It’s all about the Supreme Court

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

Of the 15 U.S. presidents who have held office since 1927, the year Time magazine began naming a man or person of the year, seven have received the title, and President-elect Donald Trump makes eight. Time didn’t intend for this year’s choice to be an honor, but simply a recognition of Trump’s importance as a cultural and political newsmaker.

A George Mason University law professor this week attributed Trump’s election victory, particularly his support from religious conservatives, to a single exchange at the Supreme Court during arguments in the 2015 Obergefell case. In a column for The Washington Post, David Bernstein recalled the Obama administration’s acknowledgement to the Supreme Court that religious institutions that oppose same-sex marriage could lose their tax exemption.

“Many religious Christians of a traditionalist bent believed that liberals not only reduce their deeply held beliefs to bigotry, but want to run them out of their jobs, close down their stores and undermine their institutions,” Bernstein wrote.

John Stonestreet said the Obergefell arguments definitely became a factor for voting Christians, but don’t necessarily account for Trump’s victory.

“When you look at Middle America, it’s not religious conservative voters, necessarily, that delivered Trump this presidency,” Stonestreet said. “It had a lot more to do with the flyover country and workers out of jobs looking for a different economic situation.”

Still, religious conservatives have major concerns about how the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage affects their religious liberty.

“It’s one thing when you have a decision like Obergefell, it’s another thing when there’s an open season on anyone who disagrees with Obergefell,” Stonestreet said. “Whether we’re talking about an HGTV house-flipper couple or we’re talking about Barronelle Stutzman, the sweetest grandmother you’ve ever met, there is a sense [that] those who disagree are being run out of town.”

Religious liberty isn’t the only issue before the Supreme Court that concerns religious conservatives.

“The Supreme Court also rolled back pro-life legislation in Texas—pro-life legislation that resulted in shutting down half of the state’s abortion clinics,” Stonestreet said. “There’s nothing that has galvanized religious conservatives like the pro-life movement.”

With Trump now poised to appoint a Supreme Court justice, pro-lifers have more hope than ever that Roe v. Wade could be overturned, beginning a new era in which abortion is not just illegal, but unthinkable as well.

Listen to “Culture Friday” on the Dec. 9 edition of The World and Everything in It.