of minorities, but that doesn’t put her outside the mainstream of today’s conservative movement. In fact, LaRue is not only an influential outsider, pressuring Republican officials to toe the far-right line, she’s also a powerful insider. Indeed, it was Jan LaRue who stood alongside Reps. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), Lamar Smith (R-Texas), and Todd Akin (R-Mo.) last month when the Taliban-wing of the Republican Party got together for a conference on “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith.”
LaRue’s ideas may be absurd, but that hasn’t damaged her standing as a major player in today’s GOP.