By Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, Juicy Ecumenism.
As we await the final report of the White House Religious Liberty Commission (RLC), the storm continues around its February 9 hearing and the aftermath. Providence, Juicy Ecumenism, and, more generally, IRD have followed and analyzed the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sarah Stewart helpfully highlighted accurate comments on X from Bishop Robert Barron, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Winona-Rochester, about inaccurate comments from former RLC commissioner Carrie Prejean Boller. A current commissioner, Barron was unable to attend the February hearing. Nor was another commissioner Cardinal Timothy Dolan, recently retired as the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York. Dolan publicly agreed with Barron’s statement.
Lost in the storm—even after the RLC’s April 13 final hearing and with ongoing legal resistance from the Interfaith Alliance and other progressive critics—has been the fullest conversation that needs to and could be had on the sources of antisemitism.
The long history of antisemitism should be just that—history—but it is not. As evidenced by the persistent chatter of certain online pundits and social media influencers, historical or conventional antisemitism is still with us, at home and abroad. Every American should speak out against it.
Little of the coverage of that fateful February RLC hearing has addressed the substance presented by the witnesses for all three panels. Readers are encouraged to watch the full testimonies, all available on YouTube. The third panel, especially, should be watched in its entirety, in order to see the manner and lack of facts and standing from Boller, as well as the content from longtime American civil rights attorney Leo Terrell, Father Thomas Ferguson (pastor of Good Shepherd Roman Catholic Parish in Alexandria, VA, and a member of the RLC Advisory Board of Religious Leaders), and Babylon Bee founder Seth Dillon. As a subject matter expert on comparative ideologies as well as American politics and religion, I was a witness on this same panel, seated between Terrell and Fr. Ferguson.