But his delight is in the law of the Lord,and on his law he meditates day and night.

As always, the folks at Gallup have ruined my Tuesday morning . . .




Gallup explains it all thusly:

Americans tend to be conscious of the need to separate church and state -- but we're also highly attuned to the power of cultural symbols. The Constitution is a compelling symbol of patriotism for most Americans even though many don't know that the first 10 amendments are called the Bill of Rights. Similarly, the Ten Commandments are typically placed in public places as a symbol of morality, largely abstracted from the specific trappings of any particular religious tradition. For many, the value of such symbolism may outweigh more esoteric arguments about religious freedom -- particularly because the vast majority of Americans identify as Christians anyway.

If only the Gallupers had reworded this ever so slightly:

Americans tend to be conscious of the need to separate church and state, but they also seem vaguely indifferent to the deliberate erosion of that boundary. They're also highly attuned to the power of cultural symbols, although polls like these suggest that those symbols are granted value regardless of whether anyone understands anything about their content, history, and contemporary political uses. The Constitution is a compelling symbol of patriotism for most Ameriucans, with the recent exception of Republicans and other anti-judicial radicals who have set their aim against Article III and several items in the Bill of Rights; they are able to do this because most Americans have no idea what the Bill of Rights actually entails. Similarly, because Americans are unconscious of the fact that while the wording and substance of the Ten Commandments differ from one religious tradition to the next, they do not recognize that the debate over public displays of the Ten Commandments — far from being abstracted from the specific trappings of any particular religious tradition — is largely a debate over the Protestant version of the Decalogue and not the Catholic or Jewish versions. Because we inhabit a political culture defined by symbols, few Americans care about the esoteric arguments put forward by liberal trial lawyers, atheistic members of the American Civil Liberties Union, godless university professors of law and comparative religion, and activist judges who would rather yank a feeding tube or marry two queers than acknowledge the righteousness and sovereignty of God. Because the vast majority of Americans define themselves as Christians, we should accept their views on the Constitution without further query.