The Illiberal Right comes for a pastor for his principled defense of even the ugliest forms of free expression in the Iowa Capitol.
The Illiberal Right comes for a pastor for his principled defense of even the ugliest forms of free expression in the Iowa Capitol.
E arlier this month, the Satanic Temple had a display up inside the Iowa Capitol. It was ugly, unsettling, and most important, utterly evil.
Many Christian conservatives have criticized Iowa legislators for allowing the display. Republican state representative Jon Dunwell has been one of their main targets. Dunwell, who is also a pastor, supports allowing the display to exist on First Amendment grounds. He wrote in a tweet: “My observation as an Iowan and a State Representative, I don’t want the state evaluating and making determinations about religions. I am guided by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.”
Dunwell added that, as a Christian, he finds the display objectionable and that the appropriate response is to oppose its message and pray.
But this is not enough for some people. Dunwell’s tweet about the display has drawn significant ire from the right, with many referencing Jesus overturning the moneychangers’ tables as justification for upending the display. Indeed, Michael Cassidy, a Mississippi office-seeker, went so far as to destroy the display itself, shortly before it was scheduled to come down.
But the comparison to the moneychangers fails on several levels. First, the Iowa Capitol has little in common with the Temple in Jerusalem. It is a secular political building, not a religious one. This is a key distinction. Jesus does not justify flipping the tables because the moneychangers were being evil, but because they were not respecting the Temple’s holiness (Matthew 21:13, John 2:16). If the display were in the middle of a church, destroying it would clearly be not only justified but required.
But the Iowa Capitol does not carry such significance. To the extent that it represents ideals, it stands for those of Iowa and, by extension, America. Freedom of expression and freedom of religion are among the most important American ideals. We must adhere to them even when the beliefs being expressed are repugnant, as they undeniably are in this instance.
Second, the moneychangers are not obviously evil. In this sense, they are far more dangerous than the Satanic Temple. While it is likely they charged excessively at times, they also provided what was seen as a service for travelers. Like the Pharisees and others Jesus opposes, it is a subtler form of wrong that draws the most condemnation.
Jesus does not need to spend much time on those who openly ridicule God. It is easy to see them for what they are. Satanism isn’t drawing large numbers of converts from the display. It doesn’t even want to. The Satanic Temple doesn’t believe in its namesake. (I am choosing not to link to the group’s website, but it is an atheistic group, not actual worshipers of Satan.) Its projects are petty provocations, and those who called for the display’s destruction are only giving it the attention it seeks.
American Christians would be wise to focus on the subtler evils of our time, like abortion and transgenderism, rather than on the immature buffoonery of the Satanic Temple. The worst evils in this country today are not open about it. Like the Pharisees, they claim moral supremacy and seek to put down those who disagree or threaten their grip on power.
The Satanic Temple’s atheistic nature has also been used as grounds to oppose the display, for example, by Andrea Picciotti-Bayer (decidedly not a post-liberal) in National Review. While it is correct to say that the Satanic Temple should not be considered a religion because it does not believe in a higher power, the government disagrees: It gained tax-exempt status in 2019, under the Trump administration.
But, more important, whether the Satanic should be considered a religion or not is irrelevant. The Iowa Capitol’s displays do not have to be religious in nature. As Dunwell said, anyone can apply to put up a display; Iowa does not discriminate on the basis of religion or ideology. Satanism is no religion, but militant atheism is an ideology. If one wanted to argue that Iowa should have stricter rules on what displays are allowed, that is perfectly legitimate. But right now it does not. That means any ideology has a right to a display, even an abhorrent one. Perhaps the display is not legitimate religious expression, but it is still protected speech. Picciotti-Bayer cites Pleasant Grove City v. Summum as evidence that not all speech, even religious speech, is protected in public spaces. This means that Iowa lawmakers could have made rules barring the Satanic Temple’s display going up. But they didn’t.
There are also utilitarian reasons to oppose regulation of the display. As Dunwell notes, the state’s making decisions about what displays are acceptable is dangerous. If the displays were to become regulated by belief, it is not hard to imagine a Democratic legislature going after one that states Biblical truths about abortion or LGBT issues. It is equally easy to imagine the same people who oppose Dunwell screeching about their First Amendment rights if such a thing were to happen.
The controversy over the display is yet another example of increasing illiberalism on the right. It’s undeniably true that Christians have failed to achieve many of their political objectives in recent decades, and that our country is worse for it. But the reactionary tendencies of the illiberal Right are both counterproductive and antithetical to America’s founding principles.
First, it is counterproductive to give the state more power over religious expression. The recent lawsuits faced by innocent bakers, pharmacists, and the Little Sisters of the Poor have made that clear. Many quarters of government are hostile to Christianity. So long as most elites remain openly antagonistic, government needs to be disarmed in this area, not strengthened. Given the unbalanced playing field we face, Christians should be focused on drawing attention to religious persecution and seeking to put more people of faith in positions of power. This approach has been largely successful on the Supreme Court, which has been a friend of religious freedom in recent years, but there remains plenty of hostility in the current administration, blue-state governments, and executive agencies. America still needs more virtuous elites for religious freedom to be truly secure.
Second, it goes against America’s Lockean liberal founding to put restrictions on expression. The Iowa Capitol is a public space, and while the display is morally depraved, it is not violent. It may be legal to regulate this kind of speech, as Pleasant Grove City found. But it is not mandated, and Christians would be wise to consider the potential consequences of more regulated speech at a time when there is such hostility to the faith.
In a statement after destroying the display, Cassidy said, “The world may tell Christians to submissively accept the legitimization of Satan, but none of the founders would have considered government sanction of Satanic altars inside Capitol buildings as protected by the First Amendment.”
It is difficult to envision a display like the one in Iowa going up in any state capitol during the 18th century, but this is more an issue of the societal shame it would have brought upon the perpetrator than of the First Amendment. And shame should indeed be wrought on those who put this display up. Cassidy is right to note how morally hollow our society has become. But legally, his argument becomes far weaker.
It’s hard to imagine, say, Thomas Jefferson, who cut out Jesus’s miracles from his Bible, seeking to criminally punish someone for going against religious orthodoxy. And while many states did have blasphemy laws on the books, the First Amendment’s text “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech” is plainly clear. It is true that during the Founding period, it was unclear to what extent this applied to state laws, but it is also clear that the Founders valued free speech deeply. George Washington said that if “the freedom of speech may be taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” And Benjamin Franklin said, “Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.”
There are times when civil disobedience is necessary for Christians. If, for example, anyone was being made to worship the display, that would have necessitated breaking the law. But a powerless display sitting idly in a room does not rise to such a level. Given the Satanic Temple’s atheism, it is closer to a childish prank than to anything truly demonic.
But Cassidy’s words are partially right: Christians need not accept the legitimization of Satan. Those in Iowa who opposed the display or want to re-insert religion into the public sphere have several options. First, they can follow Dunwell’s calls to oppose it and pray. But they can also file to have their own display put up. There are currently no religious or ideological restrictions on what can be displayed, and it would be a great thing for various churches to have displays throughout the year. This has already begun. When Cassidy tore down the Satanic Temple’s display, one of the other displays was a Nativity. Be a light in the world. Instead of banning the Satanic Temple’s display, outshine it with ones that are beautiful, true, and good. Instead of destroying, create something inspiring. Doing so would be both Christian and American.