The religions of SCOTUS justices:

[trof]

And we wonder why the majority is "pro life"?


"Jackson, who was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday, will be only the second Protestant on the high court when she joins the court this summer, along with Neil Gorsuch (who is Episcopalian but was raised Catholic). The justice whom Jackson will replace, Stephen Breyer, is Jewish, as is Elena Kagan, who remains on the court. The remaining six justices -- John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett -- are Catholic. Thus, the court will consist of six Catholics, two Protestants, and one Jew.

This is not reflective of the U.S. population, as has been widely discussed in recent years. Our latest estimate from over 15,000 Gallup interviews conducted from January 2021 through March of this year shows that about 22% of the adult population identifies as Catholic, as opposed to the 67% Catholic representation on the court. Two percent of the population identifies as Jewish (Kagan represents 11% of the nine justices). The biggest disproportionality comes in terms of Protestants. About 45% of Americans are non-Catholic Christian, or Protestant, compared with what will be 22% Protestant representation on the court.

There is also a completely missing constituency on the court, the "nones," or those who when asked say they have no formal religious identity. About 21% of the U.S. population are nones (and another 3% don't give a response when asked about their religion), according to Gallup data. The rise of the "nones" represents a major change in American religious identity over the past decades, although this is not evident in terms of Supreme Court justices. All of the justices on the court have a religious identity based on available evidence, although we don't have survey data in which each justice is asked the same religious identity question as pollsters use for the population as a whole."

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/391649/religion-supreme-court-justices.aspx

[tanyev]

1. And to think the GOP had a major conniption fit in 1960 over JFK's Catholicism.

[CatWoman]

5. I was just about to comment about that

[barbaraann]

2. Opus Dei?

An Opus Dei Supreme Court
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By Betty Clermont | 18 July 2021
The Open Tabernacle

On July 1, the Supreme Court decided two major cases. In both, the 6-3 majority – of whom 5 of the 6 are Catholic – dealt a grievous blow against democracy by increasing the power of the Republican minority and the plutocracy. This is a reminder that Opus Dei has a malevolent influence over the judicial branch of our government.
...
Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Society, “has shepherded the confirmation process” for Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett noted LeTourneau. “But what is less known about Leo is how his religious views have had an impact on the courts,” she stated. “Leo is Catholic and all of the Supreme Court justices he has been involved with since the 1990s have been Catholic – with the exception of Gorsuch, who was raised Catholic but attended an Episcopal church after he married an Anglican,” noted LeTourneau.
...
“Opus Dei uses the Catholic Church for its own ends which are money and power …. Its members form a transnational elite. They seek to colonize the summits of power. They work with stealth – ‘holy discretion’ – and practice ‘divine deception,’” Robert Hutchison wrote in the introduction to his book, Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei.
...
While Americans deservedly worry over the Koch brothers, Citizens United, “dark money” SuperPACs, et al, the Catholic Church can move unlimited funds – foreign and domestic – to think-tanks, media, voter suppression efforts, every means available to the plutocracy to subvert our democracy. Which was another compelling reason for the intentional creation of the Religious Right by neoconservatives in the late 1970s.

https://churchandstate.org.uk/2022/01/an-opus-dei-supreme-court/

[DFW]

8. Opus Dei was always about power and money, disguised as a religious organization

It was started by a Spanish cleric in 1928, and its name is Latin for "The Work Of God." Its name is as phony as Fox "News." No celestial power or deity has yet to inform the world that these people are doing its "work."

In 1936, Opus Dei threw its weight and support behind the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War, and, after Franco won, it was rewarded by huge privilege in helping to decide the social life of the early fascist Spanish state. Things loosened a little after Franco's allies (Hitler and Mussolini) lost the Second World War. Their influence waned considerably in Spain after Franco died, and the Fascist state ceased to exist.

But Opus Dei is now no longer merely limitied to Spain. Opus Dei looks for influence (and thus, power) whever it can find it. There is plenty of money and power in the United States, and what better institution to control than its highest judicial body? They know perfectly well what they are doing, and have no scruples whatsoever about those who might suffer as "collateral damage."

[barbaraann]

10. Very, very scary.

My parents took our family on a trip to Spain during the Franco years and I remember soldiers with guns and those "Franco" hats everywhere.

[rurallib]

3. There is a vast difference between Sotomayer's catholicism

and that of the 5 'conservative' catholics.

[electric_blue68]

9. THIS. Ty. Plenty of Liberal and Progressive Catholics out there.

[onenote]

4. SCOTUS has never been "Reflective" of the US population.

It's never been reflective in terms of race, religion, gender, or pretty much any other demographic characteristic you can come up with.

For most of the country's history, the Court was populated almost exclusively by white Protestants. Catholics and jews were rare as hen's teeth and essentially, limited to one seat once they were able to break the protestant logjam. More recently, the disparity ran in other directions, with one third of the Court being made up of Jewish justices (compared to 2 percent of the population). When Jackson ascends to the Court, 22 percent will be Black (compared to 12 percent of the population). Women have never been represented on the Court in numbers representative of their proportion of the population, although Jackson will bring the court closer than its ever been (four of nine).

Look at Roe v. Wade: the Court contained three Presbyterians (Burger, Douglas, and Powell), three Episcopalians (White, Stewart, and Marshall), one Methodist (Blackmun), one Catholic (Brennan), and one Lutheran (Rehnquist). There were no Jews on the Court at that time. The dissenters were one of the Episcopalians and the Lutheran. The majority included the one Catholic.

The issue isn't simply the religion of the justices, it is whether or not they distinguish their personal religious beliefs from their role as a justice. Some do. Today a majority do not.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

6. For this thread

Link to tweet

[leftstreet]

7. Expand the court with atheists

Separation of church and state please