Legal Commentary

Fans of the relationship between religion and public dialogue, and of issues concerning the Religious Test Clause, may enjoy this story about Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill), who has announced that he is running for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.  (He's a long shot.)  The news sources on this lean left but are helpfully buttressed with committee footage.  They suggest that Shimkus is a skeptic about global climate change for theological reasons: he believes humanity will not destroy the world because God promised Noah that the world would not be destroyed after the flood.  

I take no position on that question, other than to point out that there is a good deal of interpretive leeway left between the world's not being destroyed and its being damaged significantly, and good stewards of creation might well take that point seriously.  Nor will I mock Shimkus, as some of the stories have done.  But the story is a nice illustration of two points.  First, there is no getting around questions of religious truth; they will necessarily influence debates over public policy, explicitly or implicitly.  Second, this is further reason why the Religious Test Clause, whose  text and/or broader implications are sometimes read quite broadly (as in the debate over some recent Supreme Court nominees), cannot properly be so read.  There is a significant difference between saying that Shimkus's faith should not be grounds for excluding him from public office, and saying that he is entitled to be free from questions or criticism about his faith and its implications, or that his colleagues are forbidden to deny him the chairmanship (or, in some hypothetical case, confirmation to, say, a relevant cabinet post) precisely on the grounds that they either disagree with his faith-claim or think it renders him unsuitable for a position that involves these issues.  The former is impermissible; the latter must be permissible.