Beware Bill Barr’s Plans for a Papal States of America
Bill Barr’s recent, extraordinary actions to defend Donald Trump against all reason and decorum have left pundits and plebeians alike wondering what happened to the stalwart of Bush-era Republican centrists. The reason for his conversion is a terrifying threat to our democracy. Barr’s new seditious betrayal of our fundamental values only make sense when understood as a signal that he is guided by the ascendant ideology of integralism.
In two recent speeches, Barr declared the major tenets of his governing philosophy. In an October lecture, he blamed “modern secularists” for “wreckage, and misery” and claimed that America was designed by Christians and therefore cannot survive without enforcing Christian moral values. As usual, his ‘evidence’ almost always proves the opposite of his argument. In a clear display of Trumpian doublespeak, Barr included a cherry-picked reference to James Madison’s “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” which was, in fact, a vehement protest against taxpayer money being used to pay for Christian education. Barr’s November speech at the Federalist Society was similarly breathtaking in its disingenuous distortion of historical references to conclude that the Framers demonstrated “clear intent” to vest the power to execute the law “in a single person, the President.”
These two ideas — that America is a Christian nation, and that power rests solely in the hands of the President, reflect integralists’ redefinition of America’s common good. Instead of supporting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Barr and his supporters are implementing a new American agenda. If they have their way, our government will be rededicated to ‘saving souls’ through enforcement of Christian law, which can only be accomplished by demolishing the wall of separation between church and state and endowing the president with Papal infallibility.
In 2014, Patrick Deneen, a Professor at Notre Dame, wrote about a “showdown” amongst Catholic leaders, pitting liberals happy to pursue social good within a pluralistic America, against a radical school that rejects democracy as fundamentally incompatible with its survival. Five years ago, this showdown was merely interesting — now, the radical fringe is in power.
With stealth speed, Trump’s disciples have put integralist policy-making into action — crippling the legislature by refusing to acknowledge its oversight and spending authority, hollowing out the civil service, filling the judiciary with like-minded Christian nationalist judges, and proclaiming power in a supreme executive whose decision-making is beyond oversight. In their view, democracy clearly is an obstacle to be swept aside, along with co-equal branches of government, separation of powers, and the First Amendment provision that Congress “make no law” respecting the establishment of religion.
To understand just how brazen America’s radical Catholic fringe is right now, it is helpful to chart the bizarre career of Adrian Vermeule, the Ralph S. Tyler Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Following on a sterling career publishing in the field of administrative law, in 2016 Vermeule converted to Catholicism and now openly promotes integralism in speeches at Catholic universities, and on his Twitter feed, which has more than 23,000 followers.
On Bill Barr’s religious liberty speech at Notre Dame, Vermeule tweeted “Excellent speech. Now use the power of your office to do something about it.” On a thread about rapidly declining numbers of Americans claiming Christian religious affiliation, Vermeule replied: “I keep preaching about the power of small numbers in the right locations and these guys keep spending their evenings chewing over Pew reports.” In one particularly obnoxious reply he promised under the new integralist regime “that non-Apostolic denominations will be entitled to a full-cost benefit analysis when we decide whether they may publicly celebrate their rights.”
Some of this clearly is just meant to troll readers. Nevertheless, Vermeule’s advocacy as a constitutional law professor at Harvard provides a veneer of intellectual pedigree “integralism” in no way deserves. His “theory,” in fact, is constitutional apostasy — the end of the founders’ pluralistic experiment. The alignment of this political agenda with radical Protestants like Mike Pence, Rick Perry, Mike Pompeo, and a host of televangelists, speaks to their shared dream of rolling back civil liberties protections, returning women to subordinate status, and viciously repressing LGBTQ Americans. That America’s most immoral statesman is the leader of their movement proves the hypocrisy of their efforts.
Thankfully, thousands of faith leaders have sounded alarm bells and signed on to fight the rise of Christian nationalism in its many denominational varieties. But we should not be complacent about what this radical fringe is trying to achieve — and the success they have achieved already. Vermeule is right about one thing — having a small number of people in the right positions makes a difference. Bill Barr is not a law professor, a cleric, or a think tank spokesman. He is our attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer in the United States, and a federal employee whose salary is paid by taxpayers who pray to many gods, and to none. More than any other Trump appointee, Bill Barr has disgraced his oath and acted with treasonous intent to undermine the bedrock principles upon which our nation was designed.
Amy Werbel is the author of Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock (Columbia University Press, 2018).
